Pub crawling in Jersey City

When my friends were in Jersey City a few weeks back we spent a lot of time down the pub (as you do), specifically the pubs around my house which are all a bit scary. If it was in Glasgow these pub would be "Jakey pubs", here they are "Dive Bars". Dive bar culture is pretty hardcore, you don't order cosmopolitans in these places.

The main street by where is live is called Westside Avenue and is mostly Filipino and African-American businesses but there are few Irish bars left from the days when the hood was almost entirely Irish and Italian. After the race-riots of the late 60's (the 40th anniversary of the Newark riots was last weekend), the Irish and Italians all moved out to suburbia as part of the phenomenon known as "white flight".

As I stated before a lot of these bars are pretty scary looking and a lot of people won't go in to them but I have been in much worse places in the West of Scotland. And like the ones in the West of Scotland, the only thing rarer than women in these bars is sunlight and good beer. If you are a people watcher like me they are a fascinating guide to how NOT to live your life.

Anyway, the first bar we hit was called Mike's Place. Hidden behind a Dunkin Donuts and across from a Dairy Queen just off Westside Avenue. It has a pool table, a jukebox with a selection of classic rock (plenty of Queen and NO FUCKING Billy Joel) and the smallest beer selection in America and possibly the world. You can have your pick of Budweiser or Miller-lite, if you ask nicely your glass will be cold and it will only cost you a buck! You will also get a buy-back for every two ONE DOLLAR beers you consume. This probably explains why the bar looks like it is made from formica and leftover kitchen cabinets.

The regulars, all 3 of them (including Mike), are all really friendly even if they do bear resemblance to Fredo from The Godfather. Oh, and I would also mention that when you are playing pool, the table may seem like it is on a slope but in fact it is the whole bar that is on a slope. Put the white ball on the floor and watch it roll downhill faster than George Bush’s popularity.

Just down the street from Mike's Place is a another bar called "PF4 Friends". A confusing name that means nothing to me and seems to predate the invention of text message language by some 20 years. It occurs to me that it may have some connection to the scribblings of the artist formerly known as… the artist formally known as Prince who used to say things like “When 2 R in Love” and “I would Die 4 U” years before the cell phone industry caught on.

The clientèle consists of the barmaid from the Journal Square pub (more about that later) who obviously does her drinking here because the JSQ pub is too up-market for her and an ex-marine who is possibly the angriest man in America and bears a passing resemblance to Lemmy from Motorhead.

Beers were 3 bucks which was a shock after the communist paradise that was Mike’s Place, and again the jukebox was FUCKING Billy Joel free. Top marks for that fellas!

After that it was onto my local and in my opinion, the best bar in Jersey City, The Park Tavern. It has Guinness, Blue Moon wheat beer and a host of others on tap. The jukebox has a good selection of classic rock, Irish and country music. The whole place smells like wood, the bar tables are old wooden cable spindles turned on their side, in the winter there is a real wood fire and in the summer they have an outdoor space in the back. FUCKING Billy Joel doesn't get a look in.

The regulars are mainly Jersey City Police Department and JC Fire Department with a smattering of younger inhabitants thrown in. It's still a scary place though. If you want to come here, beware there is no sign on the door and I wasn’t able to find any reference to it online (hence the lack of a definitive address above). Just look for the place that has the old wooden shingle front that looks like it burned down some time ago.

Next it was onto City Hall.....

I say that because Jersey City has an Irish mayor and he is known for liking a drink, so much so that he answered the door naked during his election campaign and last year was arrested (and later found guilty and fined) for fighting with the police in another New Jersey town. The Astor Bar where I went next is one of the mayor's hangouts and, I suspect, where most of the important decisions regarding the city are really made.

Stepping into this place is like stepping into a time-warp. It looks like it hasn’t changed since the 1950’s and it probably hasn’t.

Frankie Valli and Tony Bennet are on the jukebox, and so are 2… FUCKING 2!!!!… FUCKING Billy Joel CD’s. That almost ruined it for me but as soon as I heard the soothing tones of Patsy Cline going walking after midnight, I figured I can live with the fish-faced wanker for now.

The regulars were loud and friendly, discussing racing at Belmont at the tops of their voices and chugging $2.50 beers. To a man, they all looked like versions of Archie Bunker, grey-haired and pink round Irish faces.

Finally it was on to the Journal Square Pub, this is the last bar before you get on the train to Manhattan. There are a lot of Scottish tans in this pub. What is that you ask? Well, a regular tanned person has tanned skin and white teeth, a Scottish tanned person has white skin and tanned teeth. The barmaid who I met earlier is very nice but jaded in a way that only someone who has been dealing with hardcore alky's for the last 20 years could be.

I do have a soft spot for this pub so I hope it survives the gentrification of Journal Square which is right around the corner, however looking at some of the regulars I just hope they survive the weekend!

Thoughts on a National Treasure

Last night I went to a baseball game for only the second time in the 8 years that I have been living in tbe US and, as an outsider, I have to say I had a few thoughts on the national pastime.

The day didn’t start well as I stopped off in a bar in Manhattan while waiting my brother-in-law to get off work, the barman was an old friend of mine from another place that I didn’t know had moved.

This barman is really nice guy but has a habit of starting every sentence with the words: “Well, ever since my wife passed away….”. Not to sound insensitive but I’ve known the guy for five years and she’d already been dead for sometime before I met him. After 15 minutes of this you feel like asking this guy if he knows how to make a cocktail called a “Razor blade” or a “Bleeding wrist”. Aww please maaaan… stop!

Anyway, I digress….

We hop the 7-train out to Shea stadium and I am depressed about the ghost of a woman who I never knew and who has been dead for some time. I am also lightly buzzed and I find myself looking around for the ghost of John Rocker’s career in the faces of all those dirty queers and purple-haired-just-released-from-jail immigrant New Yorkers and see only regular people getting ready to enjoy a warm night out at the ballpark.

The sight of the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Park also cheers me up but after that it is downhill all the way from there.

My problem starts with my ticket, which was free through my brother-in-law who works for one of the corporate sponsors of the Mets, I won’t say which one but let’s just say it rhymes with “shitty wank” and they are going to have half their name inserted in the name of the new baseball stadiuim once it is built.

As a Scotsman with short arms and deep pockets, I have been culturally trained to never turn down free-stuff and this includes tickets for sports that I don’t really understand that well. In saying this however - when you hand me a couple of balloon-like things (that are apparently called “Cheerstix”) with corporate logos on them and ask me to bang them in rhythm to an old Queen song and jump up and down like a performing baboon - at that point I have to draw the line. You have better chance of getting me to eat a jar of garlic sautéed toenail clippings.

"BOOM BOOM BLAT, BOOM BOOM BLAT... We will, we will rock you.... " is coming from all around me as I have my head in my hands wishing I was back in the dead wife bar.

The section of the stadium that we were in was entirely given over to employees of the corporate sponsor, all of them still wearing their work suits and banging their cheerstix together like good little sheep. It was getting more and more depressing so I decided to get up and go for a beer. Another bad idea.

I was not expecting a beer in a ballpark to be cheap by any means but $7.50 for a plastic bottle of Miller-lite?? You’d be as well filling a glass with quarters and drinking them - at least the quarters would taste less metallic. Also, I was getting hungry so I bought some Nathan’s chicken tenders and fries, actually, what I acquired was EXACTLY 3 chicken tenders and 19 fries for the princely sum of $7.25. I know because I counted them with tears streaming down my face.

By now I am starting to see the pattern here: the blue-collar pastime that Americans are so proud of has become blue chip. Back in my seat I am shocked to notice that one of the tickers on the side of the stand is showing stock prices.

I guess that sent me to rock bottom and I catch myself and say, “Fuck this! I am here to watch the game! Let's at least TRY to enjoy myself”

The game gets set in a rhythm and I find myself getting into it like the kind of drunken transcendental mediation that old alcoholics practice when they have perfected the art of staring into space. When a mosquito opens an all-you-can-eat buffet on my arm in the 6th inning I don’t even notice.

Baseball is a strange game to an outsider. I think “game” rather than “sport” is a good way to describe it as it seems to me that the players sit on their arses for most of the time, once every 30 minutes or so they get up and swing a tree branch around a few times then sit down again. If they should happen to hit something they then huff and puff around the baselines like they are being chased by a group of one-legged hippos. When they are playing in defense it is even better! You stand around waiting for the ball to COME TO YOU! Only rarely do you actually have to go to it!

And there you have it, I found it growing on me because when I was in High School I was always the fat kid that was crap at sports. Finally we have a game that a fat kid can be good at. With good hand/eye coordination “a little extra padding” can take you a long way!

God Bless you Fat America!

Aye-ya Allah!

Last week I was returning my rental car to Glasgow airport and I think I made the pretty definite statement that blind people shouldn't be allowed to drive, look what happened:


As my pants caught fire many people thought I was yelling "Allah, Allah" but I was actually yelling "Aye-ya Aye-ya.... yafuckinbastard ma troosers are on fire!"....

Oh I'm sorry, I shouldn't make a joke of this situation as it is obviously deadly serious but we live in such a fucked up world now that my sense of humor is becoming more warped as everyday events becomes more warped. In truth, the only good thing that has come out of the events in Glasgow and London last week is that no-one was killed.

It's a shame too that with the long drawn out death of Tony Blair's Premiership now over, I thought I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Gordon Brown may not be that much different but I'd be surprised if he's any worse. I already like the fact that he is talking about taking power away from the executive and putting it back into the hands of Parliament, that's a step in the right direction as far as I'm concerned.

Things on this side of the Atlantic continue their inevitable march towards a racist right wing theocracy. Last week the Supreme court rolled back one of the prime pieces of Civil Rights legislation in basically overturning Brown vs the Board of Education. You can read an interesting NY Times article here.

The court claims that the decision is based on the fact that an integrated society should embrace colorblindness as a way to continue but the fact is that America is still a very racist place (It has only been 44 years since Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have A Dream speech) and colorblindness in this society does not exist.

In the town I live in you can literally see the color line. One street in one direction and everyone is White or Asian, one street in the other direction and everyone is Black. I'm not joking when I say it is that clearly defined. As far as I am concerned last weeks Supreme Court decision will enforce that color line and increase the gap between the have and have-nots. It saddens me immensely.