Gathered some friends and hit up Maxine’s, the new martini lounge above Hayden’s on Pine.  I’d been told that it was really nicely done, so I had pretty high expectations for the place.

We arrived fairly early, just a little after 8:00.  The first thing I noticed about the building was that it was a house.  Having never been to Parev, the former occupant, I really had no idea what to expect.  Hayden’s, an upscale restaurant, is on the ground floor.  Maxine’s, the bar, is upstairs.

We climbed the stairway (an elevator is available) and found the bar.  If you consider Max’s “upscale” and Noma “trendy”, Maxine’s would be “classy”.  The decor is Victorian, with a crowd to match (average age was well above what most downtown venues see).  A large hand-blown glass sculpture hangs above the bar, while high-intensity pinspots provide all the illumination one could ever want.  While the service was top-notch, the atmosphere was stuffy.  We actually received dirty looks and “tsk tsk”s from some of the other patrons for committing the sin of texting.  The bartop looked like something out of your neighborhood VFW.

It’s almost as if they tried to make Maxine’s Victorian-chic, but someone forgot to actually install the chic part.  It honestly felt like we were visiting an Elks.  Prices tipped the scale towards the high end (7&7 + Red Bull & Vodka set us back $16).  Don’t get me wrong - Maxine’s isn’t a bad place.  It’s geared towards an older demographic, which means it won’t have the cool factor of Max’s or the atmosphere of Noma.  Unfortunately, unless you’re looking to hang out with the 50+ crowd, you’ll probably find Maxine’s fairly tepid.  Not my kind of place - I won’t be heading back.

We decided to clear our palettes with a trip to Max’s for some equally good but less expensive beverages.  We ordered their Quattro Formaggio pizza for $7, had some good times, and decided to leave once the straight-out-of-Eclipse group of screaming drunk girls came in.

We did a detour at District on our way to Cleota’s.  Had a bottle of champagne and went on our way.  Cleota’s was surprisingly dull, but Tim made up for that by carding people as they came in.  After that got boring, we returned to The District — reggae night was in full swing with a 50% crowd.  Ran into Ill, a girl named Kristy (Kristen?  Christi?  Christy?  I don’t remember), and that’s about it.  Tim got his picture taken with the raven and was pretty enthused about the whole process.  After he ran up the stairs screaming “kemo sabe!”, we decided it was time to go.

Another fruitful night downtown, another fruitful group of pictures in the Gallery.