My Favorite Job Ever!

I loved this place so much. And no, it's not a strip club, but it is just blocks away from one. I'm really, really sorry I never had the chance to go back after I left. I knew 'Keys was looking to retire, and since he wrote the shows as well as playing keyboards and owning the place, if he wanted to retire, the club pretty much had to close. It wasn't like he could just hire a replacement. The Fly By Night was an Alaskan institution, I mean, how could you not love a place who's motto was "Spam, Booze, Rhythm & Blues"?
I cocktailed there for two and a half seasons. The money was good, the atmosphere was wicked fun, and the club was closed January through March. Alaska, besides being a wealthy state, has a lot of typically seasonal work (timber, fishing, tourism) and so the unemployment laws are pretty liberal, I collected unemployment while the club was closed ('Keys usually spent some time in Hawaii during those dreary winter months.)
The shows were pretty good, funny, but after three or four months of seeing the same routines, they did get a bit monotonous for the staff. However, you could work in costume if you liked, so there were ways to liven things up. 'Keys routinely poked fun at tourists and typically Alaskan stuff; fishing, slow RVs, wildlife encounters and wild assumptions. He LOVED election years for their goldmine of material. He would have had an absolute heyday with Sarah Palin's VP nomination and Don Young's corruption indictment, and he would have pulled no punches in being wickedly funny about both Bristol's name and her pregnancy.
I had a lot of fun times at that club, Cadillac margaritas and double shots of Patron for staff after hours. There's nothing quite like emerging from a club, half-drunk, with a bunch of cash in your pocket, into the eerily early dawn of an Alaskan morning. Jesus, I miss that feeling.