We all heard the news.
Developers had just bought East 14th Street and were going to raze
everything, including the Blarney Cove.
I had passed the Cove for years. Never went in. I went to a dive on St. Marks until an
unfortunate incident. (Hint: don't have a bad affair with the bartender of
a bar you call home unless you don’t want to hang out there anymore.)
Besides, the Cove didn’t seem like a place for a girl like
me. Those guys were having shots at 8 in
morning and I was too old for that kind of pissing contest.
I was also too broke for more than one round. Not when for $5 more I could buy the bottle
at the Astor Warehouse.
So, I'd pass the Cove and never go in. Even after the
neighborhood blogger, Goggla told me it was great. Even after I married a new drinking partner.
But suddenly it was now or never. I said to the husband, let’s go to 14th
Street. We need socks and a couple of
places sell a dozen for $6.99. And then
maybe after, the Cove for a drink.
We headed east but the further we got the worse things looked. It was like Close Encounters of the Third Kind
when Richard Dreyfuss slipped into the restricted area and saw all these dead
cows.
Store after store were empty with 'For Rent' or 'Going Out
Of Business' signs in the windows. Even
the cheap department store was gutted - 40 years of affordable shit, gone.
There was only one cheap stall left in the last remaining
tenement. The guy there told us the landlord
had refused to sell to the developers, but eventually they'd win and buy the
place – “they always do”, he said.
Meanwhile, he had a dozen socks for $5.00.
A couple of steps east was the Cove. We peeked in and saw Christmas lights twinkling
and a baseball game on both TVs.
"If it's the Yankees, I’m not going in...." the
husband mumbled.
They changed one of the TVs to the Mets vs the Marlins, we
got Rolling Rocks in big-ass glasses because Pabst only came in tall boys, and the
guy at the end of the bar played every baseball song on the jukebox for us,
including one about being a Mets fan (which really should be categorized as a
mental disorder) .
I asked the bartender when they were closing. "End of June." she said. "It's sad."
Then a couple of more regulars came in. The bartender spoke to everyone, everyone
spoke to everyone and I said to the husband, "Well, if we were not old hermetic
writers who were always broke, this would be a good bar for us."
The 6th inning made it clear the Mets would lose. Again. The beers were $3 each.
"Leave a big tip," I told the husband.
"$2?"
"No. $3."
After all, they were closing and we weren’t going to get
another chance before the end of June to say goodbye to a bar that, if we
weren't too old, too broke, too hermetic, we'd go to.
**
Related Posts:
The Blarney Cove
The Bar
The Bar: Part Two - I Call Your Name
Sunday Memories: Coming Of Age
Beauty In The Eye Of...
Sunday Memories: Luck Of The Irish And A Couple Of Others
Her Cheers In Her New York
Part One: Home Work - Goggla
Bloggers Gone Wild
Days Like This
Ted Krever
