Burlington restaurant “Sweetwaters” is closing after 41 years.  Is this important, or somehow significant?  Not in the slightest.  But it brings back an interesting memory.

In 1998 (I think,) I was working for a law firm in Burlington; D****** Associates.  By that time, I had been brewing beer at home for three years and I had gotten pretty good at it.  I had won the Brewmaster’s Cup in the prior year’s annual competition, and the Vermont Pub & Brewery had taken my winning recipe and brewed a 14-barrel batch of my beer.

On a sunny Friday in May, someone in the office, who knew about it, said “Hey, let’s all go to the VPB and try Dan’s beer!”  Great idea.  Everyone in the office agreed, and we were ready to go.  Then Mike C***, who shared office space with us, came in.  Yes, the same pot-bellied peckerhead who pitched for Rice when we were in High School.  When told of our plans, he whined “Ah, I don’t like that place; you can’t get a decent mixed drink!  Let’s go to Sweetwaters.”  Well, everyone changed their minds, which tells you exactly how much they really cared about celebrating my beer, but that’s not my point.

So we went to Sweetwaters.  I hadn’t been in the place since just after they had opened, when I had gone in a couple of times out of curiosity, so I had no idea what I was walking into.  Friday Happy Hour, the place was almost packed, and it was a mix of people that I had absolutely no business being with.  It took only a few minutes to realize that it was a white collar “meat market.”

Money, sex, power; but money above all; were what motivated every single person in the place.  There were good-looking young women everywhere, dressed to kill and made up like dolls.  They were all hoping to hook up with somebody who had “arrived,” or maybe somebody on his way up in the world.  But it was, by no means, just the women who were trying to “hook up.”  The place was filled with lawyers, accountants, bankers, realtors, and developers.  Everybody in the place was looking for money. 

In a way, it was fascinating to watch, although disgusting as well.  You could almost see the power lines forming and re-forming, as the richest and most powerful would be surrounded by eager, young lawyers and realtors, trying to make some kind of connection that would further their careers and line their pockets.  I was at a stand-up bar with a couple of our attorneys, listening to them talk about the people in the room.  They would point out the rich and powerful to me; names I had heard in the course of our business, but most of whom I had never seen.  They would identify some as hopeless brown-nosers, but it was all a question of rank.

In their world, the only thing that mattered was money, and they ranked everyone they knew (and everyone else, for that matter,) by how much money they had.  My boss used to talk, with his buddies, about associating with “the right sort of people,” and he would dismiss scornfully an attorney who didn’t have any rich clients as a “lightweight.”  I remember one time when we had a visit from our wealthiest client, an Italian billionaire named Ernesto P*****, who owned some properties in Vermont.  It was absolutely hilarious to watch these arrogant lawyers, who would scorn and ridicule an ordinary working man, bowing and scraping before this billionaire.

At Sweetwaters that afternoon, I saw for the first time Burlington’s elite in their natural habitat.  The polite word for what they were doing is “networking.”  It took very little time for me to realize that the men in the room were no different from the women; they were all whores and pimps.  I guess that’s how business gets done.

Au revoir Sweetwaters.  Where will they go now?