"Terminus," the recorded metro monotone tells those who can understand at Ládví. "Please leave the train." Upstairs, in a two-story transit mall, a solarium bar invites those who take bronze with their brews. Instead, I sat outside in the near dark at 15:50 pondering the options of Budešova (Kobylisy), Praha 8: several herna bars, a café, or the Kulturní Dum Ládví.

Ládv...egas
Since Kulturní sat closed—save for fishing gear, floral blouses, and basketball bets—I ducked out of the ice drops that pelted then melted and into Little Las Vegas, lured more by "The Simpsons" on the screen than the chance to boost my bankroll. Inside, sipping 17  Kc  Gambrinus after the cartoon had ended, I was left with nothing to look at except for the unfortunately unavoidable thong and buttcrack set upon a barstool directly in front of, and no more than five feet away from, where I sat— and at perfect eye level.

Second Hand Land
A second-story thrift store, Second Hand Land, offers fashions from Germany, Switzerland, and the United States. Goddamn, Starship Troopers on VHS—if only laptops played videotapes—and castoff paperbacks from U.S. high school required reading: Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Adventures of Huck Finn, The Outsiders. All this and stuff to wear, like the 10 Kc jacket best described as “ain't much to look at, but she'll keep you warm” that I bought.

Pivos and pins
Second Hand Land shares its second story with Bowling Bar Ládví, where pins do their drunken-marionette dance from the cords that keep them in place, radar (or something) clocks velocity, and an off-peak-hours Gambrinus and solo game'll set you back about 70 Kc. (From 16h to midnight, pay 110 or more.) It's open until 4 a.m., so you can roll from the last train to the first.
On the return trip, we chatted, this paint-speckled guy and I, using my two weeks' worth of Czech and the German I'd picked up washing dishes in an ethnically Austrian town in Italy in '99. He worked, he said, 10 hours a day, seven days a week, with little reward: "Nicht essen, nicht cigaret, nicht bier."
"Nicht bier?" I responded, as if it should come as a shock that a guy who worked 70 hours a week without food—I didn't push the exaggeration; it's his story, he can tell it as he wishes—couldn't afford to drink.
"Nicht," he said. He asked what I do. Me? I'm just a passenger to the end of the line. Thank god I lacked the words to say that.

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