Cone Heads

It might not be sweeps month, but that didn’t stop us from recently trying to bust some ass, TV-style, with a good, old-fashioned sting operation.

The target: Mickey’s Irish Pub, a new bar near Oak Park Mall. We had received an e-mail from savvy reader Callie Liggatt, who alerted us to some purported pretentiousness at this JoCo hot spot.

Callie told us that when her friend visited Mickey’s, she parked her new BMW sedan behind the building. However, as the friend walked in, the door guy told her to move her car to the front line — a row of parking spots right outside the door that was blocked off by traffic cones. Those spaces were reserved for cars “$40,000 and higher,” he reportedly told her.

“She [Callie’s friend] thought he was kidding, but his facial expression apparently told her differently,” Callie wrote. “She moved her car over and the doorman moved the cones for her to park next to a Porsche SUV and a Mercedes. Which night will I get to park my ’88 Ford Festiva in the front line?”

On behalf of Ford Festivas everywhere, we had to check out this intriguing rumor. Plus, the thought of such car snobbery riled us — who do you think you are, Mickey’s Irish Pub? Um, in case you were confused, you’re not a chi-chi club in New York or Los Angeles. You’re a frat-tastic chain bar in Lenexa.

Our first order of business was to find someone with an expensive automobile. Because many of our lovely friends are the nonflashy, nonexpensive-car-driving sorts (i.e., not Chiefs players), we mentally went through our acquaintance list and came up with KCTV Channel 5’s Steve Chamraz, owner of an Audi A-4. (List price starts at around $38K.) Readers might remember Mr. Chamraz not only from our Best of Kansas City 2003 issue (for Best Crushworthy Local Celeb [Male]; rumor has it he’s framed this award) but also from — oh, yeah — the station’s infamous Internet-pervert bust. (We still think the lead-in music to that segment should have been the Three’s Company theme song: Come and knock on our door/We’ve been waiting for you.) Because Chamraz is leaving for a CBS affiliate in St. Louis in November, we figured that having him as a Research Assistant before he went out the door might prove interesting. We were hoping that he’d dispense cheesy lines to the ladies, such as “This just in: You’re hot” or “I’ve got some breaking news in my pants.” Alas, no such luck.

Vehicle thus secured, we wrangled a few other Research Assistants and set the plan in motion.

The bar is in a strip mall at 97th Street and Quivira, but in a stand-alone building. A line of people spilled out, and the parking lot was packed — but the front row was filled with non-$40K cars, such as Chevy Blazers and Honda Accords. Confused, we slowly drove past the door. No acknowledgment from the door guys. We circled around a couple more times — nothing. Hmm, maybe this $40K thing was just an urban myth. We parked and decided against catching a ride on the golf cart shuttling people to and from their cars. After waiting in line and paying a $5 cover (we snorted at this bit of ridiculousness as well), we finally made it inside.

We found ourselves surrounded by a young crowd; the place felt like a college bar — less a faux-Irish pub and more like a family-friendly chain restaurant (with crazy crap on the walls) that morphs into a quasi-club at night. A huge bar dominated the middle section; to one side were a couple of pool tables and high-top tables with flat-screen TVs. The other, larger side of the bar contained a DJ booth (but no dance floor; that area was crammed full of tables). Garage-door-style windows rolled up to expose a patio. The most appealing about Mickey’s was its selection of 39 beers on tap, including Smithwick’s Irish Ale, a brew that’s now owned by Guinness and is relatively new to the States.

Disgruntled that our sting might come to naught, we sipped our drinks. Then we noticed a stack of cones behind the popcorn machine near the front door, and after documenting it on film, we started poking around, meeting assorted characters along the way. Khristian, 26, stopped the Night Ranger as she was walking past by showing her his flesh-colored penis straw. Next thing we knew, the straw was in his crotchal area, sticking out from his fly.

“That’s the average size for a white guy,” joked Kim, 42, a Korean-born woman who had been to a friend’s bachelorette party earlier that night. Hence the straw, which she’d given to Kristian. She was accompanied by Mark, 27, her fiancé, whom she’d met at work.

“He’s my boy toy,” she said. “Hey, you know what they say about Asians? You’ll never go back Caucasian. We’re a little exotic. He likes that.”

Not sure if she wanted to perpetuate this tired old stereotype, the Night Ranger moved on and soon befriended Crystal, 26, and Sally, 26, who were sitting on the patio. (Actually, Crystal first approached us; she was the only one in the bar who recognized Chamraz. Shocking — we even tried introducing him to a pair of chickies as Steve Shaw from Fox 4. They remained unimpressed.) These two women and their large group had driven in from Basehor. It was their first trip to Mickey’s, too. And like us, they were feeling old. “I didn’t wear my short skirt,” Crystal said wryly, alluding to the ruffled minis sported by many of the chickies.

They were telling us that one of their friends had witnessed a guy in flip-flops peeing at the urinal — then bending down and puking — when we noticed another tableau outside the bar: A guy in a maroon shirt had passed out on the sidewalk, near some mailboxes. After someone shook him awake, Maroon Shirt stumbled into the parking lot, where he lurched onto a grassy median, bent over and threw up. Ah, the amateur drinker in action — could anything be more reminiscent of a frat party?

At the end of our night, we managed to chat with a couple of the staffers about the bar. The dress code enforced (no jerseys; gold chains must be tucked in), on Mondays, the place serves a midnight buffet (great idea), and, if you live in Johnson County and are too drunk to drive, you can get a free cab ride home (even better). Then we asked whether the fancy car rumor was true.

Apparently it was, and the reason we didn’t witness it was because we were there during the holiday weekend, when “everyone” was at the lake.

The staffer confirmed that the door guys flag down the expensive cars for front-row treatment. We asked what sort of cars.

“Probably, like, in the $40,000 range,” the staffer said.

“Why do you do this?” we asked. “Is it to up the status of the bar?”

“It’s kind of what the owner wants. It’s customer appreciation … respect for people who have money, basically,” he said dryly. He also told us that the most expensive car the bar’s had out front is a Porsche Cayenne.

“Does it really have to be in the $40,000 range?”

“Depends on the person who’s parking the car.”

Appalled at such auto elitism — and no, a frickin’ golf-cart shuttle doesn’t make up for that — we fled.

“Well, you uncovered a policy that’s discriminatory to hoopties,” Chamraz said.

“They’re hooptist,” RA Erik added.

This just in: That’s bullshit. So, in the spirit of Independence Day, we headed elsewhere, to a place where all car-parking policies were created equal.