Date night part deux

Danny and I had our second date night in Normal. (I realize that we should make an effort to go "out on the town" more often, but the paucity of exciting things to do around here plus the cost of the sitter are rather discouraging.) On our first date night, we went to Jim's Steakhouse and were easily the youngest people in the place. This time, we were hoping to find a younger (dare I say "hipper") place to go. We had dinner at Kobe Japanese Steakhouse which ended up being overrun by 20-30 high school students who were dressed (although not behaving) formally. The food was OK, but other than the kids and us, the restaurant was nearly empty. The elegant ambiance envisioned by the restaurant's designer was obliterated by the glaringly bright lights, Bob Seeger, and forgetful and scruffy waitstaff.
Our plan was to do a pub crawl in an effort to sample many of the well-reviewed bars and find somewhere that we would like to hang out. We went to The Loft in Bloomington, which was purportedly an upscale martini bar. Although there were indeed some 30-something people there, it was a total meat market, and not particularly ambient (no live music, and in fact, no music at all).

We headed back to Normal to check out all of the bars near our house. It is pretty cool that we are in walking distance of so many places, so we parked at home and walked Uptown. Biological Sciences people visit Medici's regularly for beers after work, and it is really a very beautiful restaurant and bar. However, the bar was completely empty at 10 pm on a Saturday. Also, they had no pretzels. So we left for the NV Ultralounge which has live entertainment and dancing. We paid the $5 cover and realized that were were literally the only people there over 30. The undergrads were of the drunk and disorderly variety, and we didn't stay long. We ended up at Maggie Miley's for a Strongbow and Long Ireland iced tea. Maggie Miley's is decently ambient, and there were a few non-college-aged people there, but the kitchen was closed and they had no bar food at all.
I came home feeling very disappointed. In CA, there were plenty of places to go out to eat, dance, drink, etc. that were frequented by people of all ages. When we went dancing, there were couples (especially Latino) of all ages that knew how to go out and have a good time. I look forward to the Latinization of America!

Clearly, the 30-something people have vanished from Normal. I don't see many of them at work, at the gym or anywhere, in fact. It is my suspicion that people from around here go on some kind of rumspringa where they leave Normal for the big city and only return after they have exhausted all other options.