New Orleans, Forever Easy and Mad Haunted

            I have returned safely.

            And that says a lot when you venture into our only true fable of a city in America: New Orleans, Louisiana, and get out without any bruises.

            Sure, you can arrive at Louis Armstrong airport, hire one of those little group vans that take you and other fanny pack wearing companions with strange wind breakers on (and they always seem to have mauve or lame-duck purple colored windbreakers) right over to the French Quarter Marriot. Someone will help you with your bags and you’ll head on up to the room, your mind racing with images of Styrofoam  Hurricanes, cat-calling strip clubs, some rock and roll and jazz covers on Bourbon Street.

            You keep to the southwest corner of the Quarter, knowing the Acme Oyster house and the Penthouse Club are there. Then, after 75 Kamikaze shots, hundreds of deep fried oysters, several pairs of fake breasts pressed against your face at Temptations or Rick’s Cabaret, maybe, just maybe, someone rolls up next to you and asks “I guess where y’got yo shoes, you give me a dollar, yea?” and lost 75 dollars at Harrah’s Casino off Canal, you say to yourself:

            “What could Matthew possibly mean by saying he was lucky to return safely from New Orleans? It seems just fine.”

            To answer this question, I will say, kindly, with a slight smile drawn across my face:          

            “Don’t worry about it.” 

            There are things to worry about and it’s not just the crime.

            New Orleans needs your money. In more ways than one.

            Just like here, real New Yorkers don’t hate on tourists (because we like their money). New Orleanians don’t have much beef with baggy beige pant-wearing, constantly overweigh gawkers who wander on their three or four chosen ‘safe’ streets either.

            They like you there.

            They just want to make sure those same clueless travelers don’t find their favorite dive and come in asking for frozen drinks.

            New Orleans is bartender city. Hell, New Orleans is a bar town. I think the red blood of the city itself is Whiskey and Vodka and Rum and the rest of the sundries this hamlet lives on is a whole economy fueled by intoxicants. And it’s not only for bartenders, it’s for service of any kind; waiters, hoteliers, valets, chefs, line cooks, strippers, escort girls, bus boys and dominatrix’s.

            Walking around New Orleans at nine in the morning is revelatory, simply because of the emptiness of the streets.

            It is a town of night.

            New Orleans is the Big Easy, meaning it’s easy to get what you want. Whatever your fancy. Just be careful you know what that is.

            When my boy Michael Blain and I set our first feet into the Quarter, he turns to me, big mischievous smile and all, and says:

            “What is that fragrance? Like perfume? Do they pump perfume out of the sewers around here? What is that? I know that smell, man. It’s a woman.”

            I smell it too. It’s remarkable. When you smell that fragrance, soft as lace and equally inviting, the city is feeling you back, friends.

            And we hadn’t even had our first drink yet.

            Back to that intoxication. Since we hadn’t had our first drink yet, we simply cross Chartres and head right into the fine nautical squalor of The Chart Room. Will, a bartender with a slight resemblance to Ronald Reagan’s kid, is less of a dick then he was a year ago when I visited this same fair city (see ).

            Michael Blain and I cheers to the next five days.

            Our trip had been legendary on the way down dirty south, save for a very tortured moment earlier, stuck at some faux-Irish pub in the U.S. Airways terminal in La Guardia airport called Slip Mahoney’s. 
             Those bartenders were big muscled douche bags who wondered how they became bartenders at airports.   
             Once we took off, we began changing hearts and minds, meeting a Jamaican women who didn’t look a day over 35 (she was 65, no joke) showing me pictures of her grandkids and telling Michael Blain and I what sweet boys we were. We also met some precocious Irish girl named Martha studying for her exams at Tulane.

            Travel can be stressful for people, especially on airplanes.

            Gee, I wonder why? Just a couple of hundred people shooting above the Earth at 35,000 feet in a jet fueled missile. I’m sure our frail humanity is used to that. Flying was invented commercially in 1914 by Tony Jannus, not that long. I think no one should be judged for a little fear and stress.

            I, however, have conquered these terrible fears somehow. Martha, who happens to be 19 in age and Einstein in mind, and I drink Heineken cans, hooked up by a very tired but very cool airline stewardess. Martha and I made fun of all the stiffs, both unconcerned by the miles of space to Earth below.

            Touching down, Blain and I knew we would not move like the tourists. Visiting that city for over 13 years, I knew the streets.

            Sort of.

            The streets opened their wisdom, slowly though. I knew all we really had to pack was a knife and clean underwear.  

            Here we come to our first lesson I’d like to share with you about wandering looking for a soiled wisdom down round these Quarter streets.

            We’ll it call: The Deazy Part One (“details on the Easy”).

            1. 

            DON’T GET SHOT

            I’m not going to tell you that New Orleans is safe. Now, it is mauve-purple windbreaker safe.      

            Okay.

            That’s a lie. Sometimes even they walk down the wrong street.

            New Yorkers should know. But damn that Williamsburg, making me soft. Blain and I found ourselves searching for Mimi’s, which is not hard to find, unless you have total broken compass/hammered syndrome, and then you find yourself on Rampart Street.

            Please let me say: If you ever find yourself on Rampart Street, leave ASAP. This actually works in other towns as well, remarkably. And if you find yourself on Barracks Street, get your white ass outta there. If you find yourself at Barracks and Rampart, well, this Coors Light is for you, fallen comrade.

            I wish I was kidding. Blain and I invented a term called the ‘hang-nail’. The ‘hang-nail’ is code for when you pick up a hanger, a guy who obviously breaks from the normal flow of any street to trail you a couple blocks to see if you’re a mark (and if you don’t know what a mark is, I can’t help you).

            One of us would say: “Hang-nail. We got a hanger, Sarge.” And that’s how we knew to veer left and around a different corner. We shook off several, and even though we are down motherfuckers, we still had that ‘we don’t live here’ vibe, and so they thought we were the ones.          

            Nah. We from Brooklyn. We ain’t the one, son.

            The night we arrive five people were killed by gunshot. I knew when I was sitting at R Bar that night we should take it easy. We did. We went to sleep.

            Those others went to sleep too, but they didn’t get to wake up.

            2.

            HAUNTED AS FUCK           

           

            Ghosts work both ways. The evil spirits sometimes like to dress up as angels, and sometime the good angels dig the works of sinners and make card games damn lucky.

            We all know music is part Eros, part Dionysus, and Cupids in there somewhere on bass. Music, some of it, you could be burned alive for playing, that heretic stuff. And if there ever was a town that born more rebel American music into world: blues, jazz, bounce, metal; than New Orleans is it.     

            We all know the stereotypes about the South. Anne Rice, some of that True Blood shit, Voodoo, Gris-Gris, ju-ju, Marie Laveau and all that mysterious business has driven an industry of tours and thrill seekers wanting to know the haunted history of New Orleans. And like I said, we like that.

            New Orleans needs you, in more ways than one.

            Information from several story-tellers, bartenders, random bar stools sitters, professional hustlers, and good friends tell me that there are approximately 23 major spirits in New Orleans. There’s a very tall man in a top hat one should avoid at Déjà Vu. Some strange characters simply referred to as ‘the brothers’ one should avoid if you’re not into having your body drained of all blood, and a kid ghost named Maurice who lives on the 14^th floor of the Monteleon, where some guests purposely ask to leave the floor for a new room and other guests specifically ask for a room on the 14^th floor. I did not get any more information on the other 19 spirits.

            Don’t believe in any of this? Not a problem.

            As someone once said: “You may not believe in ghosts, but trust me, they sure believe in you.”     

            3.

            THE BARTENDERS RULE THE CITY

            All riddles start with a trade. Back to that old crazy bitch The Sphynx: always telling stories that may or may not be true. And there are no better yard-spinners than an old-fashioned New Orleans bartender. You have to. There are so many things going on outside of the bar, once a lonely soul saddles up for a beer at The Alibi (quick big up's to Mother/Daughter bartender team Kimberly/Tiffany), that stranger is in need of a tale to get their imagination going and the bartender better be sharp as a razor, or plain just good at their job.

            But all riddles start with a trade. And the trade is money for booze. It’s a marathon, not a sprint down here in the ‘504’, a bartender told me once, and he was right. Balance is shifty by the Mississippi. Like walking on a red ball in the circus, you got to know your weight and balance on up. Find the right bartender, you’ll be sideways loving the world, making out with your true love or thrown into garbage out on Bourbon and Toulouse Street (actually happened to me 21 years old here, New Year’s Eve 2000 A.D.).

            Like anywhere, in bars from San Francisco to Bangkok, the bartenders set the tone for the evening. 

            Big up’s to the famed bartenders Michael Blain and I had the pleasure of drinking from; Erika (a ‘k’ I presume?) over at Sneaky Pete’s who tells the most morbid stories about the Quarter, all before 11a.m., and has a kid with the same as my cat (Lysander). Jim over at the finest dive bar uptown, Miss Mae’s, the joint I learned to play pool in 2006 from the reformed gangster Hector, and the girls at the most comfortable bar, Quarter-wise: Molly’s on the Market- Tara, Kelly, and Fraiser. You made the stay a thousand times more interesting than if we didn’t meet y’all.            

               

            Travel is good and travel is necessary.

            There were so many disturbances in the Force this year for me it was like Empire Strikes Back up in here.

            Be we back. And waiting for the next trip.

            Working hard so The Bartender Knows can learn more about the world.

            And it’s a big one out there.

           

            Stay tuned in future blogs for The Deazy Part Two. Right about now, I’m going to sleep for 76 hours.  

           
             PS: If someone gives you the: "I bet I know where y'got them shoes, right now, you give me a dollar!" routine and you say where you bought them, it's the wrong answer. They will always say: "You got them on your feet motherfucker! Give me a dollar!". Then you laugh and realize how funny it is and open your wallet to give him a dollar. 

             Then he robs you for the rest. 

              PSS: If anyone knows the true meaning and use of a mysterious liquid called Florida Water please write back. Also shout out to CityLightsGirl for her heartbreaking comment last week. I’m with you girl. All I can say is the words of Pat Benetar: “We are young, heartache to heartache we stand”.

            It is “Manhattan”, Marie, fellow commenter, and it is Woody’s finest (one of them, right?). “Tracy’s face”, oh, it breaks my heart.

            Ari Rivera, sometimes the pile of leaves is all we have! Harlo, see you at the bar girl. And Buz, thanks for the link.

            Seriously though.

            FLORIDA WATER. What the fuck? Till next week. Yes, next week, I promise.

DOESN'T THIS REMIND YOU OF SOME AZTEC SYMBOL? 

YEAH. WELL.

SERIOUSLY? WHAT THE FUCK IS FLORIDA WATER?

I’m In Love With The CatBird Girl

            Mysteriously, she walks out of her little boutique shop off Bedford Avenue, behind dark sunglasses, her crow black hair straight, flowing over her pale white shoulders, locking the door behind her.

            Catbird, the display window filled with bric-a-brac, is not quite open. It is 930am as I sit, almost daily, over at Verb Café in the window with my shitty little ‘mini’ laptop, composing another one of this little essays, chewing on my pen, and without fail, I will see this beauty strut out, like all great mysteries, turn, flicking her hair over her shoulder, disappearing back into the boutique shop.

            I imagine who she is, what’s she’s like after a couple of drinks, how she laughs, other things…

            And every time I see her I’m teased, yet again, into her wonderment. There are many beauties in this neighborhood, but something about the Catbird girl gets me every time.

            Is it her pale porcelain skin always peeking out from her perpetual black attire?

            Is it her velvet sheen of hair?

            Her occasionally adorned purple heels?

            Oh, wait, I know exactly what it is.

            I just got dumped.

            And anyone who has been victimized by the sting of a relationship ending, you know the state you are left resembles the town square in Chernobyl after the leak:

            Ravaged, empty, and slightly reeking of nuclear waste.

            I think even if I fell into a bush drunk I’d take the leaves bunched around me as a hug.

            Weeks after a break up (or years sometimes), the human being on the receiving end of a Dear John letter is left completely insane.

            I suddenly see another woman walk out of Catbird, different from our pale goddess. This one’s luscious hair is thick and her chocolate skin looks warm to the touch even from across the street. Then there’s the other employee with the hoop earrings? What about her and her leggy skirts?

            Do they only high beauty pageant participants at Cat bird? 

            It’s happened. I’ve fallen into full desperate mode.

            I flash back to high school, nervously clutching my books down the crowded halls, watching all the pretty girls arm in arm with varsity jacketed, handsome athletes. I seem to remember wanting to buy a boom box and a beige trench coat and yell up to these girls bedroom windows. That’s  sounds ‘stalkery’. Well, fuck, it was charming in the 80’s.

            I remember rooting for Duckie. But we all know what happened to that best dressed ‘wrong side of the tracks’ kid. Duckie’s heartthrob red-headed romance was thwarted by Blaine and his tweed coats.    

            What should I do, dear readers? How does one fill the void left by some tragic broken love? Should I finally join the ranks of OK Cupid (which one of you readers have a profile page I might see?) Should I now cruise Union Pool on Tuesday nights? Will I become like the legion of douche bag single men in this fair city, sleeping with anything that has a heartbeat and an XX chromosome? Is it time, finally, for blind dates or friend hook-ups? Do I dare be single, once again, in this whorish neighborhood, dodging intimacy and STD’s with alarming precision?

            How deep does the rabbithole of ho’s go?

            Shit. I’m too poor to be single.

            Funny enough, just this week around the bars, I’ve heard rumors of breakups of friends, tragic arguments, men and women tired, finally, of each other’s bullshit so I know I’m not the only going through it.

            So, in response to this post-summer romance, recently singled affliction, I decided to address some DO’s and DON’T’s of the broken-hearted, ways and means to somehow navigate the troubled seas of  being dumped. This goes out to the dumpee in all of us.

            And if you just dumped someone, I have a couple words for you: “Please just pick up the phone so we can talk! I’m sorry I keep leaving gifts on your stoop, but I really think you’re making a big mistake and no one will ever love you the way I do!”

            Sorry. Right.

            Okay. Here’s the official Bartender Knows DO’s and DON’T’s to reacting to your broken heart.

            DO eat as much as possible.

            It’s true. Food is love. So stuff your face full of that kind of love and you’ll be feeling great in no time. You’ll also get fat, ensuring no one will sleep with you with the lights on. But a least you’ll have a full stomach and plenty of time to take your mind off of your broken heart while shopping for the new clothes your ‘new body’ requires.

            DON’T fuck your ex before the recent ex.

            Everyone will do this anyway, but there is nothing like debasing yourself with someone you already debased yourself with 17 months ago. And the worse thing is that the sex is always better with ex’s. Why this evil fact remains true, I will never know. But it is.

            DO buy every Elliot Smith record.

            What better spokesman for the broken-hearted then the guy who broke his own heart in half himself with an actual knife. Misery loves company, and Mr. Smith is always down to commiserate heartbreak, isolation, depression, and overall ennui any time, any place. Note: best place to enjoy Elliot Smith on a downward spiral: Your kitchen floor drinking cheap red wine by yourself  at 4 in the morning).

            DON’T sleep with anyone that is below your standards.

            I understand your self-esteem right about now is a notch below David Foster Wallace, but to degrade yourself with someone who just will never get you makes the isolation even worse. I’ve been with girls who hated cinema, their book shelves practically empty, and voted Republican, and in the end, in post-coition, I laid there silently, knowing any of volley of conversation will be even more disappointing than my sexual performance.

            DO attempt now, finally, to ‘enjoy New York’.

            You know what I mean. Suddenly you’re at lectures at the Public Library, you’ve joined a cooking class, you’re seeing a personal trainer, and are now a card carrying member of the Green Party. Anything to take your mind off the heartbreak. Cause admit it, if you really were a happy person you’d be too busy going to lavish dinners and sleeping with the person that was making you happy. Lonely people have hobbies. Happy people are too busy fucking and eating.

            DON’T join internet dating sites.

            Seriously. It’s Fresh Direct for humans. Go out and meet people the old fashioned way: drunk at bars. Try as you might to say ‘nothing good ever comes from meeting people at bar’, but as your bartender, let me assure that always how it happens. For better or worse, the United Federation of Drunk Hook-Up’s is a time tested organization. Just remember how you got yourself in this place to begin with. Bar related? I thought so.

            DO drink more. DON’T try to get to know someone. DO watch lots of 70’s-80’s era Woody Allen films. DON’T read anything by Nicholas Sparks. DO listen to your bartender.

            And don’t worry about me. I’m sure next week you’ll be hearing me pine for the Amarcord girls a half block down the street.

            DO read next week. DON’T watch any movie that has Jennifer Aniston in it.

            Till next time! 

YES, THE WASTELAND OF BROKEN HEARTS. 

THE DUCKMAN RULES. LET'S TRY TO REMEMBER A TIME JON CRYER WAS ACTUALLY COOL.

               

  

BEST SCENE FROM THE BEST MOVIE ABOUT LOVE AND HEART BREAK. NAME THE FILM AND I'LL GIVE YOU A SHOUT OUT IN THE BLOG. OR I MAY TRY TO DATE YOU. 

       

           

The Death Of Subway Bar/Cyn Lounge

             Ladies and gentlemen, hundreds of tried and true drunks felt a quake in their bar flight patterns last Sunday night.

            It’s been talked about.

            It’s been rumored.

            But after the untimely death of owner/proprietor Rocky Grecco, the day finally came that closed the doors of two of the last great and true dive bars Williamsburg, Brooklyn will ever see again.

            Sure, there’s 89 (and growing) bars in the local Williamsburg area you can order a 12 dollar cocktail that has something infused in it over a zinc bar bathed in a yellow ole-timey glow reflecting off frosted mirrors. It will take forever to actually get your drink (anything that has ‘artisan’ involved will always cost more and take a helluva long time to get to your lips) and when it is served to you by the anorexic, mustached, suspender wearing dude with no social skills, you will feel a slight ache in your stomach when you hear other patrons in the bar asking questions regarding ‘refreshing’ options and whether or not the ice is shaved or cubed.

            This neighborhood, much like many others in America (Silver Lake, Fullerton, Austin, Ashville, Portland, etc, etc) has now fallen into some kind of couture culture for alcohol as much as it has for every other good, simple thing (BBQ, ‘specialty’ pizza, the hot dog) and some even say we here in the Burg started this nullifying trend. What we’re seeing is bourgeois sensibilities creeping into everything that once stood for solid entertainments.

            Even bowling got fancy in the last six years.    

            Two of the last great heads were severed with the shuttering of The Subway Bar and Cyn Lounge, two staples in my crews bar crawl repertoire.

            Tears were shed.        

            A great shift had occurred.    

            As everyone who knows my predilections for dangerous, dark, ultimately friendly bars where I can be left alone and write in peace, these two spots, due to their suicide vibe, amazingly charming bartender ladies, and the lawless free falls on random Tuesday afternoons took the crown.

            There’s other bars around that attempt to match the magic: The Levee Bar, The Wreck Room out in Bushwick, the twin sisters International Bar and Coal Yard on the isle of Manhattan. But none of these could hold a candle to the Queen of all Dives: The Subway Bar.

            In the future I will start a little column of bonus adventures called The Subway Series but today I will refrain. Like any great human being, it’s best to keep quiet until the wake is over.   Speak in hushed tones. Wear black.

            When I worked for the shotty, horridly run Macri Park, I would get a flow of regulars come around the corner of Union Ave, wide-eyed, rummy red face, shaking their head, explaining over a Bud Light:

            “I can’t hang out at Subway anymore. I’m going crazy over there slowly,” they would explain before I had ever set foot in there many years ago.  

            People have said: “Subway Bar is where good dreams go to die.”

            I was immediately intrigued.

            One lucky afternoon I breached the threshold, notepad and pen clutched in hand. Immediately the smell of smoke permeated the place.

            Yes, cigarettes.

            Hints of marijuana.

            Strange dark eyes, like animals in the woods, gleamed up at me in the darkness. But no one said anything. The bartender came over, a pretty girl with a foul mouth, and asked if I wanted a ‘special’.

            Shot and a beer.

            5 bucks.

            I consumed my liquor quietly, scribbling away in my notepad. As most new places I explore, I don’t say much at first (a feat most people who know me consider plain impossible), I just write, observe, make analysis.

            But I couldn’t stay quiet long. Engaged by the consummate conversationalists and easy on the eyes ladies Rocky always hired, I found some of the best friends and associates I would ever mingle with. We may all have come from different backgrounds, different races, different religions and monetary statuses, but we all shared one important thing.

            We weren’t welcome other places—our types.

            We were the outlaws, saddling up to the trough, the outsiders who felt strange when they sat down in a clean, well-lighted place. These people did not want a cocktail, they wanted a fucking PBR and a shot of Carstairs (don’t worry about it…) sitting pretty in the valley of the shadow of death.  

            I’ve written hundreds of pages of fiction in The Subway Bar (including some of these blogs). I wrote the second act to my first play at Cyn Lounge, right after it was ‘remodeled’ from Rain Lounge in the early 00’s.

            I’ve met the Raven Haired Beauty (remember her?) looking like a million bucks in a tight red mini-skirt some Monday night at Subway arguing about Celine, and I also remember wiping blood off my sleeve from the bar after a couple of scuffles that went south.

            I’ve seen that steel bat get brandished several times, never in my direction, and bought weeping grown men another shot. I’ve fallen in love and I’ve argued with countless women there, I’ve poured beer on myself, scripts, and other people within its halls, christening us all together in some alcoholic baptism.

            Yes, in life, we can be careful. Yes, in life, we can be practical, but never do you know what color blood really is until you open a vein, and these places were open wounds.

            Anyone who complained about Subway Bar I could never date.

            Anyone who judged the fallen and broken people actively walking a plank crushed by a cruel world, I would never associate with.

            And last Sunday, I sat there, Missy bartending the last Subway Bar shift, and heard the fateful words: “Last Call!”

            I raised myself from up from my stool, screamed aloud a guttural howl to the rest of the rabble-rousers immersed in smoke. We all stood and cheered like animals to last call in the last great dive bar in Williamsburg.

            Goodbye Subway and Cyn, you will be missed by the worse of us.

            Your feral cheerleaders in the game that never ends.

Yep. 359 am October 8th, 2012.

Cheers to you.  

Sincerely, The Help