TerriW said...
Hey, I was just about to grab this from Amazon on your recommendation, but it looks like it's a sequel to "8 Million Ways to Die" -- do you think these really have to be read in order? Or should I just go with Ginmill and not worry about it?"
Terri I would grab it as the introduction to Lawrence Block's books. In my opinion it is his best. Not the most suspenseful or with the best mystery. But it takes place early in the Matt Scudder's timeline. You see Scudder is an alcoholic and many of the books deal with dealing with it everyday. The series is a great advertisement for AA and what it can do for you. They are not at all preachy but show how it kept this guy alive. But the "Sacred Ginmill" was written about a part of Matt Scudder's live when he was drinking. And it shows what drinking can be. Fun. A lot of fun.
I mean there are the blackouts and the hangovers and the meaningless sex. He doesn't gloss over it. But the scenes of camaraderie and hanging out with other people who know the score can't be beat. I think this book tells all you need to know about what New York was like in the Seventies and Eighties. It is right on the money.
I can't recommend it highly enough.
11 comments:
Are there clouds in it?
I am super, thanks for asking.
You what kind of bar I used to like? The kind where there was a "day shift" and a "night shift."
Back in grad school there was a bar called "Bakes Alley Lounge." Me and quite few others used to frequent this place nights. Sometimes, if we got an early start, we'd catch the stragglers from the day shift leaving the place. One time me and a buddy actually went there during the day on a reconnaissance mission--whew!
Was the Sacred Ginmill a two shifter too?
I recently ordered a book called Blue Collar Aristocrats written by a UW-Madison professor. The bar he describes was about 3 blocks from where I grew up. I can't wait to read this.
Life is way too short for all the good books there are to read.
Chickenlittle/
Then you'd LOVE "Roberts' Bar" on Calhoun at S. Miro in New Orleans. A family neighborhood bar since 1933, it has FOUR shifts. The "A" shift, or day shift begins when it opens @11:00 and is your typical local bloody-mary/ shot & chaser crowd of retired alkys, etc. Happy hour is the B-shift with professors & students from Tulane right across Clairbone Ave (a mob-scene when the drinking age was 18) as well as both local professionals/business owners and a healthy mix of blue-collar types from house-painters, to plumbers with a couple of neighborhood drug-dealers thrown in. The "C" shift begins after happy hour which consists of a goodly mix of hangers on from happy hour and locals from the neighborhood in for a few plus college students starting out for the evening with Roberts as a first start. This mix usually lasts until around 11:30-12:00 when the really drunked up crazies start dragging in from partying in the Fr. Quarter on their way back uptown. The place usually has a good crowd until 0200 almost EVERY night, and is PACKED on weekends. Then, the D-shift begins and runs until whenever the bartender wants to close. Many is the night in the late 90s when a few of us would use it almost like a pvt club. The bartender would lock the doors to prevent robberies and 4, 5, 6 or more of us would drink with the bartender until 7:00 am when we'd roll out to go across the street to have a drunk's breakfast (everything on the menu, lol)at Ted's FROSTOP--a locally owned chain of blue-collar sit-down short-order "semi-fast" food restaurants (Fast-food came LATE to New Orleans) which has GREAT food--all cooked to order by old-time black adult female (REAL cooks) staff--no teen-age slacker-produced McFood there!
In fact, Roberts sits at the beginning of a small one block-long business strip which includes a barbershop/hair salon, Dentist, 3 restaurants local printing shop and neighborhood grocery which incl not only a deli but a daily hot-food counter where take-out meals there in styra-foam are better than most 4-star restaurants in other cities--and a HELLUVA lot cheaper. A local branch bank & Ins Agency are nerby as well as a small shopping center which backs up to Calhoun and fronts Claibourn ave. with a gas -station and 7-11, (Circle-K) Fox Film developing and a pizza joint. In short, a totally self contained world fronting a local neighborhood just across from Tulane. Roberts is the kind of family place the locals bring their kids & dogs to during the day (allowed in New Orleans) while they eat lunch ordered from the grocery next door and have a few cold ones while the kids are playing ping-pong. (But watch out, there are some serious ping-pong players in there at night! I was a varsity tennis player @LSU and a pretty fair table-tennis player myself and I could barely hold my own, lol)
Decore? Old-school blue collar. Red clay tile floors, old formica counter. two orig. 1935 pool tables w. REAL rubber bumpers (since destroyed when flooded by Katrina) a ping-pong table and 2 small formica tables up front w. 50s -style chrome and red padding chairs. by side door w. a REAL paddle-wheel riverboat circular steering wheel on the wall donated by an old tug-boat Captain who used to drink there back in the mists of time. A CLASSIC neighborhood bar.
BTW if you want a GREAT coffee-table book about great New Orleans bars--past & present, tourist & dive alike, buy "Obituary Cocktail: The Great Saloons of New Orleans" by the food editor of Esquire, John Mariani.
Most real bars have at the very least two shifts. You have the guys who come in to drink their lunch. They might come afterwork as well but they often have to go home to the family. Then you have the nighttime people who come after work for a few pops or to socialize.
Then you have your late-late night crew. If you have a bar that is hopping or is really popular, sometimes the crowd is greatest at 3 in the morning where people stop for a last couple of drinks before last call. That's a whole different crowd.
Unless of course you go to an afterhours.
But as Mr. Block portrays in this book....nothing is better than being in your regular joint and they pull down the metal gate and everyone is drinking for free. That's when you are in with the in crowd.
Well the in crowd of fuckin' drunks.
What happens to me almost everytime I go into a new joint is the bar tender thinks he knows me from somewhere. Mainly because I look like a drunken Irish guy. Since I prefer Irish pub type places and I know the moves they know right off the bat that I will tip right and not be a ball buster. So unless it is a young girl bartender that is inexperianced they are always extra nice because they want me to come back.
Mainly because someone who downs four pints in an hour at lunch is the kinda power drinker they want to see in their joint.
When I was in jury duty I went to this new place on Livingston street and a great old school lunch. Four Guiness and a Philly cheese steak sandwich with an Irish Coffee for desert. The bartender and the owner practically where crying and hoping I would come in the next day. But I only had jury duty for one day and the wife only lets me off the leash once in a blue moon. So they were out of luck.
I have never been in a bar. Or a strip club. First and only time in a casino (on my first and only trip to Vegas) in 2006. Never been in a brothel. Don't think I've been in a crack house, but I can't swear to that, now that I think of it.
How 'bout them apples?
That's OK blake. You seem to specialize in going to fancy movie houses.
Plus you've done lots of things many of us never do like hob knob with Hollywood celebrities and a catch glimpses of porn stars.
At least that's what I remember reading here a couple years ago.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
I have been more bars than I can remember. Even though I don't live there, I've gotten staggeringly drunk in no less than 6 NYC bars. I've been in bar fights. Hell, I've been in a fight in an all night diner! I beat the stuffing out of 2 guys bigger than me outside a bar when they were trying to molest my date.
I've been in strip clubs, but they bore me.
I've been in several
brothels...not as a customer, but as a friend of the girls who I tried to talk outta their lifestyle. A hooker I knew saved her money and got her PhD in Chemistry.
I think the house I was raised in is now a crack house; if not, several in the neighborhood are.
I've had friends die in crack houses from their bad choices.
How's about them apples?
A hooker I knew saved her money and got her PhD in Chemistry.
I may have gone to grad school with her!!
Not bad, Ron!
Too soothe the littlest chicken: I'm pretty sure my childhood home has been used as a location in a porn shoot. :P
By the way, I did get this book and I am enjoying the hell out of it. Great recommendation!
Even better, now I know exactly what to get my dad for his birthday this year. He's going to love it. (But if that Susan Boyle doesn't put out a new record pretty darn soon, I'll have no idea what the heck to get my mom.)
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