Destination: Locals Only

9:30 p.m.

Bar co-owner Michele Kofski is celebrating her 34th birthday with a Gemini birthday bash tonight. It costs most of the zodiac $4 to get in, but it's free if you're a two-faced Gemini. As usual at Locals Only, it's a mixed crowd. A weird crowd, some might say. You don't know who is going to be standing in Locals Only when you walk through the door. Good or bad, nights here always offer something fresh.

Open stage veteran Otto works the crowd with more or less the same set he's been performing for years. I wonder if performing an identical routine night after night might have the same enlightening effect as the creation of a sand mandala or a Japanese tea ceremony.

Mansuper, the musical alter ego of Kent Clark, 35, is backed by a full band now, which makes his primitive songs and antics more palatable. The band wears matching red horns and Mansuper shirts while Clark wears a pig nose, "horns" made of two little fists giving the bird, and a cardboard triangle with wings on his back. I'm trying in vain to make sense of it when Chris Pfouts (husband of editor Sherri Pfouts) points out that it is a crafty rendering of the artwork from Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon." Pfouts suggests that Clark is trying to channel the spirit of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's original singer who succumbed to dementia and withdrew to his home for decades.

10:04 p.m.

Tall cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and shots of Jack Daniels keep appearing in front of Charles Morrison "Mo" Foster, Jr. He also is celebrating his birthday tonight by playing with his band, Mandy Marie and the Cool Hand Lukes. He shows off a new tooled-leather belt and decorative buckle that Mandy Marie Luke gave him for his birthday. Doubling over to admire the gift, Foster says, "I think she was just tired of me wearing my black belt with my brown boots." Tall and fit at 45, Foster talks loud, laughs louder and has the energy of a teenage boy. "I gotta pee," Foster says, standing up and turning toward the bathroom.

10:30 p.m.

Mandy Marie and the Cool Hand Lukes take the stage. The slightly subdued crowd stays close to tables and seats. I'd be up front, but it's hard to take notes and dance at the same time. The band is great as usual, enjoyable as much for Luke's billboard-size smile and between-song storytelling as it is for its airtight renditions of country classics and rockabilly originals.

Luke banters with Mo, who alternately stands next to and on top of his upright bass. Mo closes the set out playing rhythm guitar and singing Georgia Satellites' "Keep Your Hands to Yourself."

11:25 p.m.

Gemini Jarod Stillwell, 27, and Lorri Rutherford, 33, became friends with Mandy after seeing her play. "We're honky-tonkers," Stillwell says, so he and Rutherford are loyal to a handful of local purveyors of hillbilly music.

The band Loretta is setting up on stage as people continue to filter in and out of the bar.

Locals Only doesn't have an established personality the way other bars do, but that works in its favor. The food is good, and the beer selection is better, but the bar's appeal is simple. "I like dive bars, you know?" Stillwell says.