Pitchers and catchers have long ago reported. They are now playing meaningless games in Florida. It is officially Spring. What better time to celebrate the season than for a Happy Hour beverage at the practically vacant Yankee Tavern.
A fresco of two catchers
During the baseball season, fans spill out onto 161st Street before and after Yankee home games at the Yankee Tavern. Whether the Yankees win or lose, those crowds just do not make for a Happy Hour. What better way to enjoy this legendary dive than during the “exhibition” season. There are seats, many of them, at the bar. A meaningless Grapefruit League game is playing on one of the bar’s many screens. All I know that the game does not involve the Yankees.
Grapefruit baseball
When the man behind the stick asks me what I want, I can hear him and he can hear me. We converse. He wants to know what my preference is. I tell him I would prefer something local. He ponders that for a moment.
The man behind the stick at the Yankee Tavern
“The only local beer is probably Yuengling,” he says. I quickly Google on my phone and see that the Yuengling Brewery is in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, which is approximately two and a half hours from Yankee Stadium. Despite the plethora of micro and imported beers now on the menu at the Yankee Tavern, I go with the “local.”
The local beer
The late afternoon sun is streaming in through the high windows of the Yankee Tavern. I notice a fancy espresso machine behind the bar. A few patrons wander in who are, apparently, regulars as the bartender addresses them by their first names and pour them their drinks without asking what they want.
I can hear the excellent juke box playing the Temptations, “Just My Imagination.” I can watch Grapefruit League baseball in peace.
“running away from me…”
I finish my Yuengling, leave a tip, and head back out to the subway overlooking a vacant Yankee Stadium as the sun sets over the adjacent Major Deegan Expressway.
I’m not Irish, but that doesn’t stop me from having a beer on St. Patrick’s Day—or any other day for that matter. On this St. Patrick’s Day, I found myself in front of A Touch of Dee on Lenox Avenue in Harlem.
Making my way past a group of vociferous young men hanging out in front of Dee’s, I tried the front door, but it didn’t budge. Could it be closed? And on St. Patrick’s Day? As if that meant something where I was. But a moment later I heard a buzz and the door opened for me.
Inside there were two women behind the bar and two customers at the bar nursing drinks. “Happy St. Patrick’s Day,” one of the women, a bartender whose named I later learned was Corinne, said to me.
I replied in kind and inquired about a Guinness.
She shook her head.
“Any draft beer?”
“No, just bottles,” she said indicating the bottles in the refrigerator behind the bar.
I peered through the glass and saw Coronas, Coors, Beck’s, Miller Lite, Miller High Life, and Budweiser along with small, individual-sized bottles of red, white and rose wine.
“I’ll take a Miller High Life,” I said and Corinne brought and opened the cold long neck clear bottle for me.
Was it ordained that I had to have a Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day? A Miller High Life would certainly suffice.
The St. Patrick’s Day special at Dee’s.
There was 1970’s funk coming from the jukebox and as I sipped the beer, I surveyed the clutter around the room and behind the bar. I noticed signed softballs; remnants from the numerous softball games at the dilapidated Colonel Young ball fields across the street, a coffee mug with the inscription “It’s Better to Give a Shit Than to Receive One,” a Hello Kitty figurine, a statue of a southern gentleman in a green jacket on top of the bar’s jukebox, assorted photos of the Obama family, Christmas ornaments, and, as a nod to St. Patrick’s Day, a few green Irish top hats. There was also a Happy Birthday garland strung across the back of the bar.
“Whose birthday?” I asked Corinne.
She looked surprised at the question and I pointed to the garland.
“Oh that’s an old sign,” she said with a shrug. “But it’s always someone’s birthday around here so we keep it up.”
It’s always someone’s birthday at Dee’s.
I nodded that I understood. By the time I was almost done with my beer, Corinne had placed plastic martini glasses filled with green and yellow candies around the bar instead of pretzels or salted peanuts.
St. Paddy’s Day bar snacks at Dee’s.
“We don’t have green beer,” she said. “So this will have to do.”
“It works for me,” I said, but didn’t dare sample one.
A few more gulps and my bottle was empty.
Back out on the street I could hear the helicopters in the distance hovering over Fifth Avenue and the Upper East Side. The parade was wrapping up. If I rushed I could get there before it ended. Or to a pub with Irish music that served green beer and Guinness.
“Happy hour is two for one,” the bartender, a woman in a black “Bronx Beer Hall” t-shirt told us as we settled into chairs at the bar in the relatively quiet Arthur Avenue Retail Market where the Bronx Beer Hall was located.
Despite the calm inside, Eugene was having trouble hearing. “Whats’ that?” he asked the bartender while bending over the bar, his hand cupped over his ear in a feeble attempt to hear her.
I was with the Westchester contingent; Gerry and Eugene of the Adventures in Chow City group for a pre-meal drink before one of our interim dinners at a restaurant a block up on 187th Street.
“She said it’s two-for-one,” I said to Eugene in a voice loud and clear enough so he could hear me.
“Buy one beer and you get the second free,” the bartender, who we later learned was a senior at nearby Fordham University, explained.
I was very familiar with the happy hour concept as was Gerry and, I’m sure, so was Eugene. Maybe it was the cavernous indoor market that made it hard for Eugene to hear. Or maybe it was just that he was old and nature was taking its course. I wasn’t far behind him in age, but I could hear the bartender clearly as well as the falsetto singing voice of Anthony Gourdine, also known as “Little Anthony,” as “I’m on the Outside (Looking In),” played in the background.
The beers on tap were mostly Bronx-made, which made me, even without tasting one, very happy. Some were made by the Jonas Bronck’s Beer Company while others were from the City Island Beer Company.
One of the day’s specials was the “Kingsbridge Kolsch” made by the Jonas Bronck’s Beer Company. I was given a sample and immediately after tasting the fragrant icy blonde I ordered a pint. “I’ll have one of those also,” Eugene told the bartender.
“Big Apple Cider,” Gerry said to her, also one of the blackboard specials.
“Cider?” I had never known Gerry to order cider, hard or not.
“It’s supposed to be good for gout,” he said.
I didn’t want to know more than that.
Kingsbridge Kolsch
The beer was cold and delicious. We chatted with the bartender who, with the exception of only two other customers, had only our group to attend to.
“You get a lot of Fordham students in here?” I asked knowing the proximity to the Fordham campus and recalling my own now very distant college days and how loyal I was to the two-for-one institutions near my university.
She shook her head with a smile. “No, we are the only place around here that actually cards them.”
She smiled at his quip and then said, “We get people who come in here shopping. A lot of old people. Seniors…you know.”
Gerry looked at me. I looked at him. Was she going there to be funny or did she not know any better. Either way there was no need to dwell further on the Bronx Beer Hall demographic. My beer was empty. It was time for the second of the two for one.
I glanced at the t-shirts for sale in the t-shirt booth next to the bar. Most were Italian-themed with stereotypical slogans like “fuhgeddaboudit” and “Leave the gun, take the cannolis.” There was a whiff of tobacco coming from the adjacent cigar factory, La Casa Grande Tobacco Company. Our bartender wanted to know if we were interested in food from Mike’s Deli, one of the most popular spots within the market. We declined, telling her we were eating at a nearby restaurant.
Witty t-shirts for sale.
While we sipped the delicious Bronx beers, Eugene began reminiscing about the “old days,” back in White Plains and if we knew so and so who was once very pretty but, “you should see her now.” And then he started talking about his recent 40th high school reunion including listing off several names of people unable to attend due to the fact that they were no longer alive.
I drained my second pint while over the loudspeakers in the now almost deserted market, the Crests were singing “Trouble in Paradise.” Another two-for-one round of Kingsbridge Kolsch was a temptation. I hadn’t eaten; more beer on an empty stomach would be a serious mistake.
Beer among the sausages.
“Where’s the bathroom in this place,” Eugene wondered out loud.
“I was gonna ask the same question,” Gerry said.
I looked at my empty glass; only a thin foamy head remained on the bottom of it. If I have learned anything over the years, it was to know my limitations.
“Follow me” I said
And that was that.
The Bronx Beer Hall Arthur Avenue Retail Market 2344 Arthur Avenue Bronx
When I was a kid, I used to listen to the transistor radio at night and pull in AM radio stations from as far away as St. Louis and Detroit. I knew then that the stations west of the Mississippi River began their call letters with a K and conversely with a W east of the river, where I was from. I knew this because at night, when the stations’ signals were clearest, I could hear St. Louis Blues hockey games and in the summer, Jack Buck calling St. Louis Cardinal baseball games from KMOX in St. Louis.
I found out later, the early 1990’s to be precise, that there was a KCOU in Columbia, Missouri that is the University of Missouri’s flagship radio station. I know this because on the Upper West Side there was a no-frills, some might say, dive bar called KCOU. Maybe the owners of KCOU went to the University of Missouri. I didn’t know and I never asked. It was just the name of a place I would go to early and often; mainly for the bar’s happy hour which began, I believe, at four in the afternoon and lasted until eight at night. The happy hour featured a two-for-one deal on anything you wanted—there were no restrictions as many bars institute now where the two-for-one deal applies only for “well” drinks made with the house booze, usually far from top shelf.
At KCOU my preferred cocktail at the time was a Stoli on the rocks with a wedge of lemon. And the bartenders, who of course I became very friendly with, would not skimp on the pour, generously filling the four ounce glass to the rim. Along with the drinks, big bowls of salted peanuts or mixed nuts were complimentary. On many nights those bowls of nuts, which were replenished whenever emptied, would serve as my evening meal.
The cocktail of choice at KCOU.
The bar had an eclectic juke box and was usually very quiet at least until eight when the imploding frat scene that was taking over the stretch of Amsterdam Avenue where KCOU was located would begin to infiltrate the space. By then, after too many two-for-ones, it was lights out for me anyway.
To my dismay, the frat scene implosion eventually forced KCOU out of its Amsterdam Avenue location. But I quickly learned that there was a sister “radio” bar named WXOU on Hudson Street, diagonally across from the legendary White Horse Tavern.
Though a subway schlep from where I lived uptown prevented WXOU from replicating KCOU’s home away from home status, I would make my way downtown often enough to enjoy the similar happy hour atmosphere at the cozier WXOU. The bar had the same two-for-one policy and even the complimentary bowl of nuts in the identical white bowls that I was familiar with from KCOU. The juke box was, I was happy to see, almost a carbon copy of the uptown version. The major difference was that WXOU was much more popular than its late uptown brother. In the West Village, the happy hour at WXOU was a hit; the chances of a frat implosion on this stretch of Hudson Street was remote.
Once upon a time at a dive named…
After probably a decade long absence, I returned to WXOU recently and discovered, happily, that it was pretty much exactly as I remembered it. The posters for the movies “Stranger than Paradise,” and “Once Upon A Time in America,” were in the same spots they were when I last visited. Same with the picture of the old Brooklyn Dodgers and the portrait of Jackie Robinson. The WXOU radio clock still stood where it did before; in the back of the bar near the restrooms. I flipped through the juke box selections. They were still top notch.
There were changes, however. The happy hour, which I noticed now began at three, was no longer two-for-one. Pints of draft beers were a mere four dollars and, like it had at pretty much every drinking establishment, the beer list expanded to include microbrews and beers from Belgium that I never knew existed back during my “two-for-one” period.
I ordered a Spaten, a German beer from the bartender, a female with multiple colorful tattoos on her forearms. Along with the beer, I was given a bowl of nuts. Upon further inspection, the bowl of nuts included some of that other crunchy, salty stuff; pretzel pieces, honey coated almonds, mini-crackers, and those salty sesame sticks.
Spaten and nuts
I sipped the beer and stared at the “All Cash. No Red Bull” sign above the bar. It was still daylight outside and from my perch at the bar I watched the activity on Hudson Street. Fathers, more than mothers, I noticed were accompanying their young children home from what must be a nearby school.
I finished the pint—and then another. The Animals were on the juke box: “We’ve Gotta Get out of this Place.” I was in no rush to leave this place, but I gathered my belongings and collected what remained of my money on the bar, minus a tip. The last thing I did before I left was to grab a handful of the crunchy salty stuff from the white bowl and while walking out, tossed a few into my mouth.
I’m not one to partake in karaoke. In fact, I don’t recall ever being present during karaoke hours at a bar or club, though maybe I have been. I’ve probably actually gone out of my way to avoid karaoke and if a local pub I had been frequenting began to institute karaoke sessions, that pub would most likely be crossed off my list. Thankfully, it’s a long list.
My feeling is that I would rather put my dime (a figure of speech) in the juke box and hear the real deal than listen to amateurs obliterate the same tune.
I know it’s a cranky attitude to have. Why should I care if people have fun making fools of themselves? I don’t really. I truly believe there is place in this world for karaoke. There’s also a place for restaurants where you need to make a reservation a month in advance. It’s just that neither are my kind of place.
But though at times I’m intractable, I can make exceptions and recently I found myself sitting at the bar at Winnie’s, a Chinatown institution best known for its wild karaoke nights. Of course, I was at Winnie’s during the Happiest Hour, which, for me, is much earlier than the 8pm starting time for karaoke.
They are sensible about the dancing. But no cussing?
Instead of listening to inebriated folks doing their best to cover already bad pop hits, the place was practically empty and the only sound was from the “People’s Court” on television.
While I sipped my very cold $6.50 Tsingtao, two hapless couples were haggling over an altercation that occurred because of a faulty refrigerator bought on Craig’s List. Though the beer tasted good, I began to think that maybe even an amateur with a microphone might be a better listening alternative than to the drek coming from Winnie’s only TV.
I finished the beer but didn’t order another. The dispute had not yet been resolved on the People’s Court, but I wasn’t sticking around for the verdict. Outside there was a drizzle and across the street people were huddled under cover within the atrium of Columbus Park. Winnie’s was surrounded by court houses and the next time I’m summoned for jury duty, I’ll know where to go to relieve the agony of fulfilling my civic responsibility.
Nothing wrong with a place that has a pay phone, karaoke notwithstanding.
For now, though my stay inside Winnie’s was brief, I figured I could extend the happiest of hours. In a way, I might actually discover “double happiness.” After all, I was in Chinatown. The possibilities were endless.
I was taking pictures of the scaffold-shrouded exterior of Paris Blues when a man’s head popped out of the door.
“Come on in,” the man said to me.
“I plan to,” I responded.
And after taking a few more pictures, I walked into the dark bar.
I took a seat and noticed a third person hunched at the end of the bar near the door sleeping comfortably.
It had been several years since I’d been to Paris Blues, but not much had changed inside except for the small stage where, at the time I walked in, another man was fiddling with a drum set.
The stage at Paris Blues
Live music was new—at least to me. The man who had gestured me inside was now behind the bar. He mumbled something about the other man up on the stage with the drum set.
“Taught him everything he knows about drums,” the bartender, who told me his name was Jer, short for Jerry, said.
“You play?” I asked.
“Used to,” he said.
Live music at Paris Blues
The younger man up on the stage snorted and soon their conversation turned to the Jets.
“They lost because they were playing scared,” the younger man said.
“No, they weren’t scared,” Jer said, ‘They lost, that’s all.” And that effectively ended the conversation.
A super-sized television set behind the stage that I knew had not been there when I visited last was on to a late afternoon rerun of Bonanza.
The beer options, according to Jer, included Budweiser, Corona, “Heiny,” and Sugar Hill. I was in Harlem. I thought it only fitting to choose the latter.
The beer of choice in Harlem
After serving me the beer, Jer moved around the bar and roused the sleeping man who silently got up and went outside.
Paris Blues, Jer told me, had been open for 43 years.
“How many of those have you been working here?” I asked.
“’bout 30 or so,” he answered.
African American icons proudly on display.
I really didn’t know why it had taken me so long to return to Paris Blues. Trombonist Frank Lacey, who I once saw perform with trumpet player, Roy Hargrove on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, was scheduled to perform later that evening.
“You get lots of tourists here?” I asked as I sipped more of my beer.
Jer nodded. “Japanese, Germans, busloads of ‘em. They’ll be in here tonight.”
On the television, a rainmaker had brought rain to the Ponderosa and a little girl was healed of a television sickness. The Cartwright men all smiled at the end and then the familiar theme song played.
Happy hour entertainment.
I finished my beer and thanked Jer.
“Come on back,” he said as I was leaving.
I told him I would.
The man who had been sleeping inside was sitting on a bench outside the bar. I nodded at him and headed down the street. It was beginning to rain in Harlem. After about a block, I turned around. I could see the man on the bench slowly get up from his seat. I watched for a moment as he walked back into Paris Blues.
Paris Blues 2021 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd Harlem
There was a time, during my first decade in New York City, when I would wander the Times Square area. Maybe I would take in a two dollar double feature on 42nd Street. It could be a horror bill like Mark of the Devil: PartTwo (“banned in 10 countries”) paired with The Last House on the Left (the original), soft core porn Emmanuelle 2 with The Cheerleaders (“They don’t bring it on, they take it off”), or kung fu epics like Five Deadly Venoms and Drunken Master.
Always plenty of entertainment options on 42nd Street.
There were a few bars in the area including one with an outstanding juke box that played the music of Fela Kuti, not far from where that funky Nigerian band leader was celebrated in a Broadway musical, and had bawdy female bartenders who had tattoos a generation before multiple tattoos became a requirement for a coed to even consider pledging at a Sarah Lawrence sorority.
Always plenty of leg room at the grindhouses.
That bar is long gone—disappeared even before the grindhouses where I watched the abovementioned movies were sanitized. But there is a remnant in Times Square that does remain from that era. Another bar. This one also had a memorable juke box though the music tended more toward soul, jazz, blues and R&B. And after a recent visit, I’m happy to report that the tunes on the jukebox in Jimmy’s Corner are still magnificent.
Some of the tracks from Jimmy’s juke box.
“Cheaper to Keep Her,” by Johnny Taylor was playing when I walked in. Knowing that Jimmy’s can get crowded, I stopped in before the after work rush and had my pick of seats at the bar. Jimmy’s doesn’t have any advertised happy hour and needn’t. The prices for his drinks will always make one happy. What made me happy was the $4 pint of Sam Adams poured for me.
I hadn’t been to Jimmy’s in years and I noticed that, since my last visit, there was probably not an inch of space on the walls and behind the bars that now hadn’t been covered with photos of boxers, fight posters, framed newspaper articles, and anything else to do with the “sweet science,” sports or Jimmy Glenn himself, the owner of Jimmy’s and a former boxing trainer.
Wise words.
That I could actually see the walls was also something that had changed since my last visit. Back in the day, before the smoking ban in bars, the place was so thick with it, only night vision goggles would penetrate the haze and, unlike now, the non-smoker needed to go outside into the cold for a puff of pure Times Square oxygen.
Does DeNiro count as an ex-boxer?
The phone rang over the music while I sipped my beer. “Oh hi Jimmy,” I overheard the bartender say into the phone. Knowing the Jimmy was most likely Jimmy Glenn.
“We’re running out of the Belvedere,” the bartender said. “Only two bottles left.”
Jimmy Glenn is not a bar owner in abstentia. He is a constant presence at the bar. I remember once when a softball team I was playing with had its end of season party at Jimmy’s. We had the narrow back room to ourselves and had food brought in. Jimmy would come back frequently to make sure we had everything we needed; that we were being well taken care of. As I recall, we were.
Jimmy and a playful friend.
“No, it’s quiet,” the bartender said into the phone. “No rush, Jimmy. Take your time. I’ll see you later.” And then he hung up.
I got up and headed to the men’s room. Just outside the door was a framed fading article by Daily News’ columnist Mike Lupica written in 1978. I read the headline and wondered how Spinks (Leon or Michael) could bring hope to Times Square. I didnt’ read the article to find out.
Hope?
I was almost done with my beer. Tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons was playing “Blue Ammons” on the juke box. I drained the pint, gathered my stuff, and thanked the bartender on my way out.
Jimmy’s Corner: 2012
Once outside I walked, maneuvering between neon-ogling tourists, to Broadway. As I made my way to the subway at 42nd Street, I passed both Mickey and Minnie Mouse and before I entered the station, Cookie Monster was there to wave goodbye.
Now, interspersed within the Adventures of Chow City chronicles and other nonsensical restaurant paeans and food-related ravings that make up Fried Neck Bones…and Some Home Fries, comes the debut of a new semi-regular installment called The Happiest of all Hours. Focusing on the saloon equivalent of Neckbones-like eating establisments, The Happiest of all Hours will attempt to capture what it is that makes that hour (or hours) so very happy.
To lead off the series comes the Subway Inn Edition.
No stranger to the Subway Inn, it seems whenever I go, it’s the happiest of all hours. But it had been a long time between visits. Upon entering, however, not much had changed with the exception of an abundance of flat panel, high definition televisions scattered throughout. And the presence of Modelo Especial in bottles.
“Bartender, a delicious Modelo Especial, por favor.”
Averting my eyes from one of the many aforementioned high definition television screens, I glanced upon the mantle above the bar.
Ah, yes, Godzilla wearing a tie. But I just can’t find the right words to describe the mate next to him. Could it be a signal that the happiest of all hours should come to a close?
Before leaving the Subway Inn to travel on the subway home, a visit to the facilities is almost always necessary.
I have a very painful memory about a happy hour past at Subway Inn when nature urgently called and the facilities were off limits; blocked by a posse of plain-clothes detectives as they used said facilities to conduct a drug shakedown of some of the bar’s more devoted patrons.
I swear, the seat was already up.
On this happiest of hours, I am happy to report, there was no such dilemma.
I don’t get around as much as I used to, so if any of you have suggestions or recommendations of establishments that might make good additions to The Happiest of all Hours, please don’t hesitate to contact me at friedneckbones_andsomehomefries@yahoo.com.
Fried Neck Bones...and some home fries 