99 bottles of beer on the wall . . .
OT, what are the names of the downtown neighborhood bars you mentioned last night? And the Washington Park one. There is also Littlejohn's Tavern, Robinhood Road, though my brother visiting from Chattanooga tells me it is OK if one likes drinking beer with zombies. Of course, he keeps vampires' hours, so that may explain his comment.
All I know about Littlejohn's is that that is the place where the thugs who beat up the owner of Paul's Italian Restaurant had been drinking...not the highest recommendation.
ReplyDeleteThere are actually two places in Washington Park, within stone's throw of each other on Acadia Street. The aforementioned Swaim's Grocery is not a grocery and is not owned by anyone named Swaim...that was the name of the neighborhood grocery that operated there for many years. Nice place with nice people and a deck for smokers.
The other place is called Washington Perk and is more a coffee house/deli/grocery with a terrific selection of wine and beer. Much of their grocery selection is customer driven and hard to find elsewhere.
There are three excellent bars in the heart of downtown, all with some outdoor seating. Tate's, on Fourth Street next to the new Mexican restaurant Buena Pinta, is kind of high end and specializes in cocktails, particularly martinis, including designer stuff.
The Silver Moon Saloon, next to the new school on Trade Street, is the oldest of the "new" bars. On the other side of Trade is Single Brothers. Both comfortable, friendly places.
There's an active bar scene elsewhere downtown, from the oldest, Recreation Billiards across from the Stevens Center, to Finnigan's Wake (misspelled on purpose?) on Trade. The bar at Sixth & Vine gets very crowded during happy hour, a bit of a meat market. And of course there is Foothills, which is a restaurant as well as a bar, but for me the main attraction is the ales. Friendly place.
I'm leaving some out but my brain is strained.
Is Burke Street off limits OT? Definitely not a Mecca for beer lovers (they are not Bud exclusive though), but there is a plethora of bars both public and private. Local live music on the weekends at most of them. Downtown locations are often over crowded (but I do have personal space issues) and I do love the Foosball and Darts.
ReplyDeleteOT, your memory is better than mine. I forgot about that assault.
ReplyDeleteOther than a late-night stop there about 15 years ago, my experience with Littlejohn's is indirect or anecdotal. Not long ago, I stopped by Pizza Hut, across the street, to pick up a post-choir practice pizza. As I walked to the door, I observed a Littlejohn zombie crossing Robinhood Rd, zigzaggng as if fearful of U-boats. When he docked at the register, he slurred and stammered that he was there to collect a take-out order.
Fearful that he would fall victim to one of Robinhood's U-boats, I offered to drive the sot back across the street. He declined, but I used my car to shield him as he staggered back.
After Mrs. Stab's husband walked out some years ago, she went out on a semi-date (her first venture in that arena) in a group to Paul's restaurant. They later moved to Littlejohn's where she ordered a magarita. She quickly became woozy, disoriented, and nauseated. She thinks someone administered a date-rape drug to the drink.
Fortunately, she barfed the margarita, kept her wits, and got home safely. She avoided the world of middle-aged dating till she met me and we went out (7 years ago tonight, as a matter of fact). Neither of us ever dated anyone else. So, I owe Littlejohn's a bit of thanks.
Stab...nice recollection there. From what I have learned, she was worth the wait and you have been wise for 7 years. Congrats on 7!
ReplyDeleteAndrew, Burke Street is not by any means off limits…just off the radar at the moment. I have little time to spend in bars and restaurants, and since just walking out the door presents me with quite an array of choices within a block or two, Burke Street is merely a part of the background haze these days. It wasn't always so.
ReplyDeleteI'm a blues/jazz sort of animal…flash back eight years or so and my main hangouts were Thea's Blues Club, the Cellar, Unique Upstairs, the Speakeasy, Leons, Rubber Soul, the Black Bear, Gatsby's (strictly social, darts and pool), and another place whose name, I am ashamed to say, escapes me at the moment, now occupied by the Burke Street Pub, all, alas, save Gatsby's, now defunct.
The last four of those were on Burke Street and on Saturday night the ambiance was such that you might think that you were in New York or Chicago or San Francisco. There was even this guy who worked the street with his story of needing money for a bus ticket to get back to his dying mom. One night he hit my date and I up both going in and coming out. I mentioned that perhaps he should work on his memory a bit so as not to waste his time.
My two favorite places from those days were the one whose name is also off the radar at the moment (truly shameful because I knew the guy who owned it and always attended his birthday parties there), a rather scruffy place with very few seats, but every weekend great blues bands.
The other was the Cellar, on South Marshall Street, mostly a jazz scene. It was the only truly integrated club in the city. One night my girlfriend and I went there to enjoy Johnny Whitlock and the Amazing Blues Caucus, in my humble opinion the best local blues band ever. I can still see and hear the late lamented Johnny in his wide brimmed fedora singing "Big legged woman, throw your big leg over me…" and the women in the audience going wild.
At some point in the evening my GF and I found ourselves sitting at 5 tables which had been pushed together right in front of the stage, occupied by us, some local black men and women, and other boys and girls from Argentina, Brazil and Colombia. What a great bunch of people and what a great night!
Stab, loved your story. Dating past 25 can be a bit daunting. Glad Mrs Stab survived that fiasco. There is always evil afoot somewhere. The old barf reflex can be lifesaving.
ReplyDeleteReal Margaritas do NOT make one woozy, disoriented and nauseous. That make one happy and wanting another one.
It is good to remember the Irish toast that I mentioned the other day:
"If you must drink, drink with us, your friends."
My above tribute to Johnny Whitlock and the Amazing Blues Caucus somehow dropped the ending. I meant to say:
ReplyDeleteSome might say RIP, Johnny Whitlock. Not being a religious person, I would not. There is no reason why Johnny should be resting in peace, i.e. sitting around doing nothing. That would rob all of those who never saw him of a great experience.
Instead, he should be somewhere right now, sitting on his stool with his fedora pulled down over his eyes, singing "Meet me with your black drawers on" while his all-star band, which usually included such great musicians as Steve Blake on saxophone (the arranger), Max Drake and Steve Smith on guitar, Mike "Weso" Wesolowski on harp, Bobby Kelly on bass and Kelly Pace on drums wails in the background.
Show me a better band and I will buy you tickets to the Superbowl.
Good evening, folks!
ReplyDeleteHi WW, thank you for the kind words. Mrs. Stab and I both consider ourselves lucky, and we're both right.
OT, Mrs. Stab actually drinks very infrequently, and then only one. She leaves the journeyman consumption to me.
Your discussion of neighborhood bars reminds me of my favorite watering hole from times past, a neighborhood bar and restaurant calling itself Dolly's, on Dolley Madison in Quaker Village in GSO. I would repair there after finishing work at American Express at midnight, and close the place. It had good bar food, good bartenders and barmaids, and good regulars.
A number of us would play a trivia game on national closed circuit, via the National Trivia network. We played a game called Countdown that awarded points for correct answers, with the points diminishing the longer it took to answer. 12,000 points out of 15,000 possible won a contestant a free domestic beer or house booze drink. Some nights I drank beer for free.
The night before I left to move to CA, we had fine get-together at Dolly's, made leaving a bad sad. When I moved back from CA, I drove over to reapply at AmEx and then over to Dolley's, but alas, it had changed its name, remained outwardly the same, but it wasn't.
A year later, 7 years ago tonight, Mrs. Stab went over there to have our first date. The place was being demolished. We went to Spring Garden, nearby, for a perfectly lousy dinner: no air conditioning, out of my preferred brand of domestic beer, most of the entrees unavailable (on a Friday night, no less), and a waitress who couldn't remember what tables she had. As I said earlier, neither of us dated anyone else after that, and we still laugh at that first date. Haven't been back there, either.
OT, a friend in my HS days pined for a late teen stunner named Paula Wesolowski. Was she Wes' sister?
ReplyDeleteAs a lay student of quantum mechanics, and believing in quantum consciousness, I think Johnny Whitlock persists in some fashion, and is indeed not simply RIP.
Stab, since I am bi-city, I remember Dollys and Spring Garden. It's funny how a terrible experience like your first date can actually enhance a relationship. One of the most popular features of the old Reader's Digest, which played a major part in helping me to learn how to read, was "Laughter: The Best Medicine."
ReplyDeleteMany years ago, Norm Cousins, the editor of the Saturday Review, was told that he had only months to live due to cancer. Since he had an outrageous sense of humor, he decided that his best bet for fighting the disease was laughter, so enlisted his friends to bombard him with jokes and other outrageous nonsense.
To the astonishment of the doctors, he survived and lived on for many years. Some years later, one of my oldest friends received the same diagnosis. I told him about Cousins and he liked the idea, so we deluged him with e-mails, postcards, phone calls, practical jokes and personal visits. He lived. And it happened again six years later. Several studies have failed to confirm that laughter works, but it is worth a try anyway. I'd rather die laughing than crying.
As to Paula Wesolowski, I do not know her, but then I only know Weso through his music. Since Wesolowski is not even close to being in the top ten names in the Triad, I would guess that there might be a connection. Weso is not exactly a beautiful person externally, but beauty emanates from within...if so, Paula might well have been a stunner.
And I have no doubt that Johnny Whitlock is still performing in a parallel universe near us. He was a remarkable man. Graduated from Dudley HS in Greensboro in segregation days, where he had a very popular band. Went north to NYU for college, and performed in local bars until "discovered" by Count Basie, who offered him a job with his band.
Well, that was pretty impressive, but as Johnny told it, his assessment of the music business was not encouraging, so he turned down the offer to finish his studies. He went on to get a masters degree and then worked as a medical administrator for 40 years before retiring to Greensboro and starting his band.