Musical Massage Chairs

I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but if my wife wants to go shopping at either Pearlridge or Windward Mall, I will actually volunteer to accompany her. Of course, she always asks, “What’s the catch?” But I’m pretty eager to tag along.

That’s because these two fine malls have electric massage chairs similar to the ones you’ll find in Shirokiya, except that you have to put money in these and you kind of rent a massage. It accepts paper money denominations of up to $20 for a 60-minute massage. That’s a great deal in my mind, because any kind of massage at a spa is going to run at least a dollar a minute.

Now, the chair massage is pretty straightforward, no drama, and it actually gives a really great back massage. So, the other weekend we were at Windward Mall. It was my lucky day, for besides the massage chair thing, they were displaying all these custom motorcycles. The bikers’ clubs were there in full force. The chairs are placed in pairs and I had to wait until one came open for me to plop into.

Finally, one opened up and I jumped into it and pulled out a $20 bill to feed into it for an hour massage. I inserted the bill, it accepted it but nothing happened. I started pounding on the mechanism in the hope I could jump-start it. Nothing I did could get it to work. Finally, the chair next to it opened up and I jumped into it to get my massage. I only had two bucks left but any massage is better than no massage.

Just then this big biker guy sat in the chair I just vacated. He had on his biker club colors and some leather clothing that barely covered his massive “guns.” He sat down and the chair immediately fired up. He looked at the time display and yelled, “Awright! I get a free one-hour massage!” Under my breath but still audible to him, I said, “That’s my chair.”

The next thing I expected was a face massage from his fist. But the guy stood up and said, “Sorry, brah, my bad.”

I guess he was kind of like a true Harley-Davidson – the bigger and “badder” you look, the nicer you are.