Sometimes I drink too much, and some times I drink just enough. However most of the time my drinking has been done with my best friend Dennis. Now don’t get me wrong, Dennis and I have done many things together besides drinking but what we do best together is drink vodka. We are not angry or mean drunks, we are happy drunks. We don’t drink every day but when we do, we drink to have fun, not get drunk. 
I met Dennis about thirty years ago when he was bartending at a dive called ‘Dugans’ at Clark and Surf streets in Chicago. That very night we went out drinking downtown. Back then the bars downtown were not all hoity toity yuppie places but sleazy joints with cheap drinks. When I got a job bartending at my friend Rudy’s bar, ‘Dandys’, Dennis would come in about three or four nights a week. He was the one tolerable customer I had, because for the most part I can’t deal with drunks, at least when I’m sober. That of course is not a good thing if you are a bartender, so my bartending career didn’t last very long.
Through the years Dennis and I have spent many an evening in dives up and down the Clark Street corridor. There was the night we went up to an Andersonville bar with Garet. Garet needed to use the washroom and when he returned he had a very large pair of fruit of the loom tighty whiteys on his head. He said he found them up in the ceiling tiles. We never did get a reasonable explanation as to why he was peeking up into the ceiling tiles, or why they ended up on his head.
No matter where Dennis and I went drinking somebody would know him. It was like walking into a different ‘Cheers’ bar every time. We’d walk in the door and someone would yell "DENNIS!". It could be downtown, Rogers Park, or Uptown when Uptown was nothing like the gentrified place it is becoming now. We once went into the ‘Wooden Nickel’ on Wilson, and as we stepped over the drunken woman on the floor to get to the bar somebody yelled "Dennis!".
Since moving to South Florida our behavior hasn’t changed much other than the fact we like to go out earlier and leave the late night to the young ones. Also here in Florida the bars aren’t as sleazy as they could get in Chicago, at least until we walk in.
Why in the world does that story about the huge waist size 50 underwear keep surfacing? Like you said, if the bar wasn't sleasy when we walked in, it was after we left. hehe We had fun and people really caught on that bars were a place to release your inhibitions...we just liked to "break the ice" alot. hehe
ReplyDeleteGaret: Break the ice? Hell, you make crushed ice margaritas...
ReplyDeleteAlan: I just realized that a certain someone (whose name I shall not mention) looked almost exactly like you when you were bar tending (except perhaps for the mustache) Rather telling I might add....
Ok, to set the record straight....er I mean right, First I never had those underwear on my head at all. Second, while sitting there I noticed the same guy going in the john over and over again. After he came out, a different person would go in. This seemed kinda weird. I thought to myself that this must be some kinda new way to sell dope. So I went to investigate the next time he came out. I looked around, under the sink, behind the comode, in the paper dispenser. I was sure to catch this alleged dope dealer red handed. The I notice the ceiling tiles....hmmmm I wonder if he stuck those drugs up there? I had seen something similar in a movie. So there I was, up on the comode lifting the ceiling tiles ans...to my surprize there was a huge pair of undewrwear right in front of me. I laughed so hard, grabbed them and ran out the door holding them high and stretching them at leat 3 feet in width for everyone to see. The whole bar laughed! See these are the silly, crazy things that I do when I'm with Alan and Dennis, They bring it out in me! I'm surprized Alan has not told you about the claw marks on the entranceway of Dandy's Bar in Chicago. hehe
ReplyDeleteClaw marks on entranceway of Dandy's bar???? I must hear this one.
ReplyDelete