The Wildest Night of the Year
It is Thanksgiving Eve here in New York City. Way back when the Howard Stern show was on the radio the head writer, Jackie Martling called this “The Wildest Night of the Year” because most people got out of work early and had a four day weekend so this was a drinking day on par with New Year’s and St. Patty’s Day minus all the amateurs who infest the bars on those two days. This was the night when all the regular party people go out and celebrate. I used to be one of those people. Now that I’m deeply involved in food prep for Thanksgiving, I am no longer one of those people, at least not this year.
In the past though I was not only a participant, but a leader. For a few shining years I led a band of merry drunks on a quest that we never completed. Yeah, several years back I got the bright idea to say “Hey, why don’t we do a pub crawl the night before Thanksgiving. We’ll have one drink, and ONLY one drink in every bar on 8th avenue from Scruffy Duffy’s (just south of 47th street) to Penn Station.”
Have you ever been on that stretch of 8th avenue in Manhattan, friends? It’s not as chock-full now as it had been but trust me, that’s a lot of bars. Just getting south of 46th used to be a challenge. None of these bars exist anymore thanks to real estate development plans, but on that block alone you had Scruffy’s, the Kevin St. James (I never really dug that place, too cleaned up and safe-for-bitchy-single-20something-girls on cell phones), and two bars that are in the all-time Pantheon for me, the late, great Collins Bar (Which never looked as clean in person as it does in that picture, trust me, the floor was full of stepped on popcorn, the occasional cigarette and fluids that you hoped were from someone’s spilled drink) and the widely mourned McHale’s. Often large parts of the crew would sometime during or immediately after the first four stops leaving only the hardcores to continue on a southerly weave.
There were some folks who ran into trouble over the years on this journey, and one year I was one of them. Well, it wasn’t exactly on the journey, but rather once I got home and spent a portion of the night giving my evening’s consumption back to the porcelain gods. I rarely drink enough to get sick. I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I’ve gotten sick from straight drinking. It’s usually what I decide to eat on top of the booze that does me in and this night was no exception. We had made it down below Times Square, a solid achievement and there were three of us left. I had stupidly not eaten anything all day and a Papaya King or Gray’s Papaya or one of those places presented itself to us in all its neon glory. I wolfed down two dogs with the works (including a HUGE amount of sauerkraut along with onion sauce) and a giant papaya shake. Bad idea. Though the next day I think I was ten pounds lighter as I had regurgitated every meal I had eaten for the prior week.
However other folks have done worse on the outing. I have one friend who has subsequently been banned from going out drinking with me on weekend nights or this night in particular. I heard a rumor from a third party that he went home and upchucked on his infant son while changing a diaper (the wife must have been extra angry to make him change a diaper in the state he was in when he left us) though I have not been able to confirm that story.
Still, the guy who took the cake was old Irish Bill (not his real name, of course). Irish Bill was a small guy who drank a lot and couldn’t handle it. Irish Bill was famous for the “Irish exit”, you know, just leaving the bar without saying anything or telling anyone he was leaving. This is a common behavior but what made Irish Bill famous was the fact that he would typically leave behind a jacket (even in February) or a cell phone or a wallet. On the occasions he would announce his departure he would throw a fistful of money on the table to cover his tab and it was almost always way too much. He wasn’t a cheap man, just a crazy drunk.
So there we were, weaving unsteadily down 8th avenue in the mid 40s. We pass Joe Franklin’s restaurant (now closed) and Irish Bill looks through the window and sees Joe Franklin himself holding court at a table. Before any of us could even stay “stop” Irish Bill is in the restaurant yelling at Joe Franklin. The staff cuts him off before he can reach Joe who looks completely befuddled by it all. Irish Bill is deposited back on the street where he woozily looks at us and says “Joe Franklin. Fuck that guy” and sprints down 8th avenue to the next bar. We follow and by the time I arrive Irish Bill has already done some damage. He is slumped on the bar and the bartender says to me “If you’re with him, get him the fuck outta here.”
I look at Irish Bill who now seems to be sleeping and say “He’s harmless, I want a…”
“GET HIM THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!”
I grab Irish Bill and pull him onto the street where the rest of our party is waiting.
“Next bar” I say. “They’re closed”
Irish Bill springs to life again and runs across the middle of 8th avenue screaming something, I don’t know what but the next thing we know two cops have grabbed him and pulled him out of traffic and have him against the wall (literally). This friends, is not good. We rush over and as I arrive the cops are going through the usual asking for ID, etc. Irish Bill’s friend Kenny tries to intervene and the cop says “We’re talking to him, not to you!” and backs us all off. Kenny mentions to the cop pushing us off that he has a cousin “on the job upstate” which makes the cop pause. Quickly, Kenny says “Our friend had too much to drink and I was trying to get him into the Port Authority to get him on a bus back home and he got away from us.”
The other cop stops his questioning and says “You get him the fuck on a bus and get him out of Manhattan because if we see him again we’re arresting him.”
“Yes sir”, replied Kenny.
And so we bid farewell to Irish Bill and Kenny as they went into the charming hallways of the Port Authority. There were three of us remaining at this point and so we decided to fast-forward the crawl to a bar across from the 8th avenue entrance to Penn Station. The Old Garden Tavern is what it used to be called, I have no idea what the name is now that it’s all fixed up with has flat screen TVs and the customers are mainly guys who say “bro” a lot and wear backwards baseball caps that aren’t even the right colors of the team the cap is supposed to represent. Back then it had a cracked tile floor, a slanted pool table and walk-in urinals filled with ice cubes. We staggered in and there were few people left; the main clientele of the bar in its dive form were under-agers commuting in from Long Island and commuters who didn’t want to pay the prices at the bars actually IN Penn Station. We ordered a round of shots and a round of beers and called it an evening. It was a good night.
In the past though I was not only a participant, but a leader. For a few shining years I led a band of merry drunks on a quest that we never completed. Yeah, several years back I got the bright idea to say “Hey, why don’t we do a pub crawl the night before Thanksgiving. We’ll have one drink, and ONLY one drink in every bar on 8th avenue from Scruffy Duffy’s (just south of 47th street) to Penn Station.”
Have you ever been on that stretch of 8th avenue in Manhattan, friends? It’s not as chock-full now as it had been but trust me, that’s a lot of bars. Just getting south of 46th used to be a challenge. None of these bars exist anymore thanks to real estate development plans, but on that block alone you had Scruffy’s, the Kevin St. James (I never really dug that place, too cleaned up and safe-for-bitchy-single-20something-girls on cell phones), and two bars that are in the all-time Pantheon for me, the late, great Collins Bar (Which never looked as clean in person as it does in that picture, trust me, the floor was full of stepped on popcorn, the occasional cigarette and fluids that you hoped were from someone’s spilled drink) and the widely mourned McHale’s. Often large parts of the crew would sometime during or immediately after the first four stops leaving only the hardcores to continue on a southerly weave.
There were some folks who ran into trouble over the years on this journey, and one year I was one of them. Well, it wasn’t exactly on the journey, but rather once I got home and spent a portion of the night giving my evening’s consumption back to the porcelain gods. I rarely drink enough to get sick. I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I’ve gotten sick from straight drinking. It’s usually what I decide to eat on top of the booze that does me in and this night was no exception. We had made it down below Times Square, a solid achievement and there were three of us left. I had stupidly not eaten anything all day and a Papaya King or Gray’s Papaya or one of those places presented itself to us in all its neon glory. I wolfed down two dogs with the works (including a HUGE amount of sauerkraut along with onion sauce) and a giant papaya shake. Bad idea. Though the next day I think I was ten pounds lighter as I had regurgitated every meal I had eaten for the prior week.
However other folks have done worse on the outing. I have one friend who has subsequently been banned from going out drinking with me on weekend nights or this night in particular. I heard a rumor from a third party that he went home and upchucked on his infant son while changing a diaper (the wife must have been extra angry to make him change a diaper in the state he was in when he left us) though I have not been able to confirm that story.
Still, the guy who took the cake was old Irish Bill (not his real name, of course). Irish Bill was a small guy who drank a lot and couldn’t handle it. Irish Bill was famous for the “Irish exit”, you know, just leaving the bar without saying anything or telling anyone he was leaving. This is a common behavior but what made Irish Bill famous was the fact that he would typically leave behind a jacket (even in February) or a cell phone or a wallet. On the occasions he would announce his departure he would throw a fistful of money on the table to cover his tab and it was almost always way too much. He wasn’t a cheap man, just a crazy drunk.
So there we were, weaving unsteadily down 8th avenue in the mid 40s. We pass Joe Franklin’s restaurant (now closed) and Irish Bill looks through the window and sees Joe Franklin himself holding court at a table. Before any of us could even stay “stop” Irish Bill is in the restaurant yelling at Joe Franklin. The staff cuts him off before he can reach Joe who looks completely befuddled by it all. Irish Bill is deposited back on the street where he woozily looks at us and says “Joe Franklin. Fuck that guy” and sprints down 8th avenue to the next bar. We follow and by the time I arrive Irish Bill has already done some damage. He is slumped on the bar and the bartender says to me “If you’re with him, get him the fuck outta here.”
I look at Irish Bill who now seems to be sleeping and say “He’s harmless, I want a…”
“GET HIM THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!”
I grab Irish Bill and pull him onto the street where the rest of our party is waiting.
“Next bar” I say. “They’re closed”
Irish Bill springs to life again and runs across the middle of 8th avenue screaming something, I don’t know what but the next thing we know two cops have grabbed him and pulled him out of traffic and have him against the wall (literally). This friends, is not good. We rush over and as I arrive the cops are going through the usual asking for ID, etc. Irish Bill’s friend Kenny tries to intervene and the cop says “We’re talking to him, not to you!” and backs us all off. Kenny mentions to the cop pushing us off that he has a cousin “on the job upstate” which makes the cop pause. Quickly, Kenny says “Our friend had too much to drink and I was trying to get him into the Port Authority to get him on a bus back home and he got away from us.”
The other cop stops his questioning and says “You get him the fuck on a bus and get him out of Manhattan because if we see him again we’re arresting him.”
“Yes sir”, replied Kenny.
And so we bid farewell to Irish Bill and Kenny as they went into the charming hallways of the Port Authority. There were three of us remaining at this point and so we decided to fast-forward the crawl to a bar across from the 8th avenue entrance to Penn Station. The Old Garden Tavern is what it used to be called, I have no idea what the name is now that it’s all fixed up with has flat screen TVs and the customers are mainly guys who say “bro” a lot and wear backwards baseball caps that aren’t even the right colors of the team the cap is supposed to represent. Back then it had a cracked tile floor, a slanted pool table and walk-in urinals filled with ice cubes. We staggered in and there were few people left; the main clientele of the bar in its dive form were under-agers commuting in from Long Island and commuters who didn’t want to pay the prices at the bars actually IN Penn Station. We ordered a round of shots and a round of beers and called it an evening. It was a good night.
Comments