Before I begin, it should be noted that I inherited this assignment when my On Sec had gone temporarily blind by painting the kitchen in her new apartment a psychedelic burnt(out) orange. She did suggest I could look for someone else to write it up, but with our numbers in the low double digits, it's hard to find someone you didn't just ask 2 hashes ago. (It just occurred to me that Christine has yet to write up a hash-hmm. She has been regular enough to deserve it.)
We started at one of those B-train stops where you either have to go back to the Slope or into Bay Ridge--and we all knew Brent would be heading back towards home in Fort Hamilton. He said it would be a shorter trail (questions arose--shorter than what? that 7-mile city run he did earlier in the spring on an awful rainy Sunday? shorter than his four-hour full moon that went into Queens last fall? shorter than the marathon?), but he promised a great 92-year-old bar at the end.
With my extensive knowledge of Bay Ridge bars, I started thinking: Leif Ericsson's, my old hangout? No, only its dearly departed owner, Gene Riley, would have tried to tell a story like that, and he's dead. Griswald's restaurant-NO WAY. The Panther Bar on Ovington, run by a German gentleman who once did a stretch for "manslaughter." My Bay Ridge friends used to yell in the door "You're buying beer from a murderer!" to his patrons when they were kids. They probably still do.
Three Jolly Pigeons perhaps [Ohhhhhh, said the typist, that makes more sense than what I deciphered from the scribe's scribble on the first page]? A lovely looking old bar inhabited largely by old men drinking cheap liquor and beer, flipping cigarette butts at each other? I had heard an old acquaintance, Eddie Beal, had bought it. But there were always stories of Eddie buying into a bar, but before I could get to one he usually had mysteriously moved on. Eddie was the kind of guy that schoolmates from Wexford (Ireland) used to say couldn't play pool well but he could still make money hustling you in a few games. I distinctly remember when he first came to NYC he told me in our old hangout (the aforementioned Leif's-where the barman was a fellow Wexfordite and a good friend of mine) that the girls in NY were so hard to get over on, not like the girls in Ireland. This was the beer-soaked, smoking early eighties where boomers were carrying on their college days with money from the soon-to-collapse bull market on Wall Street. The girls were easier in Ireland? Maybe that would explain the proliferation of cousins the Cardinal speaks of when he visits.
The run was medium long, straight, turn, long, straight, turn, long, straight turn. And, indeed, we did end up in 3 Jolly Pigeons, which never looked lovelier, and with very few scary old men. We had great beer and Thai food! The highlight of my table was Pierre explaining he was going to Walter Reid hospital for 6 months training in pathology and radiology. One's mind can only wonder on how he might combine the two.
Eddie Beal has left the bar for a dart tournament, but I'm sure we'll get reacquainted when we return, as we definitely will. And now that he is a successful owner of such an establishment, I'm sure he is having no problems with his successes with American women.
On Out!
[Personal note to Geri: For the next time, please try to learn how to
spell at least one of the following:
a) your old hangout b) your favorite type of cuisine c) your on
sec's name]
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