Remembrance of Things Pabst.

St. Paddy’s day makes me think of the bars gone by. The ones I used to drink in that are no longer with us. They all had a season or five but then closed or were sold or lost their lease or some other bullshit and you had to move on to the next one.

The hardest drinking bar I was ever in was called “The Quiet Man” and was on 45th St between 5th and 6th Avenues in New York. It was one of the first bars I ever adopted as my “local” as it was on the block of my office. I used to go to lunch there pretty much every day and for a drink after work every day. In this bar pretty much everyone who was there was a stone alcoholic. The owner, the bartenders, the waitresses and most of the customers were hard core old school drinkers. The owner Eddie had a John Wayne fantasy. He named his bar after the movie the Quiet Man and had photo’s and posters and memorabilia all over the joint. The Parade started there every year back in the 1980’s when the Troubles were at their height and he always had a huge crowd. He was an ex cop so he used to get the cops as well.

Now the bar had been in trouble for a long while because the landlord wanted him out to sell the building and he didn’t have a lease. Or they were trying to break his lease or something. So he wasn’t paying his rent or his taxes or anybody other than the liquor and beer companies and the food purveyors. It was a Wild West kind of existence.

My buddies used to meet me there on a Friday to get smashed and we would gather up whatever stray waitresses and bar flies that were still around to go out on the town. But weirder stuff would happen during the week. Like I told you it is the snowy days in February or the roasting days in July that determine if a bar is going to make it. I would come in after doing taxes all day on a cold February night to see if I could get something to eat. But the kitchen guys had left. The bartender would go, “You’re fooking hungry you guinea, go into the kitchen and make something for us why don’t ya.” So I would cook some burgers or steaks or maybe pasta or something and we would eat and drink till around four in the morning. Then I would jump in a cab and be back to work for 9am the next day. Fit as a fiddle.

It’s great to be young.