City At Night....but this ain't LA Woman.

One of the proudest moments I have had in New York City happened yesterday. I was strolling down Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side, listening to "Hello Stranger" by Barbara Lewis (a great forgotten hit, by the way) and wearing my old Georgia basketball t-shirt ca. 1999. The shirt has seen better days. It is faded, the shoulder has a hole about the size of a penny, and the stitching in the sleeves unravels more and more each time I wear. But, by God, it is one of my favorite shirts and I will wear it until it falls apart, then I will use it for a kitchen rag.

Anyhow, I ambled past St. James Gate, an Irish pub near my apartment. An elderly man was outside taking a cigarette break. It was about 7:30 PM and he had clearly been a patron of the bar since lunch time. He drags on the cigarette and studies my shirt closely. His head moves up and he makes eye contact, and in an Irish brogue assisted by no telling how many pints of Guinness, he says, "Georgia Bulldogs?" I remove the headphones, now playing "Crossroader" by Mountain, and say, "Yes sir. Born and bred." The Irishman smiles and "Go Dawgs. And to HELL with Georgia Tech." He grins and goes back to his stool at the bar. See? Even Irishmen hate Tech. It warms the heart, it really does. Erin Go Bragh.

I love Irish pubs in this city. You know why? Because most of them are actually Irish, rather than a gimmick. That was always my complaint with Atlanta, nothing was authentic to me. It was like a group got together, formed a bullcrap LLC, and decided to open a bar. One day, they had a meeting and one guy said, "so, what kind of bar we gonna have?" After 2.7 seconds of thought, one guy throws out the original suggestion, "Irish?" So they go out, buy every Guinness, Smithwick's and Bass bar sign they can find, splatter them all over the walls and call it "O'Shaughnessy's." It would be just like Dublin, except you are in a strip mall next to a tanning salon and Chinese take-out. I'm not saying these places are a bad idea, they just have no allure to me. In this city, if you found a bar called "O'Shaughnessy's," it is probably because some guy named O'Shaughnessy opened it in 1934 because Prohibition ended and he needed to make money.

I think that is what people enjoyed about Cass Grocery: our authenticity. It kept the place novel, rather than run of the mill. When was the last time you heard the following statement in your life?

"Man, I love the new Pilot truck stop on I-75. There's nothing like fighting 63 tourists from Michigan to get a Diet Sierra Mist from the fountain."

Never. Nobody gives a damn about that place. Nobody darkening the doors of that place remembers a thing about it. They might brag that the fountain has 76 flavors or that gas is fifty cents cheaper than everyone else, but that is the extent of their discussion. They had nowhere for locals to drink coffee, no fruit for sale purchased from Henry Stephens (no relation), they could not tell you how much a post hole digger costs, nor could they offer to show you how many Nightcrawlers were in the newest delivery of live worms. Nobody could remember the time the cat pooped on my uncle's arm on the front. Or the time that the Stanley brothers, after witnessing a rude customer threaten yours truly, inform him, "you touch that boy and you won't walk outta here." You won't hear me and Gary Gray singing "After the Thrill is Gone" by The Eagles while putting up sweet feed.

We did not have Diet Sierra Mist, in fact, we only had six flavors: Coke, Diet Coke, Dr. Pepper, Diet Dr. Pepper, Sprite and Mello Yello. Our coffee maker had two pots, all caffeinated, all day. You want sugar free, Godiva chocolate creamer with a lemon twist? Sorry. We ain't got it. Neither do we have sleeves for the cups or lids that open conveniently. We drink coffee as God intended in the 30123 and if it burns your hands, then we made it right. There are no Bose speakers installed in the ceiling playing Kenny G. We have an old Panasonic radio and it will probably be playing Tracy Lawrence, Tracy Byrd, or Travis Tritt. The TV will be on Denny Brauer fishing in Lake Okeechobee, not showing a camera image of you walking down an aisle. Nobody would ever return to the Pilot at night, just to sit on the front and watch cars go by. I used to do that when I was 17. I would take a Coke and a Snickers and just sit there. It would be so quiet for minutes and then headlights would appear. The horn honks, "BOY! What you doin' out here? Ain't you had enough of this place?!?" I raised my glass bottle Coke in a toast as they pull away. Nope, never, I said to myself.  Then it's just me and the crickets. There is truly nothing like Cassville at night.

The Dublin Tap Room, which is located about one block from my apartment here, has an awesome bartender who calls me "lad" when I stop by. When I order a Guinness, he says, "You mean Mother's Milk, lad." His accent is so thick I can barely understand him. Women are welcome, but this is a man's bar. One television has the Yankees channel and the other has European soccer, both watched equally by the patrons. Almost every man over 50 orders a shot of Jameson's with his beer. I'm nowhere near to that point, I'm more of a "one and done after work" customer. They have some signs on the wall, but most are advertisments for local bands or framed newspaper articles about Irish soccer teams. No frills. No gimmicks. No Cee-Lo blaring out of the speakers. Just a quiet place to reflect, watch sports, and people watch out the window to 79th Street.

There is something almost religious about it when the sun goes down. They have a blinking neon sign hanging over the door, a mix-hued conglomeration of red, green and yellow. The colors blink separately, so the sidewalk and the passers-by change color as the sign changes. One night, Glenn Miller's "Moonlight Serenade" was playing over the speakers and I just sat there and watched people walk by. Young white teenagers, adorned by the red flash, laughing and horsing around. A black man in a suit, lit up by the yellow flash, talks on his cell phone as he walks home. An Asian couple pushes their child in a stroller, brought to light by the green. The bartender talks quietly and expediently with other Irishmen and goes out to smoke. Cabs fly by toward Riverside Avenue and New Jersey. The day has gone to bed, but the everybody and everything moves on. "Same dances in the same old shoes," said Glenn Frey. I almost can hear the crickets. There is truly nothing like New York City at night.