An Ode to Gin Joints

Taverns, bars and pubs...I've known a few

With Saint Patrick’s Day on our doorstep, it seems like a good time for an ode to drinking establishments. All of them.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

I love bars…always have. They serve as places of becalming comfort, of refuge, and places of infinite possibility for me. I’ve made friends for life, fallen in love and learned a lot too.

And I remember my first one too, who doesn’t, right? June, last day of school, grade ten. I was a 15-year-old patron of the Royale Tavern, conveniently located two blocks from my high school. I drank a couple draft beers…and maybe a Harvey Wallbanger. I was a little tipsy walking Ann-Marie Aldighieri to her bus stop. 

Only one way after the Royale, up!

Since then, I’ve always enjoyed going to a local tavern, bar or pub. I’ve made a lot of memories in them for over 45 years now. Ironically though, there are three reasons I stay away from bars: St. Patrick’s Day (silly spillers), New Year’s Eve (amateur night), and I refuse to drink in any establishment that serves to an open carry clientele (disagreements are perilous). Never a good time. 

Growing up in Canada, fatherless and fast, I started hanging out with older guys (18 & 19) on my sports teams; and by the tender age of 16, was a regular at numerous locals: Abars (aka Island View), Lauzon Stop House, and the Royale, among many others*. Even then, I much preferred and appreciated drinking establishments within walking distance of my house. It seemed safer.  

My neighborhood local Abars…after its facelift!

It wasn’t though one night, still sixteen and bored on this humid Friday night around 10ish (I was jaded very young!), when I decided to walk home from Abars. I took my beer with me for the short 1,000 meter walk down Riverside Drive, when an overzealous patrol car passing by didn’t approve. My mom was not happy…not with me mind you, but with the desk sergeant. “He’s just a kid!” I remember her telling him.

Ma Abars, and Russ…

But a few weeks later, sitting with my buddy Rene Giroux in Abars suavely entertaining two-gals, Ma, the owner of Abars, who usually stayed in the kitchen greeting her fish ‘n’ chip take out order pick-ups, came out and grabbed my ear. She summarily escorted me out, pronouncing, “Billy Chalmers, your mother told me not to serve you.” Embarrassed as could be, Rene and I walked a few blocks to the Lauzon to drown our sorrows.

When I moved to Southern California at 19, I couldn’t visit any bars for almost two years until I turned legal age. I had never ever considered the idea of a fake ID. It felt like the proverbial rug had been pulled out from under me. But I survived those lean years of hardship and deprivation. 

Later in college, I moved in with a gal named Colleen Dunn, a vivacious bartender. She taught me a few things. My college years were good to me, thoroughly enjoying beers and intense debates with fellow students and professors alike, that regularly took place in the university pub. I learned even more there. It was a different era: fraternization was legal.

I was never really into big or busy impersonal bar scenes, not for a few years anyway. Always preferring more intimate establishments. Although, Bukowski-like barflies escape me; as do dry countries, paradoxically. But a decade’s worth of Friday nights was spent in bars, drinking not to forget, but to remember. They were wonderous evenings of possibility filled with pregnant potential. Figuratively speaking, not literally.

Traveling as I have; I have been lucky enough to patronize some of the great bars of the world: Havana’s El Floridita, Singapore’s Long Bar, Yangon’s Pegu Club, Harry’s in Venice, Rex’s in Ho Chi Minh City and Dublin’s Temple Bar, and spent many hours in bars with fellow expats, aid workers, war correspondents and near do-wells. My chief scavenge in any destination is to find the perfect bar for a great sundowner. I’ve been in all manner of global watering holes: from dry-country permit rooms to Irish pubs, German beer halls to Japanese hostess clubs, karaoke bars to rooftop bars, and beach bars to popup bars.

On two occasions, I seriously considered changing my life and opening a bar. No, really, I was serious. The first incarnation was to be a sleek vodka bar in Reykjavík, and the second, was to be an American-style bar and grill in Santa Margherita Ligure. My prevailing business partners at the time vetoed my fantasies.

But bars have eras, both in time and milieu. Abars is no more. In San Francisco, there were three establishments, all within walking distance: Zhivago’s, the Mad Hatter and the Last Day Saloon, that supported my interval there. Hard to say how I got through grad school in two years? In London, there was a plethora of locals. But they all closed between 3:00 and 5:00 PM—prime student drinking hours! However, two especially stand out: Belgravia’s The Grenadier, was a lovely quaint place, except when they pulled the beer from my clutching hand at precisely 11 PM, “Time, gentlemen!”…and then it just got too tourist infested in the summer. Mostly, I drank my nights away at Islington’s Kings Head. It was cozy and comfortable, I had a spot—the left side of a horseshoe-shaped bar—every Friday and Sunday nights. Everybody knew my name; I was the resident Yank…even though I’m Canadian, mostly. Over the next 25 years, whenever I visited London, I headed to the Kings Head, and believe it or not, some of my people, the one’s whose livers held out, were still there. Yo Dave!

Kings Head…my spot was on the left…

But it's always the people, the regulars, that draw me to my locals. Sometimes, it’s the characters at the bar that give the bar a personality. Sometimes it’s the wisdom dispensing sage and streetwise bartenders. In Malibu, it was a Mexican dive on the beach (now a Nobu) that was the place to share margaritas (rocks no salt please) and salacious industry anecdotes with Kiefer, Charlie and Virginia. At Willie’s Irish Pub in Santa Monica, I banked on UCLA’s Dean of Neuroscience arriving around 10PM for a bar dinner and a few hours of lively discussion with me. At the Black Fish Pub in British Columbia, I depended on Dave, an Olympian and ex-NHLer, for some sanity and insightful hockey talk. And at the Liquid Kitty (meow), I could always bet on some spontaneous laughs, love and affection. And even today, I can count on stimulating conversations about everything and anything, new or old, at The Pint Pot, with college jocks, working stiffs, decompressing culinary chefs and curious Millennials alike. It’s always educational.

Meow…

And that’s why I still love going out a few nights a week to my local, it’s not just to avoid the joys of parenthood, TV land and bourgeois life for a few hours. It’s because once you say your hello’s, get comfy in your bar stool and are served your cold pint, you just never know what you’re going to get from the person sitting next to you. It’s very Forrest Gump.

So, have a pint for me on St. Patrick’s Day—Guinness or Harp only, please. And here’s to possibility, still.

Ten of My Favorite Bars (That may or may not still be open?):
Double Down Saloon…Las Vegas
The Dresden Room…Los Angeles
Tosca café…San Francisco
Café Hawelka…Vienna
FCCC…Phnom Penh
Gordon’s Wine Bar…London
The Bamboo Bar…Bangkok
Antonio Bar…San Sebastian
Chin Chin Bar…Hong Kong
New Sheraton…Telluride

* There was also the Riviera, the Drop In, the Embassy, Rendezvous Tavern, Menards Tavern, Riverside Tavern, The Legion, Highway House, Killarney’s, Teutonia Club, Dominion House, Drake House, Bellevue Tavern, Caboto Club, The Elmwood, the Viscount, Tunnel BBQ and Mario’s.

Thanks for giving me your attention for a few moments, it is the most precious thing you have, and I appreciate it. Be well.

William D. Chalmers © 2022 GreatEscape Adventures, Inc. All Rights Reserved.