Tag Archives: bars

New York Sucks

Posted on by
134

Added 5 years later: The inexplicably high ranking search engines give this little rant has led to a lot of comments below, including some excellent rebuttals to my original points. There are also a lot of people adding their own complaints about the city that never sleeps. All comments are welcome, but overall I find the ones who disagree with me to be more interesting, and a few are worth digging up and reading. There are definitely some things to love about the city. My favorite comments of all, however, are the ones on both sides of the fence that hide their whiny, entitled attitude behind foul language, apparently unaware of the irony.

Recently the quality of comments has been so low that I’ve considered not allowing any more of them. Semi-literate ravers, please don’t bother anymore. There’s already plenty of barely-coherent blather on both sides.

Anyway, on with the original episode:

– – –

In the unlikely event there are two New Yorkers capable of mounting a meaningful defense of their home city, I’ll publish them both. More than two, either I’ll pick the one hardest for me to rebut, or I’ll figure out a way to let the polls decide. Messages of the form “F%*$ you, you f^%#ing f$^*!” will just add to my smug belief that I am better than you are and will be deleted and mocked.

I have for a couple of years now held the opinion that New York City is filled with victims and crybabies. Everyone knew already that the city was filled with arrogant assholes.

To start with the arrogant assholes, here’s a case in point. Tonight I was sitting in a bar, and at the next table was a pair of Yankees fans. Yankees were playing the Bosox, a game with history and significance. You would expect a Yankees fan to be passionate about such a game, and these guys were. I’m OK with that. That’s why God made baseball. That’s why Steinbrenner bought it from Him.

I overheard part of their conversation early. “They’re still talking about ’98 here. Was it ’98? The Yankees humiliated them. It was a sweep.” Now, I don’t know if it was ’98 or ’96, and yes, the Yankees did completely dominate the Padres. It was a sweep. But that year San Diego won the pennant. When dad buys you a pennant every year, that may not seem so special. But when you earn it, doesn’t it mean so much more? No point explaining that to a Yankees fan.

And that’s what New Yorkers just don’t seem to understand. They seem to believe that simply being from the hive is enough to entitle them to all the respect the world has to offer. Later, the New York fans were outraged among themselves when the best TV was switched over to the Padres game. There was still a TV right in front of them carrying their game, but it wasn’t Hi-Def. “What the f@%& are they doing showing the Padres game?” one NYB asked the other (B is for bastard). Had the man been grandstanding, trying to get a rise out of the other people in the bar, I would have simply labeled him as an asshole and shrugged it off. But the simple fact was that as a New Yorker he expected to get his game on the hi-def TV. He was entitled.

New York is inexplicably proud of being a bunch of arrogant assholes. They call it “street smart” and other transparent euphemisms. When I passed through New York I was not prepared for the incessant whining and victim attitude.

I was passing from Aruba to San Diego, and because I’m a cheap bastard my return flight included a sleepover in New York. No problem, I figured. I’d just find a less-uncomfortable place to crash at JFK. Best case, I find a bar and just hang out all night. It was a naive notion, I now realize.

My first welcome as I came off the plane set the tone for my stay in the city that never sleeps. “Did you see what he just did to me?” I heard an angry woman behind me say. We made our way to an escalator and I tell you now I have never seen such concentrated uncivilized behavior. Poor little Jerry was pushed aside and every time I said, “Oh, I’m sorry” as I was shoved into someone else I was answered with “eat me” or something worse. “Screw the other guy before he screws you” was the rule of the day.

The airport was closing. There would be no crashing in the terminal, no all-nigher in the bar. The bartender was terribly appologetic. I called a hotel and they said the shuttle would be right over. It was a cold night, freezing rain, and I was in shorts. People were not looking at me with sympathy as I stood waiting for the shuttle; they were looking at me with suspicion. I watched two old men get into a fist fight over a taxi. I shook my head. The cold rain on my legs hurt far less than the anger all around me hurt my poor west-coast brain.

It turns out the signs telling me to wait for a hotel shuttle did not direct me to the place hotel shuttles were going. After freezing my ass off (proudly, stoically, without whining) I tromped back to the terminal and called the hotel again. The friendly person apologized and the shuttle was redispatched. I stood longer in the bitter New York sleet until I was finally swept away to the warmth and security of a nearby hotel. I was happy to see that guy, and he was downright nice. Maybe New York isn’t so bad after all. Pff.

Once safely installed in my room, and with the local anger fizzing in my head, I made my way with laptop to the hotel bar. There I sat and watched the local victim hour, also known as the news. Crap, can’t there be one story on the evening not spun as injustice? The weather report was “here’s how mother nature is fucking us over today.” I have never heard a more consistent, pervasive whining than I did in NYC. I have gone out of my way in this story to mention people that were not whiny little fucks who thought the world owed them something. Two were bartenders, one drove a van. Who knows what they thought when they weren’t sucking up to travelers. [Unfair – the bartender at JFK was the read deal. She was funny as hell and a true sweetheart. I would have loved to stay up all night in her bar.]

The next morning I caught the plane back to San Diego. I staggered down the jetway and heard someone say, “Oh! I’m sorry. Go ahead.” I laughed not from humor but from joy, back where we may not be intimate but we are certainly polite, and we don’t feel that the world owes us happiness. We make that for ourselves.

7

Thanks!

Back to the Canyon Bar and Grill

Posted on by
18

Location: Canyon Bar and Grill, Los Alamos, NM
Miles: 10632.4

There was a place I liked more, but right now it’s Saturday afternoon. The other bar is closed. I suppose that makes sense; I mean, who would go to a bar on a Saturday when there’s no work tomorrow and the cable channels are filled with college football?

Granted, I don’t give a rat’s ass about a semi-pro league masquerading as “student athletics”, but I know a lot of other people enjoy that stuff, and the only reason football exists is so you can go to bars and watch it with your buddies. My only concern was whether anyone would mind if I watched the Czech Republic play Canada. I pulled up to the Aspen Lounge and it looked dark. I went to the door and saw that it opened at four, about half an hour hence. Then I saw the lettering beneath the hours. Closed Saturday and Sunday. I blinked a couple of times to make sure it didn’t say Open late Saturday or something like that, but alas, no.

There is a fairly new restaurant on the edge of town, and I had noticed that it’s sign said “Restaurant and Bar”. No problem, I thought, I’ll head on out there and have some vittles while I type. Nope. There were two sets of hours, summer and winter. I didn’t know which applied but it didn’t matter. They were both Monday through Friday. Not only do people not go to bars on the weekend, they don’t even go out for a bite to eat.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. People do go out, they just drive an hour to the nightlife in Santa Fe. A Get-Poor-Quick scheme that has been tried many times is to bring night life to Los Alamos. Forget about it.

Now I’m back at the Canyon, where for all its warts it has one key advantage: It’s open. They gave me a beer, I paid for it, and I sat down. There are a few people here, including one rabid Macintosh fan who responded to the antediluvian glow from the lid of my machine by making sure I knew he had been using the infernal machines since before they were invented. At the bar they’re having a good ol’ time; the only female in here is attached (by the lips) to the Mac fan, and collectively they’ve hit that perfect part of the afternoon where the buzz is just right and every joke is funny. It is a communal perfect buzz. A group like that makes any bar better. You know this place is home for some of these people. And in the end, isn’t that what makes a good bar? If there was a pretty bartender I’d probably hang out and fall in love.

Time has passed since I wrote the above, and things have moved apace. I have a nickname, at least from a couple of the regulars: Mac. I like it. It’s the quintessential bar nickname. Mac. I’m going to write myself into a story with that name someday. No one has to know it’s a reference to the computer I was using in the bar. In all the years and years of going to Callahan’s, I never had a nickname, probably because they already knew my real name and my impact was gradual and constant. Now I’m the welcome stranger, and lacking my real name they just went and gave me one. Mac. I’ve never been anything remotely close to a Mac before.

One of the flys left and came back with a guitar. He’s much better at playing than singing, but he’s been taking requests from the others at the bar. Right now he’s covering “All along the Watchtower” with far more passion than skill, but it’s passion that counts, baby. Earlier he was doing Eagles tunes at the request of other patrons and, well, he doesn’t know the words very well but that doesn’t stop him.

Another guitar has arrived. A jam session will shortly ensue. There are two guitars. There are five patrons. Three are guitarists. There is one geek pounding away on his laptop. There is one female taking it all in. Finally, there is one bartender, far more attractive than the dude she replaced a few minutes ago.

I miswrote before. There is one guitar and one mandolin. The mandolinier is just getting his confidence up, and it’s starting to work. So for the record there is one guitar for two guitarists. The guy that brought in the guitar just lamented, “I have to get drunk to play in front of people, but then I suck.” He’s right, but that never stopped most of his peers. They’re finding a rhythm now, drunk guitarist doing the vocals while the other two play the blues. Vocals are becoming increasingly rare.

Man I wish I could just pick up someone else’s guitar and make it sing and cry. Hats off, then, one and all, for those who can. It takes a lot of work to make it seem easy. Writing is different. It still takes a lot of work, but in music all the work you put in comes down to a moment when you are in front of the public and it’s all on the line right then. With writing, you hone and tweak until the rewrites make it worse instead of better and then you put it out there as a pile of paper glued on one edge and you hide in the dark while people judge it.

I think I’ll stick to stacking rocks.

The jam session has lost the drunken guitarist, and while the quality is much higher, the soul has gone out of the endeavor. It’s still OK to be in a dive and hear good musings, but there was a fire before. Oh, well. Dive bar geeks can’t be too picky.

Thanks!

The Power of Positive Drinking

Posted on by
16

Some people ruin their drinks with ice,
and then they ask me for advice.
They say, “I’ve never told this to anyone else before.”
— Lou Reed, The Power of Positive Drinking

I was thinking of that line even before Brian mentioned not putting ice in his beloved Lagavulin. It’s a sad day that that even needs to be said. Ice. pff.

Holy Crap! Sweet Jane just came on the TV radio station. It’s a cover, but it still counts as a plate of shrimp. It’s a good cover. Oh, man I feel good right now. I was feeling pretty good before, but then with head-slap thunder the chama monsoon rain started coming down just as the second beer was finding my nervous system. Late in the season for a monsoon, especially considering the dry August, but just what the doctor ordered for heart and land. And the smell, the smell. Ozone and soft mud. More thunder, punctuating Buffalo Springfield.

The temperature has dropped a few degrees: It’s whiskey time now. On each side of me a dog lies twitching, running with the wolves they’ve never learned they’re not.

I’m trying not to resent the arrival of the family later this afternoon. It’s their house, after all. They paid for it and everything. The only thing is, I have put the Jerry vibe into this place the last few days, and it’s just now building up to critical mass. I feel the vibe most intensely right now. It is a calm feeling despite the loud music. (Next time I get up I’m going to turn down the bass just a wee bit, bringing the vibe incrementally closer to perfection.) My quiet madness reaches out across the Chama Valley and reflects back to me off the far Brazos Peaks, rolling with the distant thunder, dancing with lightning, and I know the storm is here for me. I have called it from the place where storms sleep, roused it for one last grumbly dance across the land.

The thirsty land feels my energy, and amplifies it. The rich mud hosts tiny creatures fleeting across brief puddles, in a madcap accelerated cycle of life. Water! Grow! Sex! Die! In this frantic call to life I am unnoticed, but something rises from the muck that I smell and understand. Some bugs are getting laid tonight.

Ooo! Look! A can of mixed nuts, sitting right here next to me! Truly the Universe is resonating with me today, responding to my needs even before I know them myself.

My vibe, apparently, is a fragile one. Bringing other personalities too close to it pains it. In a bar, I can create a vibesphere, and close myself in my own aura for a few precious hours, but in a house with other people around the bubble shatters into tiny red fragments, needle-sharp little brain jammers. Better not to even try to bubbleize in the first place.

But for now I sit, pupflanked, Scotch Guarded, open, resonating. Feeling the power.

Thanks!

Local color

Posted on by
14

I went back to the High Country Saloon tonight. (The interior promotion all says High Country Lounge, but what does Anheuser Busch know? The sign above the door says “Saloon”, and that’s good enough for me. The other door says “restaurant”. You know which door I went for. I wrote for a time, with Nikki cheering me on. I’ve had people ask me what I’m doing, but rarely does someone ask, “Are you writing a novel?” For those people I am always embarassed to answer yes, because people who ask tha question are clearly more literature-oriented.

Not so Nikki. She told me that for school papers she had a hard time getting past two pages. I tried, unsuccessfully, to convince her that the ability to put a good idea into the smallest space was a great virtue. I know I could learn to be more compact. Still, it was nice the way she remembered me this time. Sure, “Laptop Guy” is easy, but “Get Novel down to less than 500 pages guy” requires a little more customer interaction. Plus Nikki is cute.

SamIAm Nikki is not who I’m writing about tonight, though. After I did my work tonight I moved from my table to a barstool, where I sat next to Mr. Lujan, disabled veteran who fought in the pacific, who went on to be a magistrate judge, who went without benefits for thirty years because of the bullshit. (His first name started with an S. I was told it more than once, but I’m not so good with names.) He was a rancher, a small businessman, until taxes put him out of business. Two years ago. He’s not a big fan of Dubya, even though he’s the exact profile of citizen that our fearless leader is supposed to be loved by.

Lujan had stories. I only heard a fraction of them. He sat next to me, and with his soft voice he held me. He spoke of watching him return through his binoculars at Leyte Gulf. He told me about Okinawa. He told me about about the clarity of his conflict, and how he felt for the Marines overseas now, with no clearly defined enemy and no clearly defined goal. His war was easy, he said, compared with what our soldiers face now. He told me that after he showed me the scars he had picked up from shrapnel. “We just have to bring them home,” Lujan said.

Then he told me how he had landed in jail for DWI, even while he was a judge. Some of the boys he had previously sentenced sprung him from his cell after he took some time to learn their stories. He wanted to know how they had ended up there, and when the rest of the law enforcement community figured out who they had collared and came to let him go, he refused to leave. He served the sentence he would have given himself.

Lujan is retired now; he sold the last of his cattle two years ago. There really is no room for the small farmer anymore. I’m not going to put a value judgement on that. Big farms are more profitable. There aren’t many big farms up here, though, and the famous tax breaks aren’t doing anyone up here squat. The last large animal vet is about to move a hundred miles south.

Retired I suppose is the wrong word. At eighty-something, he still works cutting hay and who knows what else. He has his horses and his passion. He has his health, and he has his friends at the High Country Saloon.

Thanks!

The High Country Saloon

Posted on by
12

It is a little more than fifteen miles from here to the High Country Saloon. I went, and I wrote. The value of my writing has yet to be determined. But today was reinforced the most important way to measure a bar.

It’s all about the regulars.

It was quiet when I first got there; no one was at the bar and the only occupied table held a group of yuppie bikers. The tables and chairs were dark-stained wood, the bar also. The floor was littered with peanut shells. There were about ten taps with a reasonably wide selection of beers. I settled into a chair and started to write. My beer arrived, the bikers left, and I ordered a green chile cheeseburger. It was deeeeelicious.

Before long the regulars began to arrive. Eventually there was quite a crowd at the table abandoned by the yuppie bikers. One chair remained empty, however, even as the table became very crowded. It was the King’s chair. No one knew when of even if the king was coming in, but his chair was waiting for him. It’s a good thing that I hadn’t selected that table for my writing; it would have thrown the whole bar out of alignment.

After I had finished writing, I went over and sat at the bar for one more beer. I was probably the only non-fixture among those lined up across from Gail, our bartender. The guy next to me got up and said, “Keep my tab open. I’ll be back later. You can have my fries.” There is a generally recognized definition of regular there—when Gail eats off your plate without asking first that means you’re a regular.

Your typical regular or fixture is a bar’s best marketing machine. The people I talked to really sold the bar; I’ll be going back.

1

Thanks!

The Aspen Lounge

Posted on by
2

Location: Aspen Lounge, Hilltop House, Los Alamos, NM
Miles: 10236.0

At the prompting of Jojo, I have made my way to the other bar in town. They have three beers on tap: Moosehead, Fat Tire, and Sam Adams. Right there I knew that things were going my way. It’s not that I’m particularly orgasmic over any of those beers, but they have those instead of Bud and Bud Light.

Aspen Lounge is a small place, and there are quite a few people here getting an early start on their weekends. The place feels recently remodeled with the obligatory southwestern color scheme and architectural touches, but for all the newness and shininess Sally keeps it fairly dim so it feels cozy. There is a solarium area connected to the lounge that appears to be popular as well.

I knew it was Sally when she called me “hon”, true to Jojo’s words. Sally stands in the four-foot range only because she has fairly tall hair. Her voice has been abused by 40 years of cigarettes and she’s still working on compounding the damage. She doesn’t move fast but she doesn’t stop moving; everything is clean and everyone has their drinks. The bowls of snack food are always topped off. We discussed briefly the challenge of the first pour of the day from a tap. I bet she mixes ’em strong for her regulars. When she brought me my second drink, she made a point of using my name.

An interesting thing about accelerated regularization: Nobody wants you to succeed at your goal more than the bartender. Help them help you.

There are regulars here. That would usually go without saying in the “other bar” in a town of 16,000 plus, but this is Los Alamos and this is a hotel bar. People know Sally’s (not Sal’s) name, and when people walk in there are happy greetings from those already here. I can be comfortable here. Canyon Bar and Grill was larger, and had its own regulars, and had pool tables, so there could be times when that is the place to go (I missed karaoke last night—what a pity), but overall this is more my kind of place to come and hang.

Did I tell you about my visit to Canyon B&G the other day? No? Well, you didn’t miss much except warm beer. And speaking of small town, a woman just walked in who looks familiar. She is wearing a T-shirt from my college (My college is smaller than your college. My college is probably smaller than your high school.) So I could go over and ask her what year she graduated. I would, too, but her voice is really annoying. I’d remember someone like that.

Now she’s looking at me funny.

So anyway, on the way over here I passed the Inn and saw the sign for their coming bar with free high-speed Internet access, but there was no definition of “coming soon”. Not soon enough, that’s for sure.

So I sit here in a fairly contrived bar, which usually bothers me, but in this case it is made good by the power of the bartender. I can’t picture her ever vying for the oh-so-coveted Jer’s Favorite Bartender (which, oddly, actually is coveted by a few sorry souls), but it is definitely Sally that makes this place what it is. She doesn’t dominate the room the way Rose or Amy does, she just quietly makes it work.

Keep on doing the Lord’s work, Sally.

1

Thanks!

Rocky Mountain Low

Posted on by
21

Location: Starbucks, Los Alamos, NM
Miles: I’ll check later.

Had an episode all typed up, but it sucked. The only good thing was the title, which I kept, even though it doesn’t really match the content anymore. I had even posted it by accident before I was done with it and Amy commented. There was lots of green chile in it, which was good, but other than that it was the same wandering drivel that most blogs seem to specialize in and I find myself falling into more and more these days. I was just telling about my day rather than writing. I’ve had a couple of episodes I’m quite happy with recently, and I don’t want to put up a bunch of boring crap now to break my momentum. My other writing is not going well either. I’m more fiddling around with words than writing.

So. Interesting stories. Hum. tum-te-dum…

I think I know the problem. It’s been more than four days since I had a beer. There are a few in fridge right now, chilling out, waiting for their moment. The threshold of “cold enough” is getting warmer as I type this.

Socially, Los Alamos is the exact opposite of Pacific Beach. There is no student population to speak of here and only one bar. You’re not going to go out on the town and meet someone you don’t know. This is the kind of town you come to after you’ve met your soul mate and settled down. Really settled down. Of course if you’re one of those hiking, biking, kayaking, skiing, going-to-opera-and-not-to-bars kind of wackos, this may be about as close to heaven as you can get.

As I mentioned before there is one bar remaining in this town, and it’s a beaut. This is an affluent town, but apparently all the wealthy alcoholics get plastered in the privacy of their own homes. The Canyon Grill is a dive if ever there was one. It’s a friendly place, however. Last time I was there I ended up staying way too long talking with people who seemed vaguely familiar. (“Your old man is the one who did the magic tricks, right?”) Everyone knew everyone else and I don’t want to know how many beers were bought for me.

I’ll be in there tomorrow afternoon, carefully monitoring my alcohol intake as I write. If you’re in the neighborhood stop by. The first round’s on me.

Thanks!

Annnnnd… Goodbye

Posted on by
15

Impressions of Pacific Beach:

Walking home from Tiki (funny how easy it is to think of this place as home, although I will probably never be here again), I turned at the blue-lit record store on the corner. A kid came out, coffee mug balanced on pizza box. He locked the glass doors, mounted his long skateboard, and began his commute home.

Trendily dressed kids too stupid to know better are lined up around the block to get into one particular bar.

Going down Fanuel between Garnet and Grand I meet a pack of Wednesday partiers. The girls stink of tobacco and factory watermelon.

At Tiki tonight I said goodbye to Tiki Dave, Bad Bobby, Bevins, and Connecticut Bill. “You’re not just going to Yo-Yo again are you?” asked Tiki Dave. He had me there. It is quite possible I will have to pass back through this town one more time before I am free of my former life. That is completely my fault; in the time I’ve been here I could have done all that shit. I just wanted to write instead.

Connecticut Bill probably won’t be here two years from now. I don’t expect Bevins will be here either. Bad Bobby, I’m not so sure. But I said goodbye to each, not knowing whether two weeks or death separated our next meeting. There are only a couple more goodbyes to go. Tom and Melinda I might see again, but we have already handled goodbye gracefully with the assistance of obscene amounts of alcohol and a little bit of karaoke. Any last meeting between us will be the last finger wiggle of a complex farewell handshake.

When I wrote earlier of Vegas, I said, “The ties from my past, reasserting themselves while I am in San Diego, will be burned away.” When I read that to Amy, she said, “You’re going to forget me!” She didn’t even wait until I finished the paragraph. I think she knew better than I did what I meant by those words. I am leaving people behind. I know I will never see some of these people again. But as correct as she was about the meaning, what she said was completely wrong. There will be no forgetting Amy.

I am still grappling for the right term for our relationship. During the booze-soaked karaoke fest I started to read the paragraph about how there was some deep spiritual force that had disabled the windows of her car. I was pretty proud of that paragraph. I had hardly gotten started when my audience drowned me out with “Ooo! Jerry loves Amy!” There was enough alcohol in the air that there was no point protesting; I simply put the computer away without finishing. And just what bothered me about that accusation? Do I love Amy? Absolutely. Do I love my big toe? You bet. The greeks came up with a bunch of words for love: agape, eros, and all that shit. If there is a word that combines my paternal, fraternal, self-destructive, and tingly feelings toward Amy, it’s probably in some obscure criminal code that has never been applied outside the ozarks.

I suppose I could make up a word, but it would take me the rest of my life to define it.

So: Goodbye, Amy. I move to a simpler life. A life where the words I used and feared as a child still apply. I hope I haven’t embarrassed you with all this, though I’m sure I have. But know that I am proud to be your friend, proud to know your secrets, and proud of you. That, more than anything else, defines my love for you. Damn I hope I don’t have to say goodbye again.

Thanks!

Thrusters

Posted on by
10

Barely worth it’s own episode, but yesterday while doing laundry I dropped by Thrusters (map), the bar next door. Occasionally I still get carded, but very rarely. When I do get carded they’ve usually changed their minds by the time I have my wallet out. It goes something like:

Bartender: Can I see your ID?
Jerry (reaching for wallet): Really?
Bartender: Uh, Never mind.

That’s what happened at Thrusters except for two things: I didn’t have my wallet and she didn’t say never mind.

Once I had my clothes unloaded and splashing around in the suds, I moseyed in to the bar with an empty backpack and a book. They have an atmosphere there I appreciate—small, somewhat dark, and somewhat divey. Quiet in the late afternoon. One other guy was perched on his stool and he had barfly written all over him. I was tempted by the Guinness, but in the end ordered Siarra Nevada, one of the better macro-microbrews.

The beerista asked for my ID. I had none. One other time I got caught with my identifical pants around my ankles, the bartender just looked at me more closely and then brought my beer. Not this young lady. “I don’t know…” she said, eying me carefully. “You look pretty young.” No beer for Jer, but you know what? I’m OK with that. I hope she’s working again today so I can go in and show her my ID. It’s a cheesy move, I know, but it could be the most accelerated regularization on record—making an impression before having a single beer.

Thanks!

Open Bar

Posted on by
14

Got up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head. I’d stayed with Bill and Joanne, leaving my car tied up to the hitching post at Callahan’s. I got up earlier than I had been, tried to come up with a good subject for an episode for this blog, failed, and just drifted around on the Internet for a while. Sometimes after an episode which which I’m particularly pleased I have a tough time coming up with something good enough to justify pushing the good one out of the top spot. But this is the Internet, and has a voracious appetite for new. I drank some tea, but was soon yearning to be reunited with my toothbrush. Ride to car, drive to Pacific Beach, clean the choppers; I’m ready to go.

Sluka’s was next, of course, then the library. It’s funny how quickly I’ve fallen into that routine considering how unstructured the rest of my life is. I got back and Amy arrived soon after, trying to juggle her life so she could take a quick trip back to Florida to see her family, who are right in the center of the devastation from hurricane Charley. Apparently they’re getting bottled water now, but they have no electricity and no beer. Amy can’t take them 120V AC, but a transcontinental beer run is in the offing. Tally Ho!

In the afternoon Amy went to get some work done on her car to resolve a fix-it ticket (imagine that!) and I actually got a couple of things done. The big one was getting her old laptop set up so she can freeload off the neighbor’s wireless network. Amy is now Internet-enabled. Tremble in fear, citizens of the Web! Of course my reasons for setting her up were purely selfish; I can’t remember the last time I wrote a letter on that paper stuff.

Later Paul came over and the Packers game was on and Amy cooked up a fantastic meal and there was beer and all was good. It was decided: after the game we’d go to the Open Bar. We were all feeling jolly. The Pack lost and off we went.

I have only been to the open bar a couple of times before, and never as part of a group. The first thing I learned is that the pool tables suck. Two of them are so bad no one was using them; the owner of the place should just get rid of them to make more room for drinkers. The third table was usable and in use. The bar was way too hot and muggy despite having one side open onto the smoking patio. To the great outdoors I eventually repaired. Paul made a couple of attempts to set me up with women at the bar, a skill at which he far surpasses me. I wasn’t in the mood for that kind of stuff, though. I did get a laugh from one for my “Scotsman at a Baseball Game” joke.

I also ran into one of my favorite waitresses of all time, from back in the day. I didn’t recognize her right away out of the Callahan’s context; I just kept looking at her and wondering why she looked so familiar. Finally she recognized me. Tawny was there with some girlfriends and they were whooping it up. It was great to see her again. I had a thought as we talked that other people would be wondering what the two most attractive people in the bar were doing talking to me. I owe it all to regularization.

I don’t know how Amy and Paul wound up being so much drunker than I was. They must have been drinking faster back at the house. They were really starting to get on each other’s nerves, though, and it was harshing my mellow, to borrow a phrase from Halfsies, wherever he is. Amy had an unpleasant encounter with some other guy in the bar and we left in a hurry without telling Paul, who was off somewhere else. We walked back to Amy’s; it was a peaceful San Diego night and as we walked along the bay the fireworks were popping over Sea World. I breathed a sigh of relief to be out of the bar and into the quiet. Paul was waiting for us when we got back to Amy’s place. I was treated to an endless series of Paul needling Amy and Amy roaring back. Finally I went into the kitchen and turned up the music so I wouldn’t have to hear them bicker anymore.

Why can’t we all just get along?

Paul left soon after that, plenty pissed off. Things quieted down, and one uneaten grilled cheese sandwich cut into bite-sized morsels later, Amy was asleep and I had my peace, curled up with a cat on the short sofa.

Morning arrived gently, and after a shower it’s off to Sluka’s for me. I may be here a few more days if Amy needs me to housesit while she’s in Florida. I’d rather be on the road, though.

Thanks!

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Posted on by
Reply

I thought I was getting up early until I looked at the clock. Ugh. Almost eleven. My mouth is dry, my eyeballs are fuzzy, and my fingers, not the surest of digits at the best of times, seem to be hitting random keys right now. I wouldn’t call it a hangover—there’s no headache and the leftover hot wings sitting in their gelatinous goo are still tasty—but it feels like a morning that’s been pulled from the freezer and defrosted.

It was a good night last night.

My throat is scratchy. That would be the Billy Idol at karaoke. Sometimes you have to rise up to the music. Sometimes they turn down your microphone.

There weren’t many takers for karaoke at Champ’s last night. That meant the unsuspecting Sports bar was subjected to a whole lotta Jerry, though after the “White Wedding Incident” I chose mellower (or at least quieter) songs. And then, as the Karaokologist was packing up his gear for the night, I did the unthinkable. I struck up a conversation with a woman I didn’t know.

She was friends with the karaokista. I went over to tip him but he had no tip jar; she scrounged one up. She had long, black, curly hair (I’m sure there’s a more technically correct term for cascading ringlets of raven hair, but I don’t know it), a pretty smile, and let me tell you, kids, the chick could sing. I wonder how many times I said “You can wail!” while I sat next to her at the bar. Too many times, I’m sure, but when she smiled at the compliment the first time there was no stopping me. Skinner would have been proud. She said her name was Jennifer. I told her I was a writer.

I’m surprised I even got that far after the way I started the conversation. Oh, Lordy, Lordy. Are you ready for this? After getting the tip jar squared away and parking myself next to her, belly full of liquid courage and having already made her smile once I said, “If I wasn’t leaving town I’d be hitting on you right now.” To which she replied, “I guess you just did.” Apparently it wasn’t a fatally awful cornball dumbass thing to say; I find in my fearful fingers this morning a coaster which reads in handwriting almost as frightful as mine “Jen’s email (the wailer)” followed by an email address that may even be real. (Did I make the joke about Bob Marley or did I only wish I had later? I think I made the joke. I think she laughed.)

I cut and ran at that point, trailing my already-departed hosts back over to their place. We were hanging out lamenting our frightfully low beer supply when Joe called, looking for a place to go so he wouldn’t have to drive all the way back to Mira Mesa. Melinda talked him in, and the drinking continued for a while longer. Tom, ever the industrious host, cooked up some hot wings while we ravaged the last of the beers and Melinda continued her progress through the big bottle of rum.

Now it is morning, and Tom has overcome the disaster that was the kitchen and is busily cooking up a nice breakfast. Joe still lies in a tangle on the sofa. Melinda made a brief appearance to lie on the other sofa but apparently that was too much for her and now she’s gone back to bed. And why not? It’s Sunday.

Thanks!

Jerry, Meet Jerry

Posted on by
4

I should write first about what a great day I had today. It was the perfect backside for yesterday. I’ll get to that, I promise. I’ll try, at least. But for now we will fast forward to the end of the day. To Tiki. To my out-of-body experience.

You may have come to assume, reading my tales, that I’m a Rock ‘n’ Roll All Night, Party Every Day kind of guy. Sorry to have led you astray, but that’s generally not the case. At Tiki, for instance, I am usually gone before the band starts to play. Find me a bar where good bands play in the late afternoon and I promise I’ll be there every day. I assure you this has nothing to do with my age.

So tonight I found myself still there as the music started. I was sitting next to Connecticut Bill, who would not SHUT THE HELL UP! He was the one who convinced me I should stay to hear this guy play, but once the guy started playing, all I could hear was Billy. In the presence of good music I do one of two things: I dance or I write. Usually when I write while listening to music it’s all in my head, but tonight I grabbed a pile of bar napkins and a pen, both because I knew my memory was fragile and to keep Bill at bay. It took some hard-core ignorin’ to buy myself some space.

Meanwhile, the singer was starting to attract a few new partons to the bar. Some of them were even female. I worked away, studiously ignoring Billy as much as I could. There was one woman in particular, over my right shoulder (Connecticut Bill was to my left), in a floral dress short enough I could appreciate the toned legs crossed and aimed directly at the singer. I scratched away at my napkin. One corner of my mind, of course, drew a scenario that had her crossing over to me to see what I, obviously an artist of great virtue, was breathing to life there in her very presence.

It was as I contemplated that fantasy that I saw myself. There are no mirrors at Tiki, and none was necessary. There I was, shaggy, saggy, and baggy, scratching on a napkin arcane symbols that I myself will not be able to decipher later, tearing the parchment when I get too excited. My hair is a wreck because I run my hand through it repeatedly as I wrestle with the tougher parts. I’ve got a pretty good dairy queen thing going by now.

And here’s the kicker: if that woman had come over to see what I was writing, on the off chance that somehow she had felt the force of my intellect across the room, I would have been paralyzed. “What are you doing?” she would ask. “Uh, just doing some writing,” I would answer. “Oooh, I love writers! Can I read it?” Gaah! Shit! Shit! Shit! “Uh, no. It’s not ready yet.” It would have been something like that, except less graceful on my part. Luckily the entire scenario is impossible.

Thanks!

Tiki Reunion

Posted on by
6

That’s not the official name of the night. It’s something like $2 pint night. But I’ve always called it Cheap Bastard Night. Others have tried to rename it Two-for Tuesday or Tightwad Tuesday. Nah. It’s Cheap Bastard Night, because I’m a cheap bastard. I named it after myself.

It was like a reunion at Tiki tonight. Old faces I hadn’t seen in a long time. Some I never expected to see again. The biggest surprise was Connecticut Bill, an incredibly sharp guy whose life is vanishing up his nose. Was vanishing, perhaps, if his time in jail gave him a chance to straighten out. Observers are not optimistic on that score.

I didn’t notice Connecticut Bill right off the bat, so I don’t think he was there when I came in. He’s hard to miss with his energy and his opinions on everything under the sun. He’s also the one who will play Velvet Underground on the jukebox. When I walked in the front door I saw Bevins sitting there and I climbed aboard the stool next to his. After a brief moment of non-recognition (he hadn’t seen me clean-shaven yet) I recieved a warm welcome and unbidden Tiki Dave was pouring me an Anchor Steam. The game was coming on soon and I was in my happy place.

Suddenly on my left appears another old buddy from my days hanging out at Joe’s Place. Tom had selected alcohol as the drug for destroying his life, but for the last few months he has managed to get it back together. Naturally, that means a lot less time in bars for Tom. They’re just not as fun when you’re drinking non-alcoholic brew. Tom is one of the only people in the world to have read The Test, an incomplete work that I set aside when it started to spiral out of control. The story has gotten so big that it will probably end up being a series. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in an author-driven genre, but I feel strongly that even in a series each book should stand on its own. Which means The Test needs an ending, even if it is just volume one. Tom’s commentary on the story was, well, embarrassingly gushing. And protracted. He had read the incomplete work in 16 uninterrupted hours. I promised him I would put an ending on it and get it published. He gave me a dollar to help offset my expenses in the meantime.

Somewhere during that time, Connecticut Bill showed up and there we all were, lined up with our elbows on the bar, watching the home team blow a lead, Billy feeding the jukebox and telling about his time in jail. We talked about this and that, nothing important, favorite comic strips, rehashing some of the old stories that had been dormant too long.

Finally it was time to leave that place. I moved on without ceremony, as if it was just another day at the bar. Things to do, etc. I left, knowing that we might or might never all be there again.

Thanks!

Ocean Beach Bar Hopping

Posted on by
1

Most of last night will have to wait until I can disguise it as fiction. Going out on the town with Amy usually works out that way, it seems. I had left a message with her, looking for a place to sleep, and she eventually called back. She was hanging with Rory and Alabama, two of her friends from out of town. They were at South Beach bar in Ocean Beach (A very nice place with a decent beer selection and excellent appetizers. Best fried calamari anywhere. Behind the bar are picture windows looking out over the beach. A good place for sunsets.)

They were just having some shots when I arrived. It didn’t break my heart to miss out on that round, as they looked like some kind of goofy sweet mixed shot instead of good ‘ol straight booze. Why people go to the trouble to get one of those things and then knock it down their gullet so fast they never taste it is beyond me. For that matter, why people pay for top-shelf tequila or scotch and then just throw it down the pie hole is a mystery I may never solve. If you’re not going to taste it, why not just throw some grain alcohol back and wait for the bomb to hit?

I kept my mouth shut about silly shooters, and Amy’s buddies turned out to be pretty cool. I was just finishing my beer when Erica called. She was heading to Sunshine Company and so were we. Sunshine Co. has a good happy hour special and is popular among smokers because the patio (where smoking is legal) is for all intents and purposes indoors.

It’s funny how many smokers I’ve been around since smoking was banned in bars. The sequence goes like this:

  1. Smoking is banned in bars
  2. Jerry starts going to bars more
  3. Jerry hangs out with other bar patrons
  4. Most bar patrons are smokers
  5. Jerry inhales more second-hand smoke

At Sunshine company the pitchers were coming fast and furious but somehow I manage to stay out of their evil grip, nursing two beers the entire time I was there. It was great to see Erica again, bubbly fun sweet and cute, and we talked for quite a while. She’s in love with some boy in Belguim. Our crowd shot some pool, and being the most sober person there I didn’t suck at it. Some girl hit on me – and everyone else in the bar, male and female. It was her birthday and she was looking for a present. She didn’t get far with me, but she didn’t try that hard, either. There were other people in our group she found much more interesting, often several of them at the same time.

Things started to get crazier. A blue-haired butch-looking girl had her hands down Amy’s pants. Amy was trying to use her own sexual wiles to connect Rory and Birthday Girl together. Birthday Girl seemed more interested in Blue-Hair and Amy. Birthday Girl and Blue-Hair were sucking face like a pair of lampreys on spring break. Erica mildly disapproved. Finally it was too much for my poor sober ass. I made Erica promise to come to Prague whenever she went to Belgium, got Amy’s keys and went back to her place.

Amy showed up two hours later with another friend. I made grilled cheese sandwiches (double cheese). The friend would not leave, and It turned into a late night. Finally I curled up on the short sofa and closed my eyes and he took the hint. He’s a nice guy, really; Amy had called him in the middle of the night for a ride home and he had complied. I was just very tired. Making grilled cheese sandwiches can take it out of a guy.

The final image as I turned out the lights was of Amy curled up on the couch, jealously guarding a package of Goldfish even as she slept. I reached out and tugged on the package, open and about to spill, and she snapped down around her precious crackers, contracting like a sea anemone gulping down its prey. I let go of the bag before anyone got hurt.

Thanks!

Joe’s Last Stand

Posted on by
8

Muddled Ramblings…

I’ve been here for quite a while today, doing some serious deleting. Six chapters: adios. Big chunks of other chapters: ciao. Two characters: beat it, punk. It’s all about purity of essence, so I’ve taken to drinking only rain water and grain alcohol. This is how it’s supposed to be, baby. The synapses are firing with alarming randomness, making pink elephants de rigeur. There is a node in my brain, undocumented, undefined, but up there in my head without a doubt. Its sole purpose is to fuck up the other nodes. It strikes with lightning swiftness and randomness, shutting down the speech center for a few critical seconds when I’m talking to a girl, blasting away my motor control when I try to dance. It is an evil node, or at least a capricious one, bent on making an ass of me.

Like I need its help.

Flashback: months (years?) ago I was here, at this very table, plugged in, writing away. Joe and his band set up on the other side of the bar, and started playing not long after eight o’clock. I listened from my remote spot, pounding with salt and pepper shakers when appropriate. Finally, during a break, I decided it was time for me to go. On my way out I waved to the band, and Dave, the Garfunkel of the group, saw me and said, “Jerry! When did you get here?” The whole bar turned to look at me.

“Uh… two?” I said.

As I was writing the above, Dave came by my spot here, patted me on the shoulder and said, “All is right with the world.” They’re playing on this end of the bar tonight, which probably represents a time limit on my writing tonight. Some geek typing away does not really add to the party atmosphere. Dave’s family is at the table next to mine. Put the condoms on the shakers, we’ll be having some kind of fun tonight. [Note – rather than putting napkins over the salt and pepper shakers so I can use them as musical instruments, this time Leah brought me a pair of mustard bottles.]

Joe is moving to Tennessee, which pretty much puts an end to these parties. Just as well I’m out of here.

I owe these guys a ballad, but it seems kind of late for that now. I’ve got it in my head, a good sad song, an Irish song, but I never got it out on paper. Now they’re all going their ways, and I’ll have to take my ballad somewhere else.

Thanks!