Mommy & Me crosses paths with Harley

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I don’t like to buy in to trends, especially ones as perverse as Bad Mommy Chic. But that’s what I did when I took my 4-year-old to the Viper Room for Harley-Davidson’s unveil of its Cross Bones Saturday night. For the record, I don’t make a practice of dragging my boy to bars, but I had no choice. His dad wasn’t available and his grandma was only game to babysit in exchange for a ride to the airport later that same night, which is why she was there too.

So there we were -- Grandma in her Gucci loafers, my son in his Gap baseball shirt and I in my green flak jacket -- looking, and smelling, completely out of place amid the spilled beer and boys decked out in leather. We were there, of course, to see the cover come off the big black blob blocking traffic in the middle of the floor. But we were also early, which meant I had to pacify the troops. After I liquored up Grandma with a gin and tonic, my son insisted that I also take him to the booze counter, where he was given a Shirley Temple, a ham sandwich and an ever-so-brief lesson in cool.

‘What are those for?’ my boy asked, smearing his grubby fingers on a round of toothpicks.

I turned to the bartender, who was chewing one of the stubby little sticks.

‘It’s to look tough,’ he said.

Question answered, my son swung his body weight away from the bar, indicating it was time to return to the safety of our booth. Dinner segued into the unpeeling of the many Harley stickers that were stacked on the table, then stickering them to Mom. Add the live DJ spinning T Rex, Guns ‘N Roses and Led Zeppelin, and dueling videos of skateboarders grinding rails, and my son was in pre-K bliss. ‘I love the Viper Room!’ he yelled. ‘Why haven’t we been to this place before?’

A rocker and a roller is born.

-- Susan Carpenter

Photos: Kevin Wing