Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Allow me to add my own Eulogy:

Okay, my last post roughly corresponds with the point at which my life went nuts for a few weeks which is why I haven't been here. But I came back today to say something really important:

I MISS THE COLLINS BAR!

As you can read on these blogs of fellow Collinsers:
Hells Half Acre
and
Cole Smithey (this one has a nifty photo of the infamous Collins Bar Sign as seen in the movie Taxi Driver!)
this bar meant something to a lot of people. It meant a lot to the man and I and we spent many happy hours there - after work, before and after shows (thanks to its convenient Midtown location) and even, one magical day, when the Tigers advanced to the World Series last autumn (we were there to watch them utterly fail in the World Series too, but to hell with those games).

I met lots of wonderful people, like Marcel the Dutch Pilot, Lisa, and the aforementioned bloggers, plus other genuinely kick-ass people who may or may not have blogs. The bar seemed to attract people who could like each other - I don't really know what it was, but the patrons of the Collins shared a laid-back, happy, smart and smart ass vibe. Music lovers, beer lovers, life lovers. Rarely was there a true douchebag there, the kind that went on and on loudly about how rich/successful/smart/cool/savvy he or she was (the kind I have run across is certain other bars).

We met two not-so-wonderful people last summer: the four million dollar man who appeared to have just fallen off the wagon and told us repeatedly 1)how happy we looked together and 2)how he had lost four million dollars that day. He lost some kind of lawsuit. But, as my man attempted to console him: at least he had four million dollars to lose. The scary thing was that he had had only two glasses of white wine and was barely coherent.
The other was this man - sort of a sad character - who had tickets to a show that night and wouldn't stop bothering the man with how excited he was about it. He ended by telling us that if he got to meet this musician he was going to see, that he would ask him to sign his autograph "To the only man I ever loved". Yikes.

Even though those two were ridiculously annoying at the time, I sort of love those memories. There were plenty of times where we didn't meet anyone interesting or annoying that will simply slip into oblivion.

Oh, and then there was the time that we met friends of ours there who brought friends of theirs. And one of their friends turned out to be the neighbor of the house we almost bought and he dished the dirt on why they yanked it out from under us (because, apparently, we asked too many questions. Apparently, we should enter into purchases involving hundreds of thousands of dollars less cautiously).

I believe strongly in the principle of Genius Loci and I feel certain that it is part of what made the Collins special. But the other part was definitely its bartenders. I will miss them terribly! Even though it will be nice to drink with them on the other side of the bar when we find an acceptable venue, I will miss their smiling faces and the way they made me feel welcome every single time I went in. Even on Saint Patrick's Day.

Then there is another really sad side of this story: that the bar is being demolished to make way for some awful apartment building for rich people (probably douchebags that go on and on loudly about how rich/smart/etc...they are). So there is the whole loss of character of NYC issue. Which I won't get into because I'm too busy feeling sorry for myself and the friends that I met at

THE COLLINS BAR

cue "Dust in the Wind"...now.