Alan and I ride over to this T.G.I. Friday’s at Kenny and Henderson, to meet Leigh and her roommate Jen for dinner. The ladies polish off a bottle of wine between them, which bodes as a tremendous precursor for our trooping up the road to this Traditions dive. And as soon as I’ve set foot inside the place, I feel as though I might have discovered my next great hangout spot.
Located just up the road from Friday’s, about a block away on Kenny Road, situated between it and the other sports bar I’ve frequented around here, Pockets, this place represents an oasis in the form of nondescript hole. And sure, there are a few televisions sprinkled throughout the precinct, mutely broadcasting a smattering of games, but that’s never the prime attraction here. Its drawing card could be its very ordinariness, the no-frills option of a bar that’s never more than half packed, where you can just sit down and pound the sodas.
You breeze in past this shoulder high bracket of retaining walls, facing a fully carpeted floor and a rectangular bar in the center of the room. A couple of pool tables to your right and a dartboard beyond, a jukebox to your left and row of booths lining the side wall of windows past it. A handful of additional tables up front, tucked in the pocket to your right, along the Kenny Road facing windows, between them and the first pool table. That’s the long and short of this cozy little cubicle of an establishment, the lighting neither bright nor dim, the patrons neither raucous nor despondent, regardless of the day or the hour.
No sooner than our first round of drinks are procured, the girls disentangle themselves from us and claim one of those video trivia machines at one corner of the bar, teaming up to tackle its demands. Alan and I immediately grab an open pool table, which isn’t a problem even on a Saturday night. Brews in hand and with nobody itching to play behind us, we take our time shooting the breeze as much as we are these cues. We’re chilling out in this manner when Speeding Motorcycle blasts out of the jukebox speakers, and the two of us nearly choke on our beers. Alan is doubled over, laughing his head off as I declare, “holy shit! That’s fucked up!” To which he can only nod his head while clutching his stomach. It’s a Daniel Johnston song we’re both familiar with, but this isn’t him singing it – a dash to the source reveals that this is Yo La Tengo on some crazy ass compilation CD.
Bored with the trivia, Jen and Leigh join us for a battle of the genders on this pool table. Though Alan’s even more crocked now, he and I mop up the floors with these two, as the night appears to be upshifting into ever more promising terrain. And then Leigh’s roommate slams the brakes on this entire outing by announcing that she has to go home to study.
“You know, if you study drunk, you have to take the test drunk,” I tell her.
She regards me with flower wilting frostiness, as if this is not only the dumbest thing she’s ever heard, but also, far more damning, that it’s really quite sad I didn’t already know the obvious fact she is about to enlighten me with. “I don’t have a test,” she states.
Leigh attempts to salvage this evening by inviting us back to their place for an afterhours, whatever this might entail. Alan’s of course covered in the nookie department, as his girlfriend’s actually in a pretty damn good mood, by appearances, but it isn’t like I’ve got anything better to do at this moment than ride over there with him. Plus, like the coiled snake you’re warned not to poke, though I’m pretty laid back most of the time, once provoked I really enjoy jumping against the cage at an icy personality like Jen’s. Continuing this rich tradition sounds splendid right about now. So we split into the same configurations by which we’d arrived, with Alan, despite his inebriated state, driving us up to Dublin in his truck.
II.
And now, a word about its bartenders, a random sampler of some people who have slung drinks here over the years…
Steve: Probably the funniest bartender I’ve ever met, anywhere. There were nights that our stomachs hurt after leaving this place, from all the hilarities he’d unleashed upon us. In fact it seemed like he saved his best gut busting material for the slower evenings, so you’d at least have this predictable form of entertainment, if it was a little light on the eye candy front. Leigh and Jen know Steve somehow, actually, from somewhere other than this bar. And our old neighbor Nicole does, too, as he used to date one of her good friends.
The first night I meet Steve, I’m in here with Alan and Jeff. He’s actually not working, but is rather here with some blonde chick, seated to the left of us. Bartenders are commonly fond of hanging out in the establishments where they work, even off hours, which is admittedly a little weird when you think about it – those of us who have mostly waited tables, for example, typically don’t have a habit of waltzing into our restaurants just for kicks. But he does know a ton of people here, and is getting up often to walk around, hobnobbing with everyone. Alan introduces us, and though I don’t know it, will be seeing an awful lot of Steve for the next handful of years, as this soon turns into my favorite haunt.
As for the blonde, she introduces herself as Aura, says she’s a waitress at 55 Grille on Dublin Rd. Tells us the food there is excellent, to which Steve in passing sticks his head in long enough to agree, before moving onward across the bar. Although at one point he also says to me, “you hitting on her?” and laughs, though it’s true that maybe I’ve been talking to her a bit much. Even if she too doesn’t have much better to do, considering I’m right beside her, and he keeps dipping out. Not that it matters – when Alan and I ask, considering how she raved about the food, how we might arrive up there and have her wait on us, she furrows her brow like we are a couple of idiots. With good reason, I’m sure. “You’d call up and ask if I was working,” she replies.
And now for but a sampler of some top Steve quotes:
- “I took Viagra once… split that chick’s ass in half and with Viagra, when you blast, you blast. It made me one and a half times harder, a half inch to an inch longer.”
- Steve commiserating to me and Alan once, about a rare cold streak with the ladies, and what will happen the next time he hooks up with one: “it’ll be like Michael Spinks, over in 39 seconds.” However, he has been dating this current chick for about a month, and thinks it will happen the next time he sees her. “Tomorrow night’s the title bout, $39.95 pay per view. I’ll let you guys watch outside through the window,” he adds.
- “You guys need to check out this site called Mullets Galore. They have these pictures of the week…one was a mulletard, this guy in a wheelchair. Then they have these profiles. One guy said he was into cocaine, enemas, and fisting…I had to explain to my girlfriend what fisting was.”
- “Yeah, I used to hang out with these two girls. I went over to their house one day, okay, and they were out tanning on the balcony. So I took this white tee shirt I had, cut it off so it was just half a shirt, put on nothing but a jock strap, stuffed a can of shaving cream in them and wrote PERVERT on my shirt in big black letters…I walked out to where they were sunbathing and they about died, said they’d give me twenty bucks to go stand out on the side of the road hitchhiking in that outfit…so I did! I’m standing out on Dierker in that tee shirt and jock strap…”
- Another visit where Alan and I show up, this is seven months after that first mullet conversation, and Steve greets us as soon as we sit at the bar with, “I’ve got some serious mullet pictures for you guys.” He explains that his latest hobby is sneaking around out in public, stealthily snapping pictures of any mullets that he sees. His favorite recent catch is this guy who looks like “Ron Wood with a mullet,” who is French kissing some girl.
- “You’re a dick!” he shouts at some dude across the bar. Then, moments later, a sappy ballad comes on over the jukebox and he places a hand over his heart, tells us, suddenly all sensitive, “this is my song, here.”
Also this exchange:
Steve: “…used to go to school with this guy named Casey Carter, he had the biggest mullet, red hair, feathered back…”
Me: “let me guess, he kept a comb in his back pocket, right?”
Steve: “…’course I used to have a mullet, too , back in high school, had this leather coat, long hair…”
Me: “drive a Camaro, did you?”
Steve: “no, a Fiero”
Drew: This establishment was always overrun with past and current coworkers, especially those who had worked with me at the Damon’s on Olentangy. There for a while Mike Soter could be found throwing darts in the corner just about every time I walked through these doors, and Adam “A-Bomb” Michael was a frequent presence as well; curiously enough, they would tell me that Chris “Mill Run” McAuley was also in here constantly, though I never once bumped into him at Traditions, even when I too couldn’t seem to resist its charms. But the strangest of these is the night some of us enter these premises, and I unexpectedly encounter my former manager Drew Forster standing behind the bar.
“Drew!” I cheer.
“Hi Jason,” he casually replies, wiping down a section of the bar top and not even really noticeably looking up, as though not the least bit surprised, even though it’s been roughly a year and a half since we crossed paths. Or is that he’s not exactly thrilled to see me? It’s true that we got off to somewhat of a rocky start at the restaurant, and he was even the first manager by a mile to write me up for an infraction. But we got along just fine beyond that point. Whatever the case, he will stick around behind the bar here for quite some time.
III.
Though it took a short while to grow on me, this bar soon came to feel like the proverbial old pair of shoes. Or maybe more like bathroom slippers, that cozy and familiar. I have easily spent more time here than any other Columbus drinking establishment. I can’t quite explain what the appeal is here, apart from maybe its simplicity and total averageness. Though I think anyone would classify this as a dive bar, it’s never been too rough or downtrodden. It is well lit and carpeted, both of which somehow enhance the appeal. There are nights where it’s packed to the gills, yet also those where you are just about the only soul, seemingly without any discernible pattern. Though you would think this the kind of place that would be haunted by nothing but a bunch of old men, the clientele has proven decidedly diverse, including that crucial demographic of the young attractive female. Incidentally, to date (as I’m sure will continue to remain the case) I have only ever had sex in the parking lot of a bar once, and it happened right here, with Robin, in a car in that side lot facing Old Henderson – although Traditions had by this point long since established itself as my favorite hangout. This wasn’t a reason why, this was an example, in part, of why I loved it in the first place.
Though I’ve never been a smoker, I did appreciate those who went to battle against “the man,” and fought this ruling, for example Traditions’ owner Dimo Kuzmanovski. He and a handful of other proprietors spent a couple of years (from roughly 2004-06) battling this new law, to no avail. It’s unclear to me if Dimo still owns the place, but I don’t think so. I didn’t realize until doing some online research just now that this is one of five bars in a loosely connected Classics franchise. This one, which opened in 1992, is the oldest, although I’m suddenly fascinated now to learn they have one in Pickerington, also called Traditions. Considering how much time I’ve spent here, checking that one out soon feels like an absolute must.
