St. Pat's at the Local

I hope you're all recovered from your St. Pat's overindulgence. I hope you Catholics are taking sometime this week to give up meat/whatever since you ate corned beef until you were ready to yarf. Probably not today if you're an Italian Catholic since it's St. Joseph's Day. Yes, I had a zeppole, and it was amazing. Not too sweet, but lots of fat and boiled cream. Delicious.

Amateur night was fun. We started out at my "local." I ran inside and ordered a Guinness straight off. The hot bartender handed it to me, I sipped it, and it was just as delicious as I'd dreamed it would be. Nutty, foamy, and just a little cool. The bar was busy, but not unusually nuts. My local doesn't advertise itself as an Irish bar. It barely advertises itself at all-- you have to look very closely for the signs. A van-cab full of drunk frat guys and their drunk sorority girlfriends in low-cut shirts with green hats dumped themselves out in front of the bar, and I hoped they wouldn't come in. But the bright lights of the bar across the street caught their eye, and the sauntered in that direction.

We talked to the owner of my local, a short, stocky, bald Irish man I used to call Seamus. (This isn't a racist thing-- he was the one guy whose name I didn't know, and he looks like a Seamus.) He's in the midst of building a new bar further down Beacon Street, and we asked him how it was going.

"Oh, it's fucking killing me. I'm already half a million over budget."

"Yikes. But, at this point, why quibble?"

"Fuck, I don't care. I got a loan for it anyway, so it's not my money."

"Don't worry," I said. "We're here so much we'll probably take care of the overruns."

He went off to chat with the other customers, and we finished our beers. We stuck with our original plans, and got a cab and headed into Brighton Center. As soon as we turned onto Cambridge Street, we knew this was a mistake. The line for the Green Briar was halfway down the block. Devlin's was about twenty people deep. Porter Belly's had about ten people in line. The four of us jumped in line at Devlin's, the wind blowing through our heavy coats. We jumped and shivered to stay warm. The line at Porter Belly's started moving, so we left the stagnant line at Devlin's and got in line down the street just as it stopped moving. The bouncers huddled in the doorway, shivering even in their down Patriots jackets.

A tall, lanky guy with silver earrings came outside, hung his head past the bouncers, and took a deep drag of his cigarette. The door closed behind him, and after another puff he turned around to go back inside, only to find the door blocked by the bouncers.

"Come on, let me back in," the lanky guy said in an Irish accent.

"No," the bouncers replied in their accents.

"Fook, I've been in there since two. I pay your wages. Let me back in."

"No."

At this point, I was openly laughing at the exchange. It seemed fairly light-hearted, and it seemed like the bouncers and the guy all knew each other, so I thought they were just fucking with him and would let him back in.

"Listen, I know your boss. He knows me, and he'll let me back in and fire your arses. I drink here every day, this is no way to treat a paying customer. What's the number? What's the number here?" Lanky Guy pulled out his cell phone and drunkenly entered the numbers the bouncers gave him. They had to repeat themselves a few times. Presumably, Lanky Guy got the number right. He put the phone to his ear and listened to the phone ring.

"What? He's not picking up? How come he's not picking up for his favorite customer?" The bouncers heckled the drunk guy.

Someone else popped his head out to tell the bouncers the bar was twenty-three people over the code limit, so nobody else could get in for a while. Lanky Guy sauntered away to call his friends and complain. Lanky Guy reminded me of my friend Jefe, so I sent him a message asking if he was hammered.

We decided we weren't getting anywhere at Porter Belly's, so we decided to head to SoHo earlier than we'd planned. Foolishly, we figured that everyone would have their sights set on the Green Briar and SoHo would be having a slightly busier than usual Friday. Unfortunately, we got to SoHo and found yet another line half a block long. Cold and shamed for leaving the local for the false gods of Brighton Center, we got in a cab and went back to the local place.

As the cab pulled up, I got a phone call from a Rhode Island number. It was Jefe and Christian.

"Where are you?" Christian asked.

"I'm at my local. Where are you?"

"Well, we tried to go to Fanuiel Hall, but it was nuts, so then we tried Boylston Street, and that's pretty nuts, so we're drinking at Uno's."

"You're drinking at Uno's? Get down here. It's an Irish bar, and it's not too busy. There's plenty of room and they're open till 2."

"Yeah, maybe. We'll give you a call later." They did not, so Uno's must have been rocking.

We grabbed two tables in the back (yes, we got tables in an Irish bar in the Boston area on St. Patrick's Day) and had more beer. As we sat and chatted, the hot bartender and the short bartender with hair ran outside, along with Seamus. The entire bar seemed to crane their necks outside.

"Guys, I think there's a fight happening outside."

I stood up and tried to catch a glimpse at what was happening, but I couldn't see anything. A couple minutes later, a couple cops showed up outside. The bouncer and Seamus talked to the cops. After the cops left, Seamus made the rounds, informing everyone as to what happened.

"This guy was just walking by, and bumped into this other guy. The other guy just sucker-punched him in the face. Then he tried to pull the 'oh, I'm a Boston firefighter, you can't do anything' trick. And I'm like, 'You're in Brookline now. It ain't gonna help you.'"

"Do you usually have a lot of trouble around here?"

"No, but this one arsehole came in one time. He was hammered, and he was spitting on the floor, you know, nasty chewing tobacco. I told him, 'Hey, you can't do that in here' and he then spat on my foot. So I said, 'Hey, come on, let's talk about this outside.' He came with me, and then I said, 'Now you're outside my bar, and you're not allowed back inside.' He tried to punch me, but he missed, and he kind of went on his way. Then I turned around to come back inside, and the entire bar was in the doorway, ready to come out if he'd tried to hit me again."

I stayed until the bar closed, but I wasn't hammered in the least. It was a great St. Patrick's Day-- not too intense, not a lot of drama, and no hangover the day after.