In the early 1900s, a state of the art amusement park sat upon this very site, but, long since leveled into the ground, these grimy buildings squat atop and resolutely refuse any illustrious past. Shoppers in the present tense might be surprised to learn that Ohio’s largest swimming pool once occupied this plot of land – and that it’s apparently still here, underneath the parking lot!
But let’s move forward to assess it’s state in the late 1990s instead. This seedy auto towing establishment, its metallic jungle of rust rotting behind a ten foot barbed wire fence, lurks as a distempered mutt in the market’s deepest recess. Grouped in one dense cluster before it, a pool hall, a convenience store, some fucked up all night diner that recently opened, and a Salvation Army thrift store constitute the balance of its holdings.
As I’m holding a coupon for one free hour of pool, Suzi-Cue Pool Hall emerges a foregone conclusion for keeping the festivities rolling. The prize jewel of Indianola Shopping Center, to which we’ve paid nary a visit, though oft discussed. Yet with a moniker like this we really can’t lose.
While this trail defines a block generally accepted as campus housing, these homes on 19th visibly degrade with each step taken east. Then waiting out the three lane whir of vehicles barreling heedless north up 4th, to join this gentle creekbed of bodies as they flow toward an unseen nexus, startling in its vibrancy, and realizing that glamour has not necessarily tied itself behind us on the tracks. Its emerald aura a glittering sheet which beacons all takers, Suzi-Cue’s opens as a single large cinder block room, three walls painted white and the last, or rather first, one continuous window divided only by the door. Where a backward looking ambience, and its place within this dim blue collar neighborhood of ancient, oversized houses, declining now through a battery of decades, reanimates some distant past even our parents are a touch too young to recall. When wives doll up in elaborate but none too revealing dresses, inch long lashes and brilliant lipstick, when husbands pack an after dinner pipe before family vehicles deposit the entire community here, same night, same place, every week. Could be the 1920s sprout beyond the soil, after all.
The upright cooler behind the bar flaunts an impressive beer selection, with sufficient diversity to keep even Little Paul satisfied if he ever cares to venture beyond Maxwell’s. Adhering to the wall decor, thick, motorcycle helmet sized cubes, glass and nearly opaque, comprise the modest bar, illuminated from somewhere underneath with alternating pastel splashes. Plenty pool tables to go around, although, as is often the curious case in billiards establishments such as this, the overhead lights burn with ridiculous astringency. Additionally, the insistent acrid stench permeating this room, akin to burnt carpet, dissuades our loitering past the gratis hour. But the crowd’s reassuring, college aged normality counterbalances all misgivings, and a fine sweet dusting of eye candy, sprinkled throughout like confectioner’s sugar, justifies this excursion.
Elsewhere around this plaza, Sugar Shack is a curious diner – for lack of a better word – which sprung to life in the summer of ’97 and unfortunately didn’t last for too long thereafter. But going strong then, now, and for who knows how many decades into the distant past, there’s Soussy Market, situated on the shopping center’s edge, right along N. 4th Avenue.
We are actually living here for about a year before any of us find reason to check out this place. This despite a sign forever hanging outside which boasts COLDEST BEER IN TOWN. In our defense it is a somewhat dilapidated looking establishment from the outside, though, which the owners board up at night – and who can blame them, as is this as about as far east as you can venture under the quote unquote campus umbrella, before drifting into some sketchier neighborhoods beyond.
Well, it’s difficult to verify these matters of coldness, perhaps, at least without the proper equipment, but there’s not much debating best, as in best selection around. At a glance this has to be the largest beer arsenal anywhere in this region. The treasured Pace High Carryout gives them a run for their money, and Rick’s Beverage over by where I work, in the same strip mall as Woody’s and Kroger, surely exceeds this place, though not by much. And as far as best kept secret, as far as any legitimate contenders anywhere else on campus proper, I think they are unchallenged.
Three of the four walls are nearly eaten up by these weird imports, microbrews, and the expected cheap domestic fare. By the time Alan and I arrive on the scene, Mill Run has already grabbed a twelver of Molson Ice, likely a result of the Woody’s promotion he too sampled heavily earlier. We stroll around for a second before Alan suggests we purchase Lowenbrau.
“Okay,” I shrug, though cracking up at this proposal.
“This shit ain’t bad, actually,” he remarks while hoisting a dozen of these.
“Really? I just assumed it was shitty because I’d never seen anyone drink it.”
Still chuckling, we set this retina scorching, bright blue container on the counter so the pleasant old Middle Eastern fellow manning it can ring them. Though I’m not exactly shocked to see that they have nudie magazines arrayed in racks behind him, the pornos they have for sale and available to rent, even, are a surprising find. Yes indeed, I have a feeling Soussy Market will represent a major weapon in our arsenal moving forward.
II.
As of late 2019, Soussy Market and Suzi-Cue are both still here, side by side in the same locations. This seems insanely impressive to me for some reason. Otherwise, a King’s Pizza eats up part of one corner slot where Sugar Shack used to sit, and in between is a soup kitchen of some sort, whose name I didn’t quite catch. Meanwhile, jutting outward from the remainder of the buildings, where a Salvation Army retail shop once existed (one day I pushed a file cabinet home from here, end over end up the sidewalk), this space has been completely updated and remodeled in gorgeous fashion, is now the campus outpost for Xenos Christian Fellowship. And then beyond it, a now closed, former coffee shop called 4th Street Study Center. A pair of basketball hoops at the parking lot’s far end, tucked around the back corner, where some guy is currently shooting alone as I cruise through this winter afternoon.
Here are some photos of what the shopping center looks like now. Taking pictures of Suzi-Cue’s is tricky because there’s always somebody smoking in front of the building, and people tend to glare at you in discouraging such snapshots. So I had to go with a drive-by approach on that one. This graffiti tagging on the King’s sign is a pretty admirable accomplishment, as I’m not sure how or why anyone would have gotten up there to do so.
Though High Street might represent the city’s nerve-packed spine and, well, to properly extend the metaphor, I suppose you’d have to say Broad is Columbus’s waist (though to me it seems much more like a carpenter’s level, stabilizing all with a steady straight line through the middle), in this space I would like to throw out the hypothesis that no other road in town boasts the wattage per square foot as Lane Avenue. It isn’t even my favorite avenue the city has to offer – that honor would have to go to the two-headed Henderson/Cooke monster, charting a seriously strange trajectory through a series of different locales. But you have to at least entertain the argument that over the relatively short stretch of roughly four and a half miles, Lane Avenue is the most densely packed action hub within C-bus city limits. Let’s begin our journey moving east along this road, picking up where it changes from residential to majorly commercial.
Heartland Planning Associates: 1800 W. Lane Avenue. In case you couldn’t tell, this is among the newer buildings that they’ve thrown up this century. Apparently this business is only located on the second floor, though, which I think means the ground floor is unoccupied.
1760 W. Lane Avenue: formerly belonged to a place called Silver Vault, which advertised “the largest selection of unique silver gifts” in the region. Currently the Cheesecake Boutique does business here, an oddly named clothing store.
Jack Seibert Goldsmith Jeweler: 1741 W. Lane Avenue. I’m not sure how long this has been here, as their website wouldn’t load just now. But they have an ad in this 1998 edition of Columbus Monthly, so they’ve been peddling the gems for at least this long.
Chad Cacchio DDS: 1700 W. Lane Avenue, Suite 100. Dental practice opened by this former Buckeye football standout, still one of my all-time favorite players.
His business sits on the left hand/driver’s side/north side of the road, if traveling east. Meanwhile, if stopped at this intersection, this is the view that would greet you straight ahead:
The clusters of buildings to the right belong to Shops On Lane (formerly known as Lane Avenue Shopping Center, I believe). Everything on the left is relatively new, i.e. was only constructed in the early 2000s or later.
1693 W. Lane Avenue: This address has hosted at least three business names that I’m aware of, although it’s possible the 3rd was a slight rebranding of the 2nd. Bistro Roti was here, then at some point is followed by Healing Garden Relaxation Station and Yi’s Relaxation Station.
Shops On Lane Avenue: 1675 W. Lane Avenue is its formal address. Fancy semi-newfangled mall which is nonetheless nearly 20 years into its remodel at this point. The Rusty Bucket was our most frequented haunt here, by far. My crazy coworker Charlie, busted for drinking at this establishment during his lunch break, attempted to claim it wasn’t beer, that he was imbibing “Rusty Teas.” A handful of my performance reviews were conducted here over lunch. One night my brother was in town and a few of us came here for dinner. Spotting some kind of Blue Jackets paraphernalia – and this would have been 2003 or 2004, i.e. a number of years into their existence – he asked what kind of team this was. Had never heard of them and didn’t believe me, when I explained that this was an NHL franchise.
Erin had never eaten at the “Busty Rucket” until I recently made a point of bringing her, inspired by this research. Though disappointed that Gary’s Belly Buster is no longer on the menu, there are always seasonal drafts to keep a fellow entertained. Also, of course, the food. For the uninitiated, the nickel dressing is basically their version of a sweet house Italian. Erin ordered soup and salad, was impressed by both, in particular the latter’s blue cheese crumbles and this nickel dressing. I have the Green Chili burger, which is topped by their house made beer cheese and also “green chili relish,” which is basically nothing but a cascading mountain of serrano and jalapeno peppers.
Back in its Lane Avenue Shopping Center days I know there was at least a Banana Republic here. This would have been not just before the boom, but before the bust as well. In other words: 1998. Alan and I were roped into shopping here one time when Paul was looking for shorts. This being such a remarkable occasion in itself that we couldn’t resist tagging along.
Nowadays there’s an Anthony Vince Nail Spa and The Original Pancake House, among other tenants. Rusty Bucket is still here, and Whole Foods is in the same lot, is therefore satellited into this.
1651 W. Lane Avenue: This would have sat at the Lane Avenue Shopping Center also, as of October ‘01. Operated by Ohio Designer Craftsmen, advertised as a “marketing opportunity for professional craft studios.” Not currently in use, but would have been roughly in between where Chico’s and Ulta Beauty are now.
1583 W. Lane Avenue: Sammy’s New York Bagels lists this as their address through at least February 2002. They also landed their wares in many a coffee shop about town. However, I don’t actually remember them being here, and it must have occurred in a building which no longer exists.
1578 W. Lane Avenue: No longer in use. I’m guessing this address was obliterated by the ol’ bulldozer when they revamped this stretch. It was an art studio called Benjamin-Marcus up through at least October of 2001. Nowadays there’s a Homewood Suites by Hilton at 1576 and a snazzy apartment building called The Lane at 1600. So it would have sat right in between these, i.e. across the street from Whole Foods, more or less.
1670-1288W. Lane Avenue: for a quick slideshow about this stretch, down the left (north) side of the road if driving east, check out my slide show:
With nearly six years of service time at Wild Oats, I didn’t even have to look this address up. It hasn’t changed, though Whole Foods bought them out, knocked down the building and re-established a base camp in the same spot. I actually don’t even know where to begin describing this place. A whole book could certainly be written about my experiences here – and has been, actually. I finished my first draft quite some time ago and it just might see the light of day one of these years.
Wild Oats sweatshirt. These didn’t really work in the meat department, but I ended up with one anyway.
Graeter’s Ice Cream: 1534 W. Lane Avenue. A semi-regular go to back in the Wild Oats days, when you needed a little spirit booster. Typically the gopher would be running over there with at least 3-4 orders on behalf of his colleagues.
1486 W. Lane Avenue: Was Howard’s Barber Shop from at least the 1970s onward, if not earlier, until OSU bought them out and demolished the building in 2004. Therefore it currently houses the Ohio State University Office Of Advancement. Regarding Howard’s, I started getting my hair cut here in the late 90s, when they told me at work that I needed to trim things up substantially. One slow march home and a phone book consultation later, I’m in my car, cresting the hill of West Lane Avenue beyond campus. The unfamiliar altitude atop this hill, Upper Arlington, its pastoral tree lined prosperity, the flush green lawns between these well spaced houses rich, detached, immoderate, much like the residents themselves. As if fertilized by proxy through the conspicuous manure aroma, enameling the breeze here via adjacent OSU farms. I find myself at a modest wooden shack, painted bloodsucker red, lost amid this opulence, a mile west of the university. This charming little old school barber shop reminiscent of ye olde Mayberry, with two older gentlemen chopping locks and, somehow, a really hot brunette chick whose waterfall ringlets drop halfway down her back. Time slows down in a warp light years removed from the outside world, though comfortably. Eight dollars apparently doesn’t reserve the brunette’s chair, but it, and a two dollar tip, will buy a brand new me.
There were actually two guys named Howard, Warner and Salzgaber, conducting the barbering here, along with that aforementioned really nice looking brunette girl. I never had enough nerve to specifically request the curly haired brunette, would usually end up with one of the Howards. Salzgaber bought the business from Warner in 2000, and moved to W Fifth Avenue in Grandview after OSU came knocking (down). Unfortunately, Howard S. passed away in 2017, but his son Danny keeps the family tradition alive down there.
1397 W. Lane Avenue: currently belongs to Lane Lofts, a five story or so, luxurious looking apartment complex. Up through about 2020, however, there was a Pizza Hut here. It seems they averaged about 25-30 employees or so. Donna Carney was the manager here in the late 1990s, followed by the awesomely and quite fittingly named Pete Di Piazza, who as far as I can tell had the longest tenure, from 2001 to 2007. Doug Smith followed, for a few years there, followed by Jason Ferrell, with possibly a couple others in between.
I actually have a very old video, shot inside that building, from the legendary Hi-8 film camera of yore. Here’s an edited clip, because as fascinating as it is to me, I don’t suppose other people want to watch ten minutes of my kids eating crackers.
This is from a day Jill and the girls met me during my lunch break at Wild Oats. As far as any of us are aware, this is the oldest existing video footage of the kids – Emma’s 8 months old, Maddie 5 years. I’m looking a little ragged, if you ask me, from the bonkers work schedule and bicycling and overall mayhem of this era. Plus the gap toothed grill isn’t helping matters any. Jill always had a sweet voice, which is part of what continually got me in trouble over the years, heh heh.
I treasure the footage for personal reasons, of course, but regarding this site, it’s also of interest for the Buckeye flag in the corner, that dude in the Bengals jacket, whatever game that is on the TV, and also the general historical aspects of the decor, a freaking buffet at a Pizza Hut (although I think these are making a comeback), what we’re all wearing, and so on.
Half Price Books: 1375 W. Lane Avenue. Other locations in town are larger, but I always liked this one the best. It has the best atmosphere and, for whatever reason, I’ve consistently enjoyed better luck picking up great finds here. This was also the site of an all-time favorite overheard conversation, from these two random kids browsing the music section. Keep in mind that this was 1998:
“Man, I wish I could find a Vanilla Ice tape. I’d buy it in a second – no, half a second,” the one kid says, and it’s safe to say the ironic distance is slathered on fairly thick, “see, everyone acts like they don’t like him, but they all know he’s the best rapper ever. That’s why you can’t ever find any of his tapes used.”
Tommy’s Pizza: 1350 W. Lane Avenue
This place was even better than Camille’s in the part-time side gig department, and I still feel bad about the manner in which I left. The manager, Teresa, was a shopper at Wild Oats and that’s how I landed this job. I had promised her I wouldn’t flake out and just stop showing up…but then eventually flaked out and just stopped showing up. Matt was getting married in Montana and asked me to be his best man, and I never quite got around to asking for the time off or lining up anyone to cover my shifts. And never went back, subsequently.
“You should have told me!” she chided, the next time I saw her in Wild Oats. And what can you say, she was right.
There are actually two Tommy’s Pizza locations within just a couple miles of one another on West Lane. Prior to getting hired here, I’d only eaten at the one down the hill, on campus. This Upper Arlington-ish location, at 1350, it has two pizza ovens – one of the more modern conveyor belt types, but also an old fashioned Italian oven, which we only used by request. Demand for that remained pretty robust, though, and on Friday nights, the owner, Rick, had a tradition of coming in for a few hours to man the Italian oven himself. He basically received the local celebrity treatment during these shifts, as customer after customer would make a point of drifting past the counter to wave and say hi. From where I was standing, though, he sure had a deer-in-headlights look about him most of the time, during these encounters, playing along but trying to figure out who this person might be.
Those of us on the pizza making line had a TV mounted above us, and you got pretty good after a while at vaguely paying attention to it at the same time you were assembling your order. Jeopardy seemed to be on half of the hours I spent working here, and workers would race to see who could shout on the correct answer fastest. After a while you got exceptionally good at sensing if anyone was behind you, because as crammed in as we were, with just a tiny walkway separating us from the conveyor belt oven, one false move could spell disaster.
The pizza here was curious in that one ingredient alone seemed to transform it from pedestrian to magical. I tried it both ways, and for whatever reason, this garlic salt we sprinkled on top kicked their pies into some other realm of awesomeness. I’m not sure why this would be the case, just a winning combination of ingredient alchemy. Though trying this at home with basically every other pizza brand ordered or baked throughout the years, garlic salt has never had anywhere near the same impact as it would on a Tommy’s offering.
As the person firing the pizzas into one end of the conveyor oven would not be the same person retrieving it on the other end, you had to have codes for transmitting what was special about this pizza if, say, someone made a request that wasn’t immediately obvious. These would be communicated by placing one slice of a pepper atop everything else in the exact center of the pizza. I don’t remember what the various colors meant, but a red bell pepper might indicate no salt, a banana pepper might mean let it get a little crispy, et cetera. Then you’d take the pepper off before traying or boxing the pizza.
A couple of times I was handed the giant pitchfork for popping air bubbles in the pizza. You would stand at one open side of the conveyor and stab them as they slid into your realm, a surprisingly entertaining task. One night, a bunch of us were bored and decided to bake pizzas in all manners of weird configurations. Among the most surprising finds was that strawberries on a pizza have no flavor whatsoever.
Kingsdale Gynecologic Associates: 1313-1315 W. Lane Avenue. I only mention this because there is one curious feature to this building, which you can see from the road but may have driven past countless times without noticing. If you look in the middle bank of second story windows, you can see the old neon front sign for what used to be Fiesta Lanes. It’s hanging above the stairwell there as a tribute to the bowling alley which formerly occupied this plot of land.
As for Fiesta Lanes, I only had occasion to check this out once that I recall. It’s January of ’98 and after a handful of us meet up at Jenny Hughes’s apartment. We head out in two cars up Lane Avenue, crossing the Olentangy River as we leave campus in favor of Upper Arlington’s outer reaches. Just up the hill, past the recently constructed Schottenstein Center – which the Buckeyes basketball squad will soon call home, as their final season in St. John Arena is nearly finished – and the western fringes of campus, a garish neon sign on our left, heavy on the pastel blues and pinks and curved to the extreme with its retro zaniness, Fiesta Lanes beckons us to its not exactly overflowing parking lot.
The scene inside is just as outdated, if paradoxically, accidentally cool, the way some items in your grandparents’ closets might so happen to find themselves in style again. John and Jenny immediately dash off in search of something here to eat, while Alan and Damon seek beers in the house bar. Carrie challenges me to a racing game in their pitiful arcade section, handily clobbering my sorry moves at every turn.
With our various tasks met and dispensed, the six of us reunite to pick out shoes and balls, to hit the appointed lane in this old school bowling emporium. I’m not one to knock the décor, though, in particular the 1960s bachelor pad style shaggy carpet, and also the charming lack of modern scorekeeping devices. As the girls and I are the only ones who even remember how to manage this by hand, with stubby golf pencils and ad encrusted sheets of rectangular paper, this job is left to us…which conveniently frees up the other three dudes to sharpen their macking skills.
“My back hurts,” Carrie complains at one point.
“Want me to rub it?” Alan offers, further explains, “I’m going to school for massage therapy.”
When curiosity and politeness compels the ladies to ask Damon about his chosen profession, he too makes up something ridiculous, and they nod in approval, buying it wholesale. Meanwhile, as the hours roll onward, what crowd was here steadily dispenses, until we’ve bowled two games and are literally the only people left who aren’t employees. I don’t suppose that midnight on a Tuesday is the most happening time frame anywhere, at least not without the saving graces of some miracle league, but you do have to wonder how this operation fares in general, and if they’ll last much longer. Without a major overhaul, you get the feeling they’ll have to grit it out until a place like this becomes an ironically rad trend again.
Of course, that never happened. With so many entertainment options, you can only spread yourself so thin attempting to patronize all. Fiesta Lanes is gone within a couple of years of this visit – I can only hope they managed to cash in somehow and didn’t just go bust.
1315 now boasts a wide variety of options. Piada Italian Street Food, Wings Over Columbus, Buckeye Corner and a Starbucks are all crammed into this building at present.
Camille’s Sidewalk Café: 1305 W. Lane Avenue
I wound up at this one on my own accord, and really enjoyed my time here. This was the 2004 edition of my “holiday cash” experiments, and proved a shade more successful. I was actually part of the original crew who opened this store. Craig, the manager of this operation, was about my age or possibly a little younger even, and must have been one of the best character judges on record – his hiring process was to continue bebopping around behind the counter, without pause, making a wrap or what have you, while firing questions at the interviewee, and would decide on the spot whether to hire this person or not. And during my time here, I have to say, this method of his produced almost nary a dud.
This location was the first restaurant in Ohio to have one of those flavor adding machines for the soft drinks, whereby you could pump cherry or vanilla or whatever into your pop. At least this is what some bigwig told us when he flew out for a motivational pow-wow, prior to the store opening. They played good music here and the work was easy yet fast paced. Food was also pretty decent, and I didn’t stick around long enough to get bored with it.
Unfortunately you do run into some baffling decisions from management now and then, basically anywhere you might work. They were happy with my production and had moved me up the ranks – if you really want to call it that – to their core handful of store openers. There were some brutal winter mornings trudging here in the pre-dawn hours, let me tell you. Still, this was only a part-time job. When I asked to have the week from Christmas to New Year’s off, they refused to grant it. So I informed them that I would be quitting, instead. Sometimes these places shoot themselves in the foot because they want to make some weird point, and are afraid of setting a precedent.
Jersey Mike’s Subs: 1293 W. Lane Avenue. Has been here since at least 2006.
Tai’s Asian Bistro: 1285 W. Lane Avenue. A well-regarded take out place which has also been here since at least 2006.
Up next is the view out your driver’s side window, if continuing to move eastbound. This is a huge farm that OSU owns, formally known as Waterman Agriculture and Natural Resources Laboratory Complex. The address belongs to Carmack Road but this view clearly does not:
The Schottenstein Center: Okay, so clearly they just like to give these huge operations an address of some funky little side road behind them. I’ve never heard anyone mention that this was located on Borror Dr. When describing it to people, it has always been on the corner of Lane and Olentangy. However, I’m leaving it here for now because, like the St. John Arena, it’s a can’t miss piece of the landscape if you’re driving up Lane. Numerous concerts attended here over the years, but zero OSU basketball games.
Past this enormous indoor stadium, these signposts of westerly campus sprawl. Leading the way along Lane through an impressive arboretum, underneath the 315 highway overpass and into the pastoral OSU owned farms, before university owned property terminates uphill in the old money nobility of aptly named Upper Arlington.
↑ West Of Olentangy
click arrows to turn on this street
East Of Olentangy ↓
Hineygate: Informal name (not that there’s a formal one) for long-running tailgate party, Saturdays during Buckeye football games. Lane Avenue is closed down in its entirety along this stretch, and open containers are permitted. My friend Harold somehow lost one – but just one – shoe here during a 2001 installment, which tells you pretty much all you need to know. This tradition began in 1983 in the Holiday Inn parking lot (328 W. Lane Avenue) up until 2009. Ground zero for this huge party, with live music, food, and alcohol aplenty later moved to the Varsity Club (278 W. Lane Avenue) instead.
Ashley’s: Speaking of the Holiday Inn…
Ashley’s is a cozy little hotel lounge, crammed into the left pocket of this Holiday Inn lobby. We claim the far end of the central, seemingly requisite horseshoe shaped bar, with a karaoke session on the near side which is nearly as loud as the carpet. Probably thinking more about the tip money than the prospect of actually serving us, John L frames an indulgent smile between his dark goatee, and will commence dispensing shakes of the head, along with our drinks, at a ratio of about 1:4.
I only joined these guys somewhere around 8 o’clock, and it was immediately apparent most of them had gotten off to an early start. Though Wiseman’s mostly content to offer jaded quips and ironic, off-kilter grins, seemingly impervious to whatever he’s drinking, the other four are halfway sloshed by the time we reconvene here. A little bit of a break surely helped, but they’ve revved it up to full speed in seconds flat and are giddily drunk again soon enough.
This compulsion to catalog everything slows me down, both in drinking pace and in the physical time it took me to cross the bar and claim a seat. As a result I’m the last to sit, which leaves me at the end of the chain and saddled with the not exactly ideal conversational partner of Mehlman to my immediately left. However, it just so happens that a pair of women who look to be in their late thirties soon settle into the stools on my right, the better looking of the two directly beside me.
“J-Dog, you’ve got the best seat in the house!” John H and A-Bomb keep shouting down the bar at me, leaning forward and peering down it with giant, knowing smiles.
For it does seem I’ve accidentally stumbled into a winning lottery ticket here, maybe. This woman at my elbow is extremely chatty and seems to know what she wants. Possesses an attractive face, too, and while her body as a whole is only okay, she has an amazing ass, glimpsed once when she and her cohort leave their chairs for the ladies’ room. It’s a mighty tight specimen, all the more impressive when considering her age.
“There’s this bar out in Dublin, called the Hard Road Café,” she says, “do you know where it’s at?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s off Hard Road there in Dublin,” she reiterates, slightly stumped, as though struggling to think of a better way to describe the place, “anyway, they have this karaoke night every Saturday. I’m gonna be out there tomorrow – you should come.”
“Maybe I will,” I mutter, though knowing it’s never going to transpire. I want to make something happen with her tonight, and if not that, then at least get her number.
“Jay Dawwwwwwg!” A-Bomb shouts down the line again, “you know any piano?”
“A little,” I admit with a shrug.
“Well come on! Let’s go!” he barks, and drags me out into the lobby, where a set of ivories sits just outside the lounge entrance.
Cackling nonstop throughout, A-Bomb plops down on the bench first and runs through a few small pieces he knows. Then leaps to his feet and commands me to do the same. Though confessing that basically all I know is a few Billy Joel tunes, I sit down and begin hammering out my crude approximation of Piano Man. Leaning against one side of the piano, Adam howls and takes issue with my pacing.
“Isn’t it supposed to go dee doo dun dun, dee doo dun dun?” he questions, eyes watering from this incessant laughter.
“Eh, whatever,” I chuckle in return. If someone can at least recognize what I am attempting to play, then this is satisfaction plenty.
My lady friend flits past our audition area, en route to the restrooms again. “Keep playing!” she tells me, without a break in stride, “I’ll be right back!”
I’m trying to remember this one Beatles song when Rookie moseys out to join us. Though he’s been at the restaurant a while, he’s basically just a totally normal, soft spoken white kid of about the same age as the rest of us. Kind of clean cut and baby faced, belying the whole stereotype about every cook on the planet being an obnoxious dickhead. Which makes it all the more hilarious that, when he smiles, there’s one tooth completely missing in the top right row of an otherwise flawless set of chompers.
He sits down on the other end of the bench and begins running though something he recalls up on the highish middle range of the keys. Laughing hysterically from where he stands, A-Bomb leans forward just enough to plonk out a few random really high notes, completing this decidedly avant-garde three part symphony we’ve just improvised. One guy who is definitely not impressed with it, however, is the Holiday Inn security guard, who marches over and draws a finger across his throat, in the universally recognized sign language for telling someone to knock it the fuck off. His next move is to point into Ashley’s, as in we need to head back inside there, right this second. According to him, this piano is drowning out the karaoke.
“First time I’ve ever been kicked into a bar,” Rookie observes, as the three of us are heading for our stools
In the interim, Mehlman has slid down next to John H, though, which forces us to redraw our seats. Without thinking about it, I land in the middle of the three vacant ones, with A-Bomb to the right and my lady friend beyond. He doesn’t make any moves on her, though, and maybe she considers my choice some kind of intentional slight. After all this prep work, this woman and her sidekick stand up and leave without another word said. Just when it seemed like things were headed somewhere – and I never even so much as got her number. Maybe Hard Road remains an option, although I’m even less inclined to pursue this lead following that odd exit.
But the drinks continue flowing, with L hooking us up considerably on the tallies and the pours. Meanwhile, A-Bomb chatters away about all manner of randomness.
“See, you’ve heard of Citron, right? That lemon flavored vodka?” he says.
“Yeah…”
“Well, they’ve got all kinds of flavors now…blueberry, cherry, I forget what all they’ve got…hey L! What kind of flavored vodkas do they make now? I forget.”
“Ummm…,” L ponders and scans the bottles below the bar, “vanilla, blueberry, raspberry…I don’t know, I can’t remember them all…”
But then A-Bomb orders a Captain and Coke anyway. Yet instead of drinking it, he slides the glass down the bar, past me and toward Scott Mehlman, who has somehow ended up on my immediate left again. I guess I should correct this to state he attempts sliding them, for there’s this seam in between me and the drink’s target, two pieces of the bar surface which don’t line up quite exact. The Captain sails until he hits this ridge and topples.
Mehlman is half turned, towards the others, and only notices this drink as the spill extends into his field of vision. The two of us in the know are laughing hysterically, though manage to button it up a bit when L drifts back into our midst and A-Bomb asks for another. The second cocktail disembarks in the same manner, with identical results.
“What the fuck?” our sad cowboy Mehlman grumbles now, with the second oil slick in as many minutes covering the bar before him.
A-Bomb and I are just losing it at this point, and he presses his luck by asking for a third Captain and Coke. Having witnessed this latest maritime disaster, our bartender wordlessly shakes his head no.
“You know it’s pretty bad when L has to cut you off,” I tell A-Bomb. But this just causes him to howl even harder, his blue eyes teary and bloodshot over this whole series of events.
But L in fact must cut all of us off now, for the Holiday Inn lounge is closing. Somehow I managed to only drink two beers, and one of the few Cap’n & Cokes which didn’t crash, a miracle leaving me in much better shape than the rest of our gang. More miraculous still is our collective tab which, as Ashley’s doesn’t track their liquor like most bars do, has permitted John L the leeway for generous accounting. He only charges us $25, total. We leave him a $42 tip on top of it, though, a neat piece of shorthand indicating the extent of his largesse.
As of Feb ’02 it seems they feature a well-regarded Sunday brunch buffet, featuring made-to-order waffles, omelets. And a pretty decent lunch beyond that. Lawrence Tower is on this plot of land now, meaning the Holiday Inn and Ashley’s are both no longer around.
St. John Arena:Well, well, as it turns out, though I did not know this until just now, while it certainly appears to face Lane Avenue, i.e. this is the only side from which I’ve entered the building, it actually has a Woody Hayes Drive address.
352 W. Lane Avenue: former site of a longstanding 7-Eleven, which was dubbed the “poor man’s Hineygate” due to sizable overflow parking lot crowds on OSU football game days. Now it is nothing, to no one, as the shop is currently closed.
Fanning elsewhere, further along Lane finds first a towering cluster of dormitories, one window of which, eighteen or nineteen stories high, proudly harbors a neon Bud Light sign. Visible from blocks away in any direction, this glittering, glowing advertisement reaches people like a beacon, calling everyone within the signal’s radius to cast their cares aside and party. We can’t help but conjecture as to its owner’s identity, whether a polished ladies man leading thousands into battle, or a lonely recluse begging for just one person to arrive upon his doorstep. Or maybe not even a guy at all but a member of the fairer sex, some hedonistic hellcat that can drink every male she knows under the table. Interlacing this scene like stitches are tiny apartment complexes and houses of every architectural stripe and era, high rises even, and a smattering of university buildings.
The Cooker: 300 W. Lane Avenue
Though my friend Bruce had warned me to steer clear of this operation, I was hard up for holiday cash and decided to wait tables here part time anyway. This would have been 2003 and they were on their last legs. By this point it was one of those places – and many of you have experienced such, I’m sure – where management is taking it out on the help because there aren’t any people coming through the doors. Apparently they thought we worked in the advertising department or something. As a result, when working doubles, some of us would stroll up and drown our sorrows at The Library between the two shifts. Needless to say this pretty much negated the whole “holiday cash” concept and may have put me in the red on this enterprise. During more prosperous times they were notorious for scheduling small armies of servers for every shift, then cutting people immediately as the level of need became apparent. This could explain why their ads were pretty much a constant presence in the classified section. Until the entire franchise went out of business in 2004, that is.
This address now houses a Panera Bread location. You know it’s pretty sad when I’m saying this is clearly a marked improvement.
Varsity Club (278 W. Lane Avenue): Somehow, it took us about a year of living here before we got around to visiting this campus hotspot. One of just five campus bars I can think of which has been around since the 1990s or earlier.
174 W. Lane Avenue
Formerly the location for another Tommy’s Pizza, which lasted an eternity despite being located not that far from the Upper Arlington one mentioned earlier in this post. Has since closed and there is currently nothing at this address.
Tommy’s Pizza on OSU campus. Maybe I was holding my camera crooked, but I actually think the building slanted.
16 W. Lane Avenue: A bar called Quarters dispensed drinks here, once upon a time, lasting into at least the early 2000s. Before this it was known as The Jailhouse and looked pretty much the same. This address doesn’t exist now, though the newish Buffalo Wild Wings on the corner of High basically sits where it would have been.
↑ West Of High
East Of High ↓
From this point onward, until its termination into Summit, Lane is almost purely residential. Having said that, it’s not as though these homes are any less action packed than your typical place of business. Here are some notes on addresses I’ve had the privilege to visit, right here on East Lane Avenue:
Brian’s House (Big Paul’s Friend):
I must admit at this point I can’t really sort out which house this was. My original journal from 1997 and first edition of One Hundred Virgins both list the address as 88 East Lane, but this is clearly wrong. Coincidentally, I would later spend a great deal of time at 88 East Lane (see below) which is one reason I know this is wrong. Judging from Google’s ever present maps, it looks like this house must have actually been either 82 or 78. In later, corrected editions of Virgins I just omit the number entirely and only mention this as an East Lane Avenue house.
Whatever the case, we know the address this night, once Big Paul calls us from Brian’s house with particulars. Damon, Mandy, Melissa and I take off on foot to find the place. It proves a breeze to locate, thanks mostly to the mob of kids packed sardine tin tight upon its front porch, the exterior of Brian’s house echoes ours and virtually any other on campus. A thoroughly antiquated beast, enormous and ancient, but possessing the battle scarred character of a thousand senseless nights. Unlike ours and nearly all the rest, however, his has avoided the axe, standing as one large residence rather than a ream of smaller apartments. Top to bottom, all three floors and this giant deck and the meager yard, these are his to do with as he pleases for as long as he pays the rent.
We elbow our way through the front porch throng, into a living room teeming with bodies no less dense. Before a neglected fireplace, two kegs trail side by side lines, stretching beyond these four walls and into his equally congested den. Past this roiling ocean of unfamiliar faces, we search for just one we know. Each room along this ground floor is painted a uniform shade of white, and with overhead lights blazing brightly in each we’re not struggling so much with identifying the bodies as much as we are making sure we don’t miss any. Scouring the living room and den, the kitchen, we move upstairs and repeat the process through a bathroom, a number of bedrooms. This sharp looking Oriental girl stumbles into our midst and Damon does his best to land this cold contact, jumping into the fray and hitting on her with astonishing bravado. She spurns his advances, however, drifting off to parts unknown.
Eventually our search uncovers another flight of stairs leading up to a finished attic on the third floor, and it is here we find the Cleveland gang, those purveyors of evil we’re seeking. Makes sense these cats would hole up in the darkest corner of the house, a place where their dark jeans and jackets can melt into the shadows. True to form, Linville’s strumming ominous chords on acoustic guitar, and tall, lanky Rob, attired in the same basic outfit as Paul, frowns invariably, saying little. But contrasting sharply against that dour duo, our host Brian, a short, affable fellow, smiles readily, between his business casual clothes and well trimmed light brown hair. Yet to shed the last vestige of his baby fat, Brian seems at peace with the madness two floors below, perfectly content with that and the Oriental chick sitting beside him, otherwise known as his girlfriend. “Ouch. Sorry….I didn’t know,” Damon stutters, suddenly awkward.
“It’s okay,” she says and laughs, as Brian, who has no idea what they’re talking about, offers a corresponding smile.
Thick Asian rugs cover the floor, and aside from the central couch and chairs we’re crowded around, a window faces Lane Avenue, another Brian’s back yard. Likely the warmest room in the house, this tepee shaped attic has a hypnotic charm found nowhere in our own meager abode, insulated by unpacked boxes from the clamor below these white floorboards. But we haven’t come here for solemn reverie, nor a pastoral rehashing of old times. The girls are distracted asking Linville to play them some songs, but even as he’s blatantly ignoring them, Damon and I have found our avenue for exit.
Properly ground once more, we raid the kitchen, desperate for two solid containers of any size. Still our contempt for beer runs rampant, but we see consumption of the vile beverage as a psychological tool. Draft, worst of all, but if mimicking the Romans grants us that slight edge we may pry ourselves into some young girl’s panties.
Nailing down the last two useful items available – a pitcher for me and something resembling an orange juice carafe for him – we are drawn to the keg’s honing signal, jumping into line like cattle for slaughter. Ahead, an arresting sight captivates our virgin eyes, as one young kid does a handstand atop the keg. Two guy hold his legs and a third shoots beer into his mouth from the tap, with the crowd chanting out each passing second in unison.
“What the hell?” Damon mutters.
“Keg stand,” the football player in front of us turns around and grins, a well seasoned veteran of these affairs.
Our makeshift mugs eventually filled, we have seats along the stairwell, the nerve center of this titan beating heart. Scanning the room, we gauge attendance for Brian’s soiree at somewhere between a hundred and one fifty, not bad for a kid who’s moved here from the shores of Lake Erie just a few months ago himself. But most of the girls we talk to, drifting past us en route to the second floor restroom, are either too drunk or too refined to maintain a conversation with us, and our pickup lines are uniformly awful.
“Hey, it’s been awhile!”
“Didn’t we used to work together?”
“So, you know Brian, huh?”
Some chick named Olivia we recognize from high school plops down on the stairs between us, yet gorgeous as she is, it’s a vaguely uncomfortable encounter. We scarcely knew her then and have nothing to say now, and the elegance by association we might reasonably hope to acquire dissipates. A few game candidates emerge once Olivia moves on, but little meaningful can come of it, because we don’t know how to carry ourselves in these situations, we’re not sure what we’re supposed to be saying, or doing, or for that matter wearing. The most genial of these creatures will stand and speak or sometimes even sit but we can’t get over the hump of making an impression somehow, these are obviously faceless encounters no one will remember five minutes from now.
Lines roughly half as long as those for the kegs issue now from both restrooms, first and second floor, highly skewed female. Female because the men don’t give a damn, the men are outside pissing on the side of the house, pissing in the yard, some even pissing out of windows. Meanwhile, this black kid in the den is playing DJ, spinning a ceaseless procession of great dance tunes, stemming mostly from the Beastie Boys’ License To Ill, for wherever we go, whatever the year, this has always been the lone CD everyone agrees upon. Finally, we’re standing in line for another round of beer, and Brian crosses our path.
“I just tried to change the keg,” he pants, incredulous, “and I’m coming through with the new one and some guy’s like, Hey! Who do you know to be changing a keg! and I’m like, I live here!”
“Did you know the guy?” I ask.
“No, but then again there’s a lot of people here I don’t know.”
Brian drifts off, possibly to the hideaway upstairs and the arms of his hardbodied girlfriend. He no sooner disappears when Mandy, Melissa, and Big Paul reemerge, or maybe he’s trying unsuccessfully to elude them. Damon and I have realized our approach isn’t working, and moving one step ahead of that crew, we reassign ourselves to a couch in the den. Here, the disc jockey’s operating in detached tranquility behind an easy chair, while the dozen or so females chatter with a few randomly scattered males.
Linville eventually manages to dump his fan club off with us, but until he does we’re free to ogle unabated. Mostly stunning in appearance, a handful of these beauties actually stoop low enough to converse with us, but again it leads nowhere. The best we can hope for in this situation is to hold tight, pray that a clear break will open if we outlast everyone else. As Brian’s five keg surfeit is whittled down to one, bodies begin streaming out, a slow though visible depletion, and this is ideal. But between Mandy’s wicked glares at the glamorous, dolled up dames surrounding us and Melissa’s outrageous guffaws in response to all that’s said, we’re not making much headway, the cause seems lost.
During an idle moment I spy this sheet of notebook paper near my feet, and tuck it into my pants pocket. A list of names and phone numbers, I explain when Damon asks, though judging from his knowing smirk I guess he’s already aware. The identities imbued upon it matter little, but I’m nestling a dim belief it might net us some positive gain, keeping this ship afloat.
One of the ladies talking to us as a group gradually ignores everyone else, sidling up next to Mandy. She places her hand on Mandy’s knee, smiling grandly as she whispers in Mandy’s ear, attempts throwing an arm around the shoulders, clearing digging our quintessential tomboy. Up north in hilljack country, flagrant lesbianism is far from an everyday encounter, and miss Goff’s face grows a deeper shade of crimson with each passing moment, half anger, half embarrassment. Clearly on the brink of blowing her top, Mandy’s anger has the rest of us rooted firmly in voyeuristic heaven, elbowing one another as a conversational muffle falls across the room.
The DJ spins with his head hung low, oblivious to the imminent fireworks. We’ve seen Mandy stomp other girls to shreds in the parking lots of the roughest Mansfield bars, but she needs a half gallon of whiskey to summon that brawling mien. Tonight she simply leaps from the couch and stomps out of the room, out of the house and into the wintry night. The remaining three of us, we don’t even bother locating Linville, we gag our howls and follow.
“Oh my god, that was hilarious!” I crow.
“It was not,” Mandy insists, refuting any humor.
Stuart’s Apartment (88 East Lane):
When Bruce calls much later, I ask for directions and walk in the rain to get there, only a block north up Summit and then a few west along Lane. Once inside the apartment here at 88 East, I’m introduced to Stuart, who rents the place along with two other cats. It’s the very last apartment in the small row of about four or five, in a light brown brick building jammed snugly sideways between two houses, an awning of black shingles overhanging it like a hat. As for Stuart, at first glance he seems a bit on the preppy side to be associating with this Bruce character. He wears fashionable clothes, after all, and his jet black hair closely cropped in an uber-modern style. Is also one of these creatures who adopts khaki shorts as a standard issue uniform, even as our motley trio steps out tonight into the chilly drizzle.
But, as if I couldn’t have guessed, it turns out Stuart’s the same brand of inconsistent wiseass as the rest of us. A little more vicious, perhaps, which plays into his appearance, one of these guys who can turn apparent respectability into a Trojan horse type subversive attack, undermining the system from within. Or something like that. He drives an ancient white Studebaker, though, not that we’ll be using that tonight, and after all he does let Bruce crash on his couch for free, when the latter runs afoul of paying rent on time to his actual technical roommates.
“I’m usually running about three weeks behind,” Bruce explains, with a mad, gleeful cackle. His favorite word is bitter, which he crams with a volume explosion into many a sentence, and his general speaking style is to croak out the syllables slowly, for dramatic effect, which would feature untold ellipses if written. “So usually, you know, about…one week or so into the month, my roommates start hitting me up for rent. That’s when I start…steering clear of that place, and crashing at Stu’s!” They both laugh heartily at this, so there are evidently no complications with this drill. Bruce then concludes, “so yeah…I do this pretty much every month.”
This occasion of my first visit, we don’t stick around, as the three of us walk to a party over at Joanne and Sarah’s place nearby. But I will soon wind up stopping by here on average about once per week for the next six months. Between the three actual roommates and singular honorary one, in Bruce, there’s always something going down here. There’s a gravel lot behind the place, accessible from whatever alley this is running behind Lane, and a dented shed at its edge which someone spray painted INSANE CLOWN POSSE across. And this seems to fit the general vibe, where you can’t quite get a handle on the occupants, or why there are always a couple of random but pretty decent looking girls in the mix. For a while, this card game called In Between becomes all the rage here, a gambling variety which typically finds one lucky soul walking home with everyone’s tip money for the night.
Located on High Street in the heart of Ohio State University, the Newport Music Hall was originally a movie theater, built in 1922 and used in that capacity for nearly fifty years. In 1970 it was refashioned and renamed as the Agora Ballroom, one in a chain of about a dozen rock clubs throughout the country. Ted Nugent played the first ever show here in May of that year, and while it was renamed and expanded in 1984 to its current incarnation, it has remained in continuous use without pause from the moment the Motor City Madman christened it. Much later, while a student at OSU, Kim Deal of Pixies and Breeders fame used to clean the toilets here. To date, the unexpected champions Dick Dale and GWAR emerge as the most viewed shows for me, at this particular venue. Here’s a quick recap, with a bunch of other, possibly extraneous information thrown in. Or you can always click on these individual years below to jump ahead a little bit:
January 10 – The Replacements. Above playlist is from that show. Goo Goo Dolls opened.
January 26 – Rik Emmett from the band Triumph. Set list is as follows:
Stand and Deliver Saved by Love Lay It on the Line Big Lie Midsummer’s Daydream Suitcase Blues Pizza When a Heart Breaks Hold On Drive Time Magic Power Fight the Good Fight
January 28 – Nine Inch Nails. Set list:
Terrible Lie Sin Something I Can Never Have Sanctified That’s What I Get Suck The Only Time Get Down, Make Love Ringfinger Down in It Head Like a Hole
Die Warzau and Chemlab were the opening acts
February 1 – Social Distortion. Set list:
So Far Away Prison Bound Mommy’s Little Monster Drug Train Let It Be Me Sick Boys Ring of Fire When She Begins This Time Darlin’ 1945 Bad Luck King of Fools
February 4 – Slayer. Set list:
Raining Blood Black Magic War Ensemble Blood Red Postmortem Skeletons of Society Seasons in the Abyss Die by the Sword Dead Skin Mask Spirit in Black Expendable Youth Born of Fire Mandatory Suicide Captor of Sin Chemical Warfare South of Heaven Angel of Death
Testament and The Spudmonsters are the opening acts.
February 14 – B.B. King
February 27 – Lynch Mob, Steelheart
March 7 – Extreme, Winger, Tangier
March 15 – Bo Diddley
March 16 – Book Of Love
April 8 – 24-7 Spyz
April 13 – Ramones
April 17 – John Wesley Harding
May 15 – The Fixx
May 16 – Gene Loves Jezebel
May 22 – Dread Zeppelin
May 25 – Pantera, Wraithchild America
June 12 – Fugazi. Set list:
Turnover Merchandise Nice New Outfit Greed Sieve-Fisted Find Reclamation Blueprint Waiting Room Bulldog Front Suggestion Long Division Two Beats Off Repeater Reprovisional Stacks Dear Justice Letter Promises
June 29 – Divinyls, School Of Fish
June 30 – Blue Oyster Cult. Set list:
Stairway to the Stars OD’d on Life Itself Before the Kiss, a Redcap E.T.I. (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) Buck’s Boogie Take Me Away Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll Astronomy Career of Evil Unknown Tongue Burnin’ for You Godzilla (Don’t Fear) The Reaper Dominance and Submission The Red & The Black
July 1 – Steelheart
July 5 – Drivin’ N’ Cryin’
July 9 – Roger McGuinn
July 18 – King’s X
July 22 – Soul Asylum
July 26 – Royal Crescent Mob
July 31 – Napalm Death, Sepultura, Sacred Reich, Sick Of It All
August 11 – Sam Kinison
August 16 – Bullet Boys, Black Eyed Susan
August 18 – Clan Of Xymox
August 20 – Aldo Nova, Watershed. Some of the songs Aldo Nova played: Blood on the Bricks, Monkey on Your Back, Fantasy
August 21 – Todd Rundgren
August 23 – Alice In Chains
1993
February 23: Widespread Panic
October 22: Primus, The Melvins
Heather and I attend this show with her friends Jake and Travis as last minute replacement picks to join us. I write about this show at length in my book Stop Rewind Fast Forward: 1993.
Since Heather has essentially commandeered my white Primus tee for months now, I buy a black Pork Soda one at the Newport, and then the four of us make our way upstairs. Speaking of that white shirt, though, my all-time favorite picture of her features it in a starring role:
Heather in a Primus tee, 1993
School of Fish’s cameo here is an unfortunate one – and I only refrained from cropping them for historical reasons – but otherwise this is a classic. Vintage Heather, with one of the best smirks ever captured on film.
Actual tee shirt purchased at 1993 show. It looks even more demonic now, in this current state.
A month and a half later, here I am back at the Newport for another show. Heather is a keeper, a returning member of the concert attending lineup. But we’ve switched out some of the defective parts, so to speak, from our previous ensemble, and this time make the drive down with my own friends Kenny and Chris.
Immediately inside the Newport, after I buy this black tee shirt with a red devil surrounding by gold glitter on front, the legend Mission To Mars on back, as Kenny opts for the white one with an angel instead, the four of us drift upstairs and plop down in a sea of familiar comrades. I also write about this show extensively in Stop Rewind Fast Forward: 1993.
The demon used to be surrounded by gold glitter. There is still one little sparkling piece left, to the right of the middle horn.
The four of us are hanging out around the kitchen on Summit Street when the phone rings and Damon answers it. The TA for one of his classes, Eugene, a music fanatic I’ve met a couple of times, is on the phone with a curious proposal: he and his wife won seven free tickets to some Dick Dale show tonight, but they can’t go, and he was thinking we might want to. With his hand over the mouthpiece Damon polls Alan, Paul and me, and we shrug, figure what the hell.
“How many you got? Okay. We need four, I guess,” we hear him say, and hang up.
We ride down to one of the school buildings on OSU proper to get these tickets from Eugene, and, after killing considerable time in the name of blowing through a dreadful opening act or two, don’t even set off on foot until well after the stated 7pm start time.
As it turns out, we don’t miss the cruddy opening act after all. The Franklin County All Stars, these guys call themselves, and they are a local group. In fact Damon points out that we have seen the bass player before, with another band at Ruby’s, but I’m having trouble placing that. While this probably isn’t factoring into the equation tonight, watching these guys is a really good example of why I often prefer to just hang in the background – at smaller venues, that is, where this is more likely to apply – and stick to more of a fly-on-the-wall approach, rather than ever meet the band. The conundrum is that I have a hard time writing anything negative about people who’ve been cool to me. But then if you take all the edges off, it’s not honest anymore, and it’s pointless to boot, as you’re now writing a bunch of vague, soft, meandering pap, like that old guy always going on about his cats in the Short North Gazette.
I’m lucky that most of my friends who play music are actually very good at it. Pertaining to these guys here, well, I’m sure they are nice fellows and all. Maybe they sound really good in other combos, or maybe they’re just having an off night. But it’s not working right now. This squadron of somewhat older dudes is bludgeoning its way through generic classic rock – and actually, though this analogy just occurred to me, I guess this is the sonic equivalent of that old guy in the Short North Gazette. The cumulative effect of which, I have to tell you, in this dark, cool, still sparsely populated club, is I keep nodding off throughout this set. What makes this all the more amazing is that we are up front, sort of half sitting on and half leaning against this curved wall to the left of the stage. Feeling my body lurch forward and feet firmly rest on the ground continues to act as a snooze alarm, briefly reviving me.
After these characters exit the scene, as the venue continues filling with bodies, the four of us move up to where we are right against the stage. Nearly every other act would have barricades of some sort, but Dick Dale apparently does not. Thus we are at a perfect height and vantage point, able to rest our elbows atop this wooden stage, while we wait for him to appear.
None of us are really all that familiar with this surf rock legend, though he’s been around since the 1950s. It’s possible that the only song I’ve heard of his is that one from Pulp Fiction, and the other guys know about the same, or even less. So we’re not quite sure what to expect as he drifts into the view, long grey ponytail and the remainder of his band trailing behind – much younger kids on guitar and bass who round out this trio.
All three are dressed entirely in black. I’m not sure about the drummer, but Dick and his bass player both sport identical tee shirts featuring Dale’s distinctive skull logo, and even identical jewel studded guitar straps, the same sparkly gold finish on their instruments. Dick is stocky yet impressively muscular for a guy his age, and we will soon learn why. One possible clue that maybe this isn’t some quaint, tinny little surf rock ensemble would be his guitar, which features about the fattest string size any of us remember seeing. As for the cat behind the kit, he has a shaved head and, according to Alan, “looks like the drummer from 311.”
Dale plays left-handed, but with a right-handed guitar flipped upside down. This was a common practice back in the day before lefty instruments become prevalent, and is a testament to just how long this guy’s been around. But they erase any notion about this being a pastoral stroll down the nostalgia circuit the instant he begins shredding away on said guitar.
We thought we had signed on to watch some silly old timer plink through surf music all night. It never imagined to the four of us that this stuff might actually rock, which it does, to an often pulverizing degree. They play both loud and fast, and the bass player never takes his eyes off of Dick, as if even he is on the edge of his seat, unsure what might happen next. In fact, he appears to be giving the drummer cues at various junctures, to indicate what the boss man is doing.
As for Dale, it soon becomes apparent why, apart from looking cool on its own, he chooses an outfit of all black. He has a pick dispenser glued to the bottom front face of his guitar, because he goes through about a million per show – they don’t break, but are ground down into sawdust by his relentless riffage. Featuring his skull logo as well, these picks are white, and have him covered in this white pick shrapnel before too long.
“People ask me why I make funny faces up here,” he says, only half joking, as he catches his breath in between songs, “it’s because I’m in pain. The strings I use are so thick, they tear up my hands and shred my pick into pieces!”
As if any additional corroboration were needed, his hands are red and somewhat raw looking after just a couple of numbers. And still they keep right on cruising. Mostly, they stick to upbeat instrumentals, originals from Dale’s back catalog. But on occasion the trio shakes up this pattern, such as with wordless covers of Smoke On The Water or Ghost Riders In The Sky, and Dick even sings on House Of The Rising Sun. Vocals are not his strong suit by any stretch, and you wouldn’t want to listen to this all night, but he does an okay job. If nothing else, it makes for another effective change of pace, before they lurch back into this surf metal hurricane.
Between most songs, he does pause long enough to explain a little bit about the song, or at least an interesting anecdote. And when he says “I’m a grass roots kind of guy,” you can tell there’s a great deal of truth to this, that it isn’t your typical empty stage banter. For one, removing the barrier and allowing anyone who wants to actually touch the stage is an unexpected move, even at this level. Plus he also has this habit of making eye contact as he looks around the crowd, and winking at you, which for some reason reminds me of a grandpa sneaking you candy even though you’ve been told not to have any more. Or something like that.
So when he explains, “okay, we’re going to try something we’ve never done before. This is a first for us,” maybe this is standard rock show b.s., but it seems legit. He and the bass player break out acoustics, and strum these across three much more tranquil pieces. It’s another masterful dynamic break, as they then launch back into thunderous surf rock mode, a cinematic sweep of pacing.
This makes sense considering the final, expected track of the evening. We know we’ve arrived here when he launches into a spiel that begins, “I was approached once a few years ago by this video store clerk who introduced himself to me as Quentin Tarantino. He said he wanted to use one of my songs in this movie he was making, a song called Misirlou. Quentin told me that when he wrote movies, certain songs made him think up whole scenes, and he thought up a scene based on my song. I told him he could use it.”
Dick grins, as if expecting that most of the crowd knows how this extremely left field, career reviving stroke of luck turned out, but also that he still can’t get over his good fortune. Like most master showmen – old time country singers, and local cover song specialists come to mind – you sense that he’s gotten quite adept at maybe stretching the truth just a wee bit, or at least carefully rehearsing how he’s going to phrase things for maximum myth building. But we are certainly not going to begrudge him such by this point.
“I could relate, you see,” Dale continues, during his longest monologue of the night, “he was a grass roots kind of guy, too, trying to buck the system, just like me. No one wanted to put out the movie, so he released it himself, and it ended up making three hundred million dollars! That movie was Pulp Fiction.“
The crowd roars as this band now lurches into Misirlou, without question his most well-known cut. Even so, they shake up the arrangement quite a bit, and basically play this song in two parts. First the drummer and bass player launch into the groove, carrying this as a roadie brings out a trumpet and this chart with a bunch of notes on it. Though surely done for comedic effect alone, the roadie holds up the chart, and Dick pretends to read it while playing the trumpet solo note for note, exactly as it appears on record.
Once his stage hand takes these props away to a surge of applause, Dick grasps his guitar, shreds his way into that highly recognizable riff, and the band rides off into the sunset on the backs of this tune, played to its conclusion. After which only the latest, most unexpected twist develops, as the roadie reemerges to take away his guitar, and the other two musicians leave the stage: Dale plops down on the edge of the stage, says he’ll sign an autograph for everyone who wants it.
And orderly line fans out from the left of the stage, one we’re in prime position for, to be among the first. And not only does he sign ticket stubs, merchandise, or whatever else you want, the guy absolutely talks your ear off, if you ask him a question, or sometimes even if you don’t. While Alan and I breeze through, telling Dick he sounded awesome as he’s scribbling his name for us, Damon and Paul, guitarists both, are wondering about his sound on a technical level, and have more extended conversations with him.
“You seem real sincere,” Damon tells him. Dick comments on this, which somehow turns into another story we haven’t heard yet concerning Tarantino and the movie soundtrack.
Paul, meanwhile, asks him what strings he uses. Dale names the brand and says they are 16 gauge, and for the duration of our walk back to the house, Paul is raving about these, says he’s going to order some immediately. Once inside, it goes without saying, we immediately thrown on my cassette copy of the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. It’s the only Dick Dale music we have on site, although you suspect that oversight won’t last much longer.
Franklin County All Stars: trousers
Dick Dale: bandanna boots shades trousers
April 20 – NOFX play a show at the Newport. Some of my coworkers attend, and I’m invited along with them, but decline on the grounds that I’m not really into this band. In later years I will kind of regret drawing lines in the sand like this. I should have spent more time hanging out with these people, and it’s not like I had anything better to do, anyway.
May 3 – Fugazi hits the Newport. There’s this stretch of 10 days where these guys, Sonic Youth, Green Day and the Foo Fighters are all playing here, but this is the show I most want to see. I slide past the ATM machine after clocking out for the day, to withdraw money for a ticket, but can’t get my scratched to hell card to work. Other options for getting cash otherwise on a Sunday night are pretty much nil in this prehistoric era. Looks like I’ll be heading home instead.
May 20 – Creed (dis)grace the stage at the Newport. Actually they weren’t quite as big of a joke at the outset. Most people who listened to the Blitz or what have you thought that they were decent. Still, when Alan got home, along with this dude he works with named Larry, and invited me to walk to the show with them, I knew enough to crack, “if I wanted to see Pearl Jam, I would just wait until Pearl Jam came to town.” They said it was a pretty decent concert, though – even if it’s most notable to historians because the power went out for a little while, halfway through their performance.
May 28 – Scott Weiland plays the Newport during his first ever solo tour. Paul and I are driving to The Cooker for a bite to eat, and think we spot his tour bus, parked at this hotel on campus.
Events Calendar, 2000:
January 19 – Blue Oyster Cult
January 21 and 22 – Insane Clown Posse
February 4 – Jazz Mandolin Project
February 5 – Dark Star Orchestra
February9 – Fight Night
February10 – Dance Night. I take it these are lean times for booking actual bands.
February11 – Ben Harper, Corey Harris
February12 – Lords of Acid, Praga Kahn, DJ Genoside 2
February14 – Long Beach Dub All Stars
February15 – Cowboy Junies, Josh Rouse, Over The Rhine
January 12 –Green Sky Grey CD release party. Rezzin, The Stepford Five, On Tap also play.
June 28 – George Clinton and P-Funk show. This is Michael Christian’s first as audio engineer for the Newport.
July 1 – Slash’s Snakepit. Christian’s second gig, and first time meeting Slash. The famous guitarist called out to him before the show and offered him a…lollipop. Then Pete Way of UFO/Ozzy Osbourne fame calls and wants the hookup on tickets for this sold out show. You can hear more about this hilarious odyssey in his episode of the Columbus Local podcast.
October 11 – Reel Big Fish, Goldfinger
October 12 – Howlin’ Maggie have a CD release show, for their new album Hyde. Shawn Smith (Brad, Pigeonhead) and The Jive Turkeys are listed as special guests. It’s an all ages show beginning at 7pm, tickets are $8.
October 13 – Moonlight Drive
October 14 – Dropkick Murphys, Sick of it All
October 26 – Jupiter Coyote and Sister Flow
October 27 – Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd Tribute Band)
October 28 – Insane Clown Posse, Twiztid, Blaze, Dark Lotus
October 31 – My Life With Thrill Kill Kult (Halloween Party)
November 1 – Afroman, Soul Fu Villains
November 2 – Oval Opus
November 3 – Tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan, featuring The Frank Harrison Group
November 25 – Psychedelic Furs/ Echo And The Bunnymen
December 6 – Ben Folds. In his Other Paper review, Harvilla doesn’t exactly rip on the guy, seems more confused as to why a bunch of college age kids like him so much
December 21 – Clutch, Biohazard, Candiria, Disarray
December 29 – Holiday Rock Fest featuring local bands Hookt, Pownd, Green Sky Grey, Tower
December 31 – Hoodoo Soul Band, Howlin’ Maggie
Events Calendar, 2002:
January 16 – Pennywise, Boysetsfire, Deviates
February 2 – Dark Star Orchestra
February 20 – Kings X
2006:
Is it me or is this not the most underwhelming lineup I’ve ever seen from this place? Then again C The Columbus Magazine for some reason has them listed as being in “downtown” Columbus, which is maybe not helping matters any.
February 24 – Tim O’Brien and Danny Barnes. At least I have the complete audio from their set, which might seriously be the highlight of the year at this venue:
April 4 – 30 Seconds To Mars
April 7 – Red Wanting Blue
April 8 – 10 Years
April 12 – Stellastarr and the Editors
April 13 – She Wants Revenge
April 15 – Keller Williams
April 21 – Chimaira
April 26 – Built To Spill
April 29 – S.O.D.
May 12 – Ordinary Peoples headline a show with Scotty Boombox and the Ocean Ghosts, Stretch Lefty, Bottom Brick opening.
May 18 ’06: Petric sees Yngwie the same night as Dick Dale. Says he had a literal wall of Marshall amps, from one end to the other, behind him on the stage. You pretty much know the drill here, a nonstop onslaught of guitar shredding. The only tune specifically mentioned is Demon Driver. He rates Malmsteen’s show as having been the better of the two, in his Other Paper review.
June 1 – Zoso
June 2 – Sighlo & Headchange, Varian, Silent Surface, Intrigue
June 3 – A New Shade, Retoric, Austerus, Study Of Revenge, Seven Deadly, Shineout Liberetto, We Walk By
June 9 – Fall Of Man, Charlie Buckett, Plagued On Earth, State Your Cause
June 10 – The Stee Raszka Band, The Iry, Vinyl, Freak Nut Rat Patrol, My Final Breath
June 12 – Lifehouse, Rocca DeLuca
June 13 – Dar Williams
June 14 – Lamb Of God, Children Of Bodom, Thine Eyes Bleed
June 29 – Ozric Tentacles
July 3 – Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Pitbull Daycare
July 7 – Dark Star Orchestra
July 8 – Caption, 30 ot 6, 9gt, Headchange, Silent Surface, Halo Effect
July 14 – Robin Trower, Franc Aledia
July 16 – Mindless Self Indulgence, Kill Hannah
July 17 – Beth Orton
July 18 – Candlebox, Skywynd
July 26 – Blue October (CD101 Low Dough Show – all tickets $5). Evans Blue and Bril also play.
July 28 – The Futureheads, Tapes ‘N Tapes
August 6 – Kottonmouth Kings, Hed Pe, Subnoise Souljaz
September 7 – Rancid, The Explosion
September 22 – The Floor Walkers, Morning Round, House of Cards, Whether Man, Nicholas Williams, Somewhat Minor
September 25 – Of Montreal. They also play an acoustic show at Magnolia Thunderpussy earlier that day. Grand Buffet open here
September 27 – Built To Spill, Helvetia & the Prids
None of the brand new finds we discover across this stretch of weeks can compare with the crown jewel hoisted from these excavations, a place called Sugar Shack. Tucked away in a corner of the exceedingly decrepit Indianola Shopping Center, essentially just a block removed from us, this weirdness warehouse first came to our attention one night after Damon and I grew bored shooting stick in desperation at nearby Suzi-Cue. We immediately became smitten with this funky hangout, bringing Alan and Shannon on board at our earliest opportunity. And while we all know better to even so much as mention much less suggest such an unhinged destination to Paul, the rest of us can’t get enough.
This, the night of the latest excursion for Damon and me, there are some real live flesh and blood girls in here, amazing though it seems, four of them and good looking ones at that. Ordinarily, however, not so much. Two of them are playing fifty cent pool at the table on the far side – a reasonable rate, even in ’97 – while the other pair are seated in the random furniture near us, facing the plate glass front wall, conversing with this moustache sporting sixty-something arteest looking guy in a black leather cab driver’s hat, a white haired cat named Mark. With mismatched lamps and tables further accentuating the scene, a game of Scrabble and magazines among the various amusements scattered throughout, this section of the ostensible diner resembles your average cozy campus living room. One which features a bunch of underage Mexican kids, though, whom this Mark character is lecturing about God. That and a section behind him designated as a “stage” of sorts, where two keyboards rest, untouched at the moment, on metal stands, tempting anyone who passes to attack them.
This otherworldly café only opened this past summer. Open around the clock, seven days a week, the Sugar Shack is in theory a coffee shop, yes, though clearly offering much, much more. Local artists have adorned the walls with various pieces of their work, but the styles range from Deco to Cubist to Impressionist and beyond, encompassing the entire timeline of art history, and no two works are even remotely alike. Price tags hang from most of these but gathering from the static arsenal of paintings which greet us upon every visit, it would appear that very few if any of these masterpieces ever sell.
The tables and chairs are thrown together relics from some thrift store, mismatched to even more appalling effect than the paintings, tacky and tasteless. The lighting is lifted straight from one of the haunted houses that pop up each October, a spooky shade of green coating the front half of the café till giving way to a more conventional white near the back. To the right of the door, upon entering, a small section of the tile floor is cleared off for this theoretical performance space, though we’ve never seen anyone plying their wares here in earnest. Should a band or a poet choose to perform here they best leave most of their equipment at home, however, as space is limited, and the tension of a tight performance is enhanced by playing in front of that huge window, feeling the eyes from those in the parking lot upon your back.
Along the right wall, a refrigerated glass case boasts a wide selection of wedding cakes for those severely strapped for options, the kind of bizarre touch that seems right at home here. In the diner’s left half, a room kept slightly darker than the rest of the joint, two pool tables sit, open for play. With every other establishment in town charging either seventy five cents or else a whole dollar, we can’t go wrong with the pair of quarters they charge here, and have designated this our regular billiards spot above even the beloved Ruby Tuesday. Dividing these two rooms is a chest high wall upon which sits a number of board games, pamphlets, and knickknacks, basically anything the owners or anyone else felt like flinging there, and finally, in the back hallway by the restrooms, an overweight woman snoozes on a couch with a Chihuahua sitting upon her stomach.
Behind the counter hangs a cardboard sheet delineating the various prices for their delicacies. Written in black magic marker the sign proudly proclaims BREAKFAST SERVED 24 HOURS A DAY! and it is indeed. Not bad fare at all, either, though a bit too salty and cooked, served, sold no matter what the day or hour by a bunch of poor Mexican kids who appear at most twelve years old. Meanwhile the owners, the parents, are seldom seen and spend their time for the most part in this camper trailer parked behind the store.
The blonde girl strikes up a conversation with us, agreeing in hushed tones that this joint is more than a little strange, and what is the deal with all these Mexican kids, running around everywhere at three in the morning? Damon and I are having a blast as always merely observing the spectacle, although this pleasant, unexpected encounter certainly elevates our appreciation a notch.
Except now the blonde’s friend, an equally attractive brunette, gets into a shouting match with our guest arteest here, over what else but religion. Mark, who is clearly the resident know-it-all in this precinct, continues to offer his smug, inflexible interpretation of various scenes from the Bible, accentuated by a former beatnik’s knowing smirk. The brunette eventually storms over to where we are, interrupting our conversation with her sidekick.
“You ready to go?” she demands of the blonde.
“Uh…yeah,” she says, then turning to us smiling adds, “see you guys later. It’s been nice meeting you.”
“Yeah, nice meeting you,” Damon and I reply in unison, and they are out the door.
At least these kids provide plenty of comedy relief in their wake. Mark does stroll over to the keyboards a couple of times at random and rips off some surprisingly virtuosic classical music runs, apparently for his own enjoyment, before sitting back down again. As a few adults now drift out from somewhere in back, those who run this place and are by appearances the adults in charge of these youths, the little ones tickle the ivories themselves to substantially lesser effect. Meanwhile Mark preaches to the owners, now, and mentions more than once having been spoken to by Jesus.
“Hey Mark,” one of the children, a boy who looks to be about ten, pipes up and asks, “has Jesus ever said these two words to you: shut up?”
II.
This will not be the last we see of this character, either. Partially due to an eagerness to break out of our routines, and partially due to, well, spotting this dude’s mug on a flyer, Damon and I have days ago plotted a surreal double bill of brand new adventures for an otherwise random Tuesday night in December. The first of these involves watching that arteestwe glimpsed at Sugar Shack playing a live gig there.
He and I shove off on foot, walking a block east through the chilly night air down 19th, to the Indianola Shopping Center wherein lies our beloved fucked up diner. Upon entry, we donate the suggested dollar apiece into this bucket beside the cleared off quote unquote stage area, just to the right of the door. The two of us then proceed to a table, to order some grub and wait for the music, unsure what to expect.
The Mark Wehrling Trio, this outfit calls itself, and it seems that they are a jazz enterprise of sorts. And who should be mucking around on the keyboard, of course, before the gig even officially starts, but the resident Jesus expert himself, the aging beatnik in the leather cabbie hat.
Then a full cast of cohorts join him, and they launch into a set proper. Fleshing out the core group, there’s a young kid who seems kind of new and lost on an upright bass, but then a well-versed, preppy looking youth on drums hanging in there just fine. As an added bonus, too, we are treated to a pair of stand-ins joining them for the occasion, cats who are a little more seasoned on trumpet and sax. Meanwhile holding it all together as ringleader there’s the marquee name himself, ripping off some amazing, classically trained runs on the electronic portable ivories.
“I don’t get this music at all,” Damon says, confounded, studying this quintet intently blow through their own distinct take on avant-garde, free-form jazz, “it’s either really hard to play, or really easy, I can’t tell.”
“I’ve always thought that, too,” I agree, although actually a fan of this stuff myself, “it’s hard to tell which.”
Patterns do begin to emerge, however, helping us decipher the mystery. Mark will take a solo as everyone else holds the groove, as the torch is then passed to the bass player, followed by the drummer and finally each horn player in turn, the other four locked into a rhythm as one guy improvises in key.
But the drummer in particular keeps us continually baffled. He’s conjuring up this shimmery quality of sustain with his cymbals, like a hissing, slithering snake, yet we inspect his set, even, when the band is on break, and can’t determine the source of this sound – he doesn’t have any rivets hanging from them or anything we’re aware of to explain this phenomenon. Additionally, though I’ve listened to enough jazz maybe to expect a little of this, the beat making mechanisms are not what one would expect in a rock band. He only keeps time on the ride cymbal, cracking the snare drum or booting the kick merely for emphasis now and then, whenever the mood strikes him.
Damon is mildly freaking over this latter trend. “I don’t get it! What the fuck!” he grovels, “he feels like kicking the bass drum here so – BOOMP – there it is and then it’s back to TSS T-T-TSS T-T-TSS on the ride cymbal?!”
Still, we were in search of some fresh diversion, and have definitely found it tonight. And whatever the oddity presented by the combo as a whole, uneven yet dazzling in spots, there’s no denying this Mark dude knows his way around a piano – an impressive, unexpected revelation, proof again that you can’t just assume you have anyone pegged after a single, passing glance. The whole outfit, really, is very solid, and you’d think they could do better in the booking department than this kooky dump of a café.
Though Mark Wehrling and company are apparently holding down a regular Tuesday night slot, and this diner features open mic nights on Thursday and Sundays, folk music on Wednesdays, this schedule tends to make things sound a lot less chaotic than they actually were around here. You just never quite knew what to expect from this place. On more than one occasion this meant an overnight, audience participation open drum circle. At the conclusion of an already very weird St. Patrick’s Day, Damon and I wandered up here for middle-of-the-night breakfast, and are somewhat amazed when this very articulate black kid drops into our midst, bouncing in frenetic fashion from one subject to the next, spouting a number of intelligent and thought provoking opinions…before inviting us to this hip-hop expo he said he was putting together down at the convention center, mentioning casually that he carries a gun, then telling us peace out because he was going to stroll across the room to pick up not one or two but all three of these nice looking girls across the room. You walk home from these encounters wondering what you just ran into. And into that category you could add another theoretically scripted piece of entertainment: MENTAL, their Monday techno nights, which we happen to glimpse just once.
What this means in practice, as we grab a table up front to avoid missing a single shred of this action, is some fucked up freak with a green, long sleeved shirt and brown dress slacks, horned rim glasses and retro chic afro billowing a good foot away from his head, spinning a bunch of warped sounding drum, bass, and synthesizer music on his twin turntable. He displays considerable skill at this, though, fluidly segueing often two completely different styles of music together at once, cutting the next selection in with aplomb.
While this transpires, off to the side there’s this equally wacked out looking chick in either a pink or red shirt, and gobs of ill-matching makeup, tinkling the keys of some tinny little keyboard. Still, as Damon and I repeatedly exchange amused glances, the trippiest, easily most unexpected element present here tonight would be the crowd. Somewhere along the line we realize that nobody else in attendance is paying any attention whatsoever to this music. It’s as if this were a jukebox in the corner spinning Jim Croce tunes or something. And this bizarre spectacle will run a continuous, unwavering thread though the duration of our stay here. You have some kids at tables, clearly studying and/or working on school assignments…others reading for the sheer hell of it…additional packs engrossed in conversation…but not a soul so much as glancing at these musicians. Was such etiquette some convention of this scene, which we are violating? We will never know. But hey, there’s a running $2.99 special on sausage gravy and biscuits, from midnight to 6am, and so we keep returning.
Though a campus area institution situated a beer stein’s throw away from the place where I work, it inexplicably takes me a good ten months to mix Woody’s into my rotation of treasured haunts. I had entered this cramped, cheerful and vaguely Buckeye sports themed bar a couple of times prior to this night, though the precise point of my conversation can be traced to an October evening where a bunch of us stroll over after shutting down our restaurant.
Clearly, it’s a safe bet to say this place was probably named after OSU football legend Woody Hayes, as close to a godlike figure as this university has produced. And there is a fair amount of Buckeye memorabilia dotting these walls, though not enough to make it obnoxious. Not that this likely would have mattered anyway – situated as it is in this strip mall on Olentangy, midway between and bracketed by the Applebee’s at one end and our Damon’s on the other, this place has emerged as the afterparty club of sorts for employees of both establishments. On a good night, which is to say most of them, the staff at these two restaurants easily numbers well over half of the Woody’s patrons, often rendering it a standing-room-only space.
The only reason it’s taken me so long to join the fray is that I had been working mornings only for the first nine months of employment at Damon’s. Shortly after going full time there, however, this impressively rowdy dive is reintroduced to me – properly introduced at last, you might say – and from here there’s no turning back.
I have heard from multiple credible sources that our bartender John H banged some girl back in the tiny enclave with the ice machine one night, a stunt causing both of them to emerge with a ton of dust covering their clothes, a round of cheers mere seconds thereafter. And while nothing this scandalous ever happened to me within these walls, it certainly became the pushing off point for many an outrageous night, not to mention the incubator for countless conversations and the inevitable subsequent pairings, as outlandish as they have might appeared mere hours earlier. Fat Bottom Girls was a selection on the jukebox we often punched whenever our busboy Scott entered the premises, owing to his charming preference for such. Another friend and coworker who shall remain nameless – at least for now, heh heh – wound up sleeping with a manager we couldn’t stand, mostly because they were the last two left there one night.
The evening of my indoctrination, John H, Sherrie and I stroll over to Woody’s together. Sherrie, oddly enough, had occupied an apartment downstairs from me in the same house on Summit Street, then wound up a few months later waiting tables at Damon’s. As we are all arriving in stages from the restaurant, the three of us are somewhere in the middle of the pack, still able to claim three consecutive seats right at the bar. Per usual, the grab bag of faces here counts employees from our restaurant as roughly half of its mass. Even the lone bartender on duty right now, John Rocci, used to work at our restaurant, quitting there not too long after I started, around the beginning of the year. He’s a stocky guy with close cropped brown hair and glasses, cannons for arms, he used to work banquets but surely finds the windfall here much higher.
John and Sherrie decide on beers but I opt for a mixed drink, the ever potent Long Island Iced Tea. Here the bar only comes up your knees, as the floor’s sunk in behind so the bartender’s face to face with you when sitting down – a nice touch that makes this place seem less a pub than the living room of someone’s house. The light here is warm, ambient, too, brighter than most but not blinding, with one large screen playing the day’s sports highlights, a fantastic jukebox, one pool table and two electronic dart boards and various Buckeye football paraphernalia lining every remaining inch of the walls.
Joanne is next to enter, and while roommate Sarah Berry had tonight off after working this morning, the third resident of their apartment, Jane, trails right behind Joanne. It’s hard to imagine a duo much more different than Sarah and Joanne, and indeed, as the latter appears to have way too much class, appeared from the outset way too self-assured to last in the dining room for long, Joanne has already been whisked almost exclusively into that more “serious minded” sorority of the clubhouse girls – our only hope is that she doesn’t become one of them, that we can somehow maintain her as an ally in their midst.
As for Jane, I’m guessing she might register somewhere between those other two, although in appearance she definitely hews closer to Joanne. Equally tall and blonde as Joanne, though Jane’s hair is curlier, her smooth, round face more compelling, the pull of her green eyes twice as magnetic. She’s a dead ringer for my ex-girlfriend Heather, also, to a spooky degree, and as they stand behind the rest of us – the only room remaining in the entire establishment – I hear them talking and think that if I once dated someone who looked like that, then I stand a chance with any of these girls, too.
Virginia shows up next with her boyfriend Brian, also from New York City, and they claim two recently vacated seats to my right. Brian’s moved here months ago in pursuit of a degree from our illustrious university, and with nothing better to do, Virginia recently joined him. She’s not in school but thinks she might soon be.
Nonetheless, Brian I instantly begin to see as the lame duck boyfriend. He currently holds office but won’t for long. He yawns and stares at his drink, he looks around the bar, bored, but never says more than a handful of words. Meanwhile Virginia’s hanging over me all night, she’s an unceasing bullet train of chatter, she has a hand on my shoulder and tells me her life story, start to finish. I breathe in the pine scented perfume billowing from her sweet, open neck, I make eye contact and suck in every detail, from the fine blonde hairs on that neck all the way down to the tiny gap between her two front teeth when she smiles. The provocative manner in which she’s unbuttoned the top two notches of her white dress shirt, tie removed, showing just enough cleavage to flip over cars and burn buildings to the ground.
“You don’t smoke?” she says, puffing on a menthol.
“No,” I explain, “this might sound crazy, but I never learned how to inhale.”
Behind us, the mob of people becomes further compressed as more and more employees shuffle in. Cooks, the clubhouse bartender, supervisors and the infamous clubhouse bitches, they’re all here now, everyone’s got pocketfuls of cash and you can hear the rising pitch of voices, gaining steam as well as intensity, as the night steadily spins further and further out of control. John H buys the two of us a shot of Wild Turkey, which means for me returning the favor with another round, and then here comes Maria, one of those clubhouse bitches I’ve long since written off, she wedges between us, buying shots of Jagermeister for herself as well as John and me.
A new experience for me, too, this Jagermeister. Set against the harsh background of those twin whiskey shots before it, Jager goes down like a cup of melted licorice, smooth, instantly addictive. Picturing some of the hardcore maniacs I’ve known who swear by the drink, it’s easy to see why they drink nothing but, how they can polish off a whole bottle in one good night. Still, I order a second Long Island, and we kick this show into high gear.
“Here,” Virginia says, sticking one of her Parliaments in my mouth, lighting it.
“No!” I hear Joanne squeal behind me, as she throws her arms around my neck, “don’t start smoking!”
“Don’t worry,” I laugh, “she’s just teaching me how to inhale.”
Distracted here, it doesn’t register at first that John H’s hands are also full, now that the tall blonde Jessica slithers into the bar. She works in some professional capacity back there in the Windy City, and dresses as such, even in attending this shoddy dive bar. With only the sheer magnetic force of her attraction she pulls his focus, unwavering, at the expense of everything and everyone else in the room. Jessica buys herself and John and me a shot of Wild Turkey, as we toss these back and do our best to imitate this whiskey’s namesake.
“Gobble gobble gobble!” we cheer, clinking the one ounce glasses together, the simplest toast of all time.
Right at this moment, Amy K and Erin stroll in, delirious with the money they’ve raked in on the clubhouse floor. Jovial and plump, plainly attractive, these two share one half of a duplex up in Dublin, just as they share the same essential personality. Amy K has silky black hair and great people skills, and while technically a manager at this point, there are still nights like this where she’s called into duty waiting tables. Whatever the occasion, when she laughs it’s this infectious, thunderous howl, which everyone loves, her mouth flying open as wide as my beloved table 61. As for Erin, whom everyone calls Ewok, tonight she’s wearing her long, straight hair in a ponytail that stretches halfway down her back, now that we’re off the clock, and like always the expression she’s sporting behind those oval shaped glasses suggests untold secretes, a sneakiness, or maybe just kinkiness. Tonight it’s outright jubilation as she won three of the four quarters in our employee football pool, netting her a tidy windfall of $300 in addition to all the loot pouring in from her tables.
Drinks are flying everywhere and there’s a manic expediency to our consumption, as the clock is not our friend, closing time draws near. First Joanne and Jane split, then John leaves with Jessica and though I feel I can sit here three days talking to Virginia, her man’s about ready to doze off on his bar stool and they too stand up to say goodbye.
“I’ll see ya tomorrow morning, Jay,” Virginia says, throwing her arms around me in a hug.
“We’ll do it again sometime!” I cheer, shaking Brian’s hand with an unbridled sarcasm.
The last two left, Sherrie and I close the gap of that cooling seat behind us, last occupied by our fearless leader John H. Shrieks of goodwill, the chatter of a thousand conversations behind us like a burst of soothing white noise, and buried somewhere deep in the mix the tireless spins of that faithful jukebox, moment by moment these sounds wither away and die. Sherrie picks up the baton of recital from dear Virginia and begins telling me her life story, as we polish off our drinks in rapid fire procession. Tales of drug abuse like the three day speed binge that coalesced with her and some friends hanging out at Ruby’s, whereby she runs around the bar shrieking her head off for no reason at all. Tales of heartache, past lovers, not to mention her most recent flame – also named John – a tall stringbean with piercings all over his face who lasted about three days in our dining room kitchen.
“I love him, but…..he’s got problems, let’s just put it that way,” she laughs, the trademark Sherrie chortle that leaves her overbite hanging out twice as prominently as before.
One by one the rest of the Damon’s crowd filters out, all the cooks and supervisors, all the clubhouse bitches. In fact as the house lights come on we’re the last two sitting there period, as engrossed as I am with her stories and these amazing mixed drinks, we close the place down.
Ours is a purely platonic end to the evening, I should mention, as we are only friends, coworkers, and interested in nothing else. Future nights and future companions, however, will bring with them a wide range of other outcomes. Many a late evening hiding out as much is ever possible in this place, in a corner booth, ordering a succession of shots for Cary every time I head up to the bar for a beer, because she’s still only twenty and these are much less likely to get us busted. The night Tiffany professes her love for me and like an idiot I don’t exactly know how to handle this information, am in fact chuckling in pure jackass mode as I wave goodbye and exit with a few of my cronies – am doing so as she shouts this out the door, in fact, across the parking lot. Or the time a bunch of us showed up here for last call, and I admitted to A-Bomb that I never actually slept with Alison, I couldn’t figure out why everyone thought I did – a conversation he was too drunk to remember the next day, anyway.
But this isn’t to suggest these only involve the females, my compelling memories stemming from this place. This would be the site of my first ever Columbus karaoke appearance, such as it was, a mostly dreadful rendition of Fight For Your Right sung with my roommates Damon and Alan. Also the entirely sober moment where I finally worked up enough nerve to tell a bunch of my coworkers that I basically write all the time and at that point had completed one novel. Or the to-that-moment dull winter night where Alan and I were talked into an Applebee’s party at some apartment across town, the home of a waitress he already knew somehow and bumped into with me at Woody’s, a party that devolved into this major fight where only the presence of John Rocci and a couple other banquet employees from my restaurant kept us from getting our asses stomped. After which, from the following evening – why but of course, we returned to Woody’s the very next night – and ever onward, Rocci jokingly referred to Alan and me as The Slugging Crew.
Sadly, the good times can never last, and over the years our increasingly less frequent visits seemed justified, as the bar became lamer and lamer. During these occasions you would actually find yourself becoming more nostalgic than usual, because there was nothing else to prop up your interest in the bar – nothing interesting was bound to happen now, a realization that compounded the gloom. Which of course made one less inclined toward future visits.
In December of 2018, I drive past this place, intending to at least photograph the exterior so I have a picture for my piece. Only to discover that the entire strip mall is gone! Off the top of my head, I know that basically the entire right flank of this center was intact without change for at least the last 20 years: Kroger, Woody’s, Subway, Rick’s Beverage. Maybe some of these institutions will return, but it won’t be quite the same, of course – and it’s another example of why it’s important to document this stuff while we still can.
Stop Rewind Fast Forward: 1993. (click to view/read more)
Pick up a copy of my latest music history tome, concerning that iconic year! Among the shows covered are a Primus and Smashing Pumpkins, both held at Newport Music Hall. Also the Lollapalooza stop at nearby Buckeye Lake, where local band Scrawl was on the bill, and Cbus musician Foley played as a member of Arrested Development.
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