Enough of That, Now for the Cast of Characters

David Ham (his real name -- he's dead, RIP) -- A fundamentalist-raised boy from Kansas or some such nether place, who became a Buddhist, very well read, opinionated on every subject that would ever come up (Tolkien, the Yankees, Ronald Reagan, Islamic mysticism, etc.). When not talking, he was always reading in the dim light of the bar; he had one glass eye, from a childhood accident, which he would absent-mindedly click on with a pencil, with predictable reactions of horror at the bar (which he ignored). He was also into making very exotic and hot pepper sauces, like Indonesian Pirates' Paste (the recipe for which I have unfortunately lost). When his doctor told him his ticker would give out at any minute, he cashed in everything, took a cruise ship to the Alaska fiords, then popped off with a heart attack in a Seattle restaurant, having a pre-written letter with everyone listed who had to be notified tucked away in his pocket. One of the best bar people ever, and very missed.

Fern -- A nice old WASP lady who hung out, drank lots of martinis, and was Secretary of the American Kennel Club. Very cultured, well-spoken, a devotee of the St. Thomas's Church boys' choir -- she was great to talk to until she had her fifth martini, then would turn extremely nasty, after which you had to move away from her. She'd get pissed off at something, a waiter maybe, or some political event, then you didn't want to be near her. I can't conceive that she'd still be alive now, so that is her real first name.

Elric Riordan (science-fiction writer) -- A real Blarney Irishman: "Buy the whole bar a round, my man, and put it on my tab." (Which of course was up in the hundred-dollar range all the time and rarely paid off.) Had a wonderful stock of anecdotal-type jokes delivered with accents over 5-minute periods, which of course nobody could interrupt. He had an absolutely beautiful Dublin-born wife, a Grace Kelly type, who was a really nice person, but he treated her like shit. He had an argument with David Ham one night over hockey technicalities that almost came to fisticuffs -- hilarious, everybody was enthralled ("hit the mother, Dave.... come on, do it"). [A PS, long after leaving Manhattan where we used to hang out, and having moved to Brooklyn, what did I hear in a local dive one day but that mellifluous "Buy the bar a round, my man." Yes it was he...]

Lizzie Galveston (poetess) -- A stocky lady with a goose-honk laugh, a feminist poetry writer, a remittance person (i.e., her family in Texas paid her to live in Brooklyn and stay away from home). Classic line, when she was job-hunting, honked down to me sitting five bar stools away: "Do you think the fact that I haven't had a job in eight years will reflect on my résumé?" She also made a loud point about never having more than two beers -- but neglected to mention that she had spent the whole day up to now doing the same thing in all the other neighborhood bars.

The Sapper -- Such a bloody cheapskate, he would come in when the free food was out at happy hour, have two or three platefuls, and actually split a club soda with somebody. His brother, who was just as odd, gave up a lucrative career as a dentist because he was upset treating young pretty women and imagining what had been in their mouths the night before.

The Yuppie Bandit -- Famous for his specialty burglaries, i.e., breaking into yacht clubs and stealing trophy cups. He finally went to jail -- was actually extradited to Connecticut, which must be a rare occurrence. His normal occupation was part-time dishwasher in fast-food restaurants in bus terminals and train stations. But he was fall-on-the-ground funny to talk with. He had no conscience except the Robin-Hood one -- don't steal from people who can't afford to lose the money. Actually succeeded in stealing the America's Cup at one point, although that was recovered.

Scotto -- The ultimate Kennedy-conspiracy freak, ended up being run over by a truck while riding his bike at four in the morning somewhere in New Jersey, so he could have been right with his idea that they were after him. When he wasn't whacked out on drugs, his favorite bar meal was "Mexican pizza" (before it was invented), consisting of soft nachos with Jalapeno peppers, common enough now but unheard of in the 1970s. He'd have that, plus two pitchers of SanGria laced with vodka, and god only knows what he kept going into the men's room to snort or shoot. Then drive off in his commercial van back to New Jersey. The conspiracy stuff was really fun to listen to -- it hooked practically every celebrity death to the Illuminati that secretly rule the world. His favorite drink apart from the SanGria was 'red beer', a mixture of tap beer and tomato juice -- ugh!

A-gog-lio -- Can't pronounce or spell that Italian cooking phrase meaning "with oil" but anyway this person was a sales rep who took our group out to dinner when we were on a business trip to Detroit. This place was really in the pits locationally -- area looked worse than the South Bronx. They had armed (one suspected) caddies come out of the restaurant to escort you across the sidewalk from your car or cab, well no, car, because cabbies wouldn't even take anybody to that neighborhood. Anyway, it was a great restaurant with a good Mafia atmosphere, marred only by the fact that Agoglio got so drunk on Sambucca that we had to walk him around the area (with the 'armed' guards) for twenty minutes until he could sit up straight enough to drive his car. Yes, yes, drunken driving is bad, but what are you going to do under those circumstances, when you haven't got the slightest idea about the local geography, and if Agoglio hadn't been behind the wheel and homing by instinct he would have passed out in the back seat and we'd really have been screwed. [Oh, that's the first time I ever had Sambucca, coffee beans and all -- revolting stuff!]

Kent Cohen -- Not his real name of course, but his actual name is just as absurd. This is an Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn, practically Hassidic though he doesn't dress that way. The only religious guy from his high school who ever went to jail for dealing dope on the premises (and a big time, like five years or so, because he was practically running a pharmacy). He was a great buddy of Scotto's of course. Now he peddles those pyramid soap schemes, but is living in sin with a Hassidic woman he stole from an Eastern Parkway husband. Maybe he shouldn't be counted as a bar person, but he was that too. Looks like a very hairy Lou Grant or a fatter Bob Hoskins.

Marlena Albright -- The quintessential User of people, never pays for a drink, "borrows" her rent money, has asthma attacks when things become too inconvenient or too hot to handle. Got court-sanctioned custody of her grand-daughter (who was about 3 at the time) because the mother was even more messed up, with drugs and all, and claiming that the father of the child was H*rv*y K**t*l. But custody did not prevent her from spending every evening at the bar, with the kid playing around under the bar stools until 11 or so every night. This bar is tolerant and liberal about things like that (i.e., why should babies and infants be excluded from what will become a life experience?), but even the hard-asses found that a bit too much.

Arnold Pisc -- "Shots for the bar." "You're looking better today." "Good night. Drive fast. Aim for trees." Does this ring a bell with you, like his whacking the empty beer bottle on the bar to draw the bartender's attention? You have met people like this in bars, yet this particular person is exceptionally obnoxious. Good for him! (He is also a qualified scientist/philosopher, having devised the Dumb-Beam Theory, Getting Rules, and the distinction between Painting the Bowl and Touching Cloth.)

Elnardo -- What can you say about a person, who after a nice long after-work bar crawl followed by a meal in a Chinatown restaurant, mistakes a broom closet for a bathroom, throws up in it, then waltzes out the door (with a lot of Oriental gibberish and screaming following him out)?

Festus McCoy -- A true Southern Gentleman who has done some stupid things in the Elnardo line which will not be mentioned here, except for a mild tendency to throw ice cubes at bad bar musicians. [Because Festus is really Grobius.]

Some others who may or may not get written up:

Archibald Garment
Cynthia Astarte "Gaptooth" Hunt
Chase Pontifico Hunt III
Umberto Los Colon
Undine "Puglady" Scharkfuss
Luigi Lucedisole (Chuckles)
Sharille "Cones" DeGarl
Jack Daw Guitteras, the Hispanic anti-Semite
Alain "Fangs" Belaziel
Dextrous "Can't Brook Philipinos" Dealer
Catherine "Chipmunk" Westhampton
Pocahontas Carew
Astra Bykloscoppi (Hungarian Countess)
Shamela Roti from Tobago
Guinevere Spicelady
Hope Diamond
Guido Lambado (for Senator)
Yornixt Yabatarde
Donna Messwume
Splendido Puzivermi
(nobody fits this description yet, so the role is open)

[ probably not, because I am just teasing friends here
who would probably not like to be summarized on this page ]

Bartender Hall of Fame

Jim -- With his black toupé and white apron, he was an old trouper, ageless. Whenever a famous old bar went under, to be torn down for an office building, he'd turn up at another one. Last spotted at Hurley's next to Radio City Music Hall -- Hurley's is now gone too. It was always just happenstance finding him behind a randomly selected bar somewhere, sometimes after a gap of years. But he always mixed me a dry martini without even asking what I wanted, because he knew that was my favorite tipple back then. Always called me 'sir' because he never remembered names, only associated drinks.

Paddy -- Blackout night in NYC in July 1977: Locked up the doors and announced 'ladies and gentlemen, drinks are free for the rest of the night' -- until dawn the next day. A true gentleman, and we got him to sing an Irish traditional song solo at our wedding reception.

Cyril -- Drove a nice huge white Cadillac on a bartender's income -- nobody asked -- but he allowed me and my intended to use the party room upstairs when it was not in use to pop up between rounds and do some hanky-panky. Ten years later, long after the old bar closed and got replaced by a Korean deli, he was behind the bar at another place entirely where we ended up by accident. 'Yo, Cyril', we cried. He remembered our favorite tipples even after that long hiatus. That's a professional bartender!

The Limey Troll -- Technically a busboy, not a bartender, Terry was an IRA gangster from the Southampton, England mob, now illegally living in New York. Pot, forged drivers' licenses, duty-free booze, you name it, you could get it, and he'd give you a discount if he liked you. He disappeared one day, but nobody ever speculated about it because that would have been talking too much. There'd just be a sort of tut-tut silence and sad shake of the head when somebody who hadn't been around lately came in asking for him. He did bartend occasionally, but had some sort of mental block about using the cash register. So we were all happy when he was on. [That bar, with Paddy, Cyril, Terry, and Bridget, who will not be referred to hereafter, was a center for NORAID and eventually went out of business after Paul O'Dwyer died.]

Bucky -- A classic secular Jewish bartender, similar to the old-fashioned NYC taxi-driver. Full of anecdotes, especially about when he used to work at the Grand Central Oyster Bar and had to deal with famous people who often got into a shameful state while waiting for their trains. He could have been 60 or 90 -- no way to tell, because even his comb-over was dyed black; but he was officially retired, couldn't stand not working and chatting, so went to 'this' place and probably worked off the books. Alas, poor Bucky, I wonder where you are now a-mouldering. He mixed a mean martini, served in a brandy snifter not one of those paltry conical glasses, must have been five ounces of gin or vodka in that thing. And if you were a regular, your third one was always free, if you were still able to stand. Cost per back then $3.50, so you could get smashed for ten bucks, including tip.

Glen -- An interim bartender in that same Bucky place. He was a music student, just making his living on the side as a bartender. Lived in Hoboken and claimed it was the best place in the world. For a while, he also doubled as the pianist when the bar did that live for a brief and unsuccessful period. He was awful at it yet charmingly enthusiastic, so nobody booed. He was also a klutz, dropping ice on you when he mixed a drink, etc., knocking over beer bottles. One night, long after he had quit bartending to do 'gigs', my wife and I were on a subway in Brooklyn, heard this horrendous crash and the twang of a fallen guitar, and I said 'that sounds like Glen' -- and by God, it was. Small world, isn't it?

Dennis -- Another one of those bartenders who always turned up again someplace or other. But he was one of those really nice people who end up working for a total jerk, even a crook. Hope he didn't go down when the owner got busted for tax evasion and lost all his properties. But Dennis did manage to marry the amazingly beautiful, if very short, blonde waitress that everybody lusted after (why do short girls often have such lovely legs?). He also helped me out when I carried on clandestine affairs, telling my wife I wasn't there when she called, etc. -- although I swear I stopped doing that sort of thing years ago since those days.

Jake -- The Grass Roots Cowboy. When St. Mark's Place in the East Village went yuppie, Jake was still there in spite of everything, leather vest and denims, frontier bushy beard, pony tail and all. He came from Montana cow country, claimed he had to leave because he was practically the only Catholic in the state and was therefore looked down on, became a long-distance truck driver, then ended up in this bar, where he was a fixture for many years. He finally got fired (no reason provided, except that he didn't fit the image of the place, which is bullshit, so something else must have happened), ended up in a bar in the Grand Central area where he had to use electronic measuring devices, no more buy-backs to favored customers (he was so happy when we visited him there, and so sad that he couldn't stop for a moment to chat), and quit in disgust and went back to truck-driving. Last I heard, he was doing the Alaska/Boston run or some such thing.

Karen -- Also Grass Roots. So sad. She was a real pisser and a good friend. (Also practically the first female bartender I'd ever encountered back in the 1970s.) The spitting image of Bonnie Raitt except with brown hair. She was into white-water canoeing, skydiving, all that sort of thing, then took a few days off to have some 'female stuff' done to her in hospital and ended up dead of ovarian cancer at the age of 37. That still hurts me after something like 15 years. I admire Doug, the owner of the bar, for tracking down most of the old regulars, even when they had left the neighborhood, and inviting them to a wake in the tavern to meet Karen's mother. The event was an appreciation, not a tearful thing -- which is how such a thing should be.