Handbill Handout

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)...

“This place is giving me nothing” I grumbled to the Mrs. over my third Boreale Rousse . We were in the Cock and Bull, a St. Catherine street pub near the Forum that we frequented regularly in the 90s and less so in the 21st century as we got older and her tolerance for smoke declined along with my tolerance for my fellow drunks. However Quebec has recently joined the rest of the nanny states and provinces in banning indoor smoking in bars (which I’m opposed to in principle but as an asthmatic non-smoker thoroughly enjoy in fact, so call me a hypocrite and then call me a taxi ‘cause I’m in no condition to be driving home from this place, no sir) and we have recently resumed our patronage when visiting the former Ville Marie. The Habs were having another underachieving Saturday night, this time against the Bruins. The bigger crowd was in the shiny new sports bar half a block away while the ol ’ C&B was half full at best with dedicated local celebrants of the fermented beverage. ...

"So this is where Steinbrenners come to die." I thought. I am in a cab barely air-conditioned in the 85 degree thousand percent humidity torture that passes for November weather on the Gulf coast of Florida. My cabbie vaguely resembles a young Osama Bin Laden and smells of old socks. We roll through palm trees, strip malls, strip malls and strip malls. Eventually we turn off onto a road flanked by single story warehouses, self-storage joints and the odd bowling alley. At the end of a two lane road adjacent to a swamp is a state of the art office campus. This is where TV ratings come from. Time passes, meetings are held, tours are given and eventually the official work part of the day ends. We wind up the night watching the Jets beat the Patriots at the BW3 that shares my hotel's parking lot before having a final nightcap at Applebee's, the only bar in the vicinity open past midnight. Morning comes, a brief work breakfast meeting and off to the airport. It is fortunate...

I've said it before: you can learn a lot in a bar. Friday afternoon I'm having a buffalo chicken wrap and a beer for lunch while some guy a who looks to be around 5-10 years my senior is at the end of the bar downing shots of Jack and bottles of Blue Moon. He is pontificating in a way unique to end of the bar drunks. It has that same righteousness as southern preachers or civil rights activists or PETA members or any other true believer you can think of. I'm familiar with the approach as I'm not a bad practitioner myself at times, right down to that moment when you emphasize your point by raising a fist in the ear, wobbling uncertainly on the stool as that action has affected your already altered sense of balance and bringing it down in an unsteady arc to drive your final point home. What made this drunk different than all other drunks? He had a theory as to when it all went wrong that I've never heard before. I've heard the elements before, but like a geni...

The Treaty Stone was my college bar. It’s gone now. It became a bunch of different bars after I graduated, all of them far cleaner and with more upscale clientele than the bar I drank in during my lager days. I’m not even sure if the building exists anymore. The Treaty Stone made your average McAnn ’s look upscale. The Treaty Stone was one of those places people with more money would walk right past. The Treaty Stone was the kind of place where I wouldn ’t dream of drinking anything but beer straight out of the bottle today but freely drank tap beer and shots decades ago. The urinals were filled with ice and the kitchen had been closed years before and now served as a free bedroom for any homeless guy willing to clean up the place at closing in exchange for a table to sleep on. So who drank there? Poor college kids and homeless guys. The bums would cash their welfare checks at the pawn shop next door (a pawn shop complete with brass balls hanging out front) and drink it. The poor colle...