Not everything posted on this site can offer a ringing endorsement, and that is certainly true of Gatsby’s, located for decades now on North Hamilton Road in Gahanna. I feel like this bar’s tagline could very well be, “not bad…but you can probably do better!” Which is in fact what I’ve been saying about it for years.
The first visit for some of us occurs on St. Patrick’s Day, 2000, which is a Friday. The always excellent AJ Angelo is playing here on that night, so this is at least something to hang our fuzzy green tophats upon. Even a great musician still has to pay his bills one way or the other, sure, but he is just as stellar tonight as ever. Otherwise, it seems we may be tarnishing the good Saint Patrick’s name by not finding any more worthwhile pastimes, on his very special day.
And it’s possible my impression is only tainted as a result of who we wind up meeting here. Though the solid, reliable trio of Damon, Paul Linville, and I have ridden over here together, we joining some of Damon’s coworkers, who collectively remind me of my first grade class at naptime. Because this place is truly packed, and we must wade through a mountain of people just to find thie one plastic coated wooden table where maybe a dozen of his fellow state employees are seated, along with some significant others.
Though there are a couple who can still hang, and none of them are really all that old, this is a mighty lame bunch overall. Sitting here alongside them, a phrase suddenly pops into my head, describing what I am witnessing: these people are tourists of their own lives. Maybe that’s overly harsh, and who knows, maybe I will have cashed in my chips by the mid-30s as well, but though the hour is still quite young and this is a Friday, after all, which means just about every person scattered around this table has the entire weekend off, they are all checking out shortly after we arrive. They show up, have one beer, make sure that somebody takes a picture of them being here, and then leave. The picture itself was really the whole point: see, I was here! I was out doing stuff on St. Patrick’s Day! Not so much because they’re interested in the holiday or the beer or the music or this bar.
So by 9 o’clock, though we are just warming up and it seems that AJ is as well, churning through the classic rock hits up front, the three of us are already long since the last ones left from our party. The bar is a dual leveled affair, with the front end, where Angelo is playing, slightly lower. We decide to relocate to the higher back half, which offers a decent vantage point as well, and is slightly less crowded – although the bar has already begun to noticeably thin out anyway. Then again, we are partly responsible for this phenomenon. It’s small enough that a centrally located chunk of about 17 people leaving is bound to make an impact.
But oh well, there’s still some good music, and at least a handful of other passing entertainments. Relocating to stand near an electronic dart machine near the restrooms, we figure it makes for a perfect strategic location, close though relatively cramped quarters for covering all bases. And so it is that young sweeties drift by us with glow in the dark four leaf clovers pinned upon their chests, offering vague smiles if nothing else, and over the hill reformed barflies flirt when their husbands aren’t looking, while we even manage to knock back a couple more beers in the process.
Or more than a couple, at least for some of us. Damon somehow manages to get fairly smashed in relation to Paul and me, and gets on this roll spewing crazy pickup lines to every female who drifts past. Or just one pickup line, really, repeated over and over again: “Kiss me, I’m Irish.”
Though one decent looking middle aged woman with huge breasts does indeed plant a peck on his cheek, there are probably ten or twelve girls closer to our own age who just look back with a laugh as they keep on cruising. Now the line has turned on itself, into a joke, that even Paul and I are making fun of and Damon is becoming all the more determined to find some success with. Owing to this, as well as possibly this third or fourth beer, we eventually can’t resist getting in on the fun ourselves.
“Kiss me, I’m Irish,” Damon says to this latest, small cluster of girls gliding past us.
“Suck me, I’m Irish!” Paul suggests instead.
“Touch me, I’m sick,” I tell them last.
Though these lines vary in ridiculousness, perhaps, they are equal in their seriousness and effectiveness. Which is to say, zilch on both fronts. And then when two or three of us somehow manage to bump into this ten foot tall dart machine, and it seriously begins to tip over before we catch it, we suspect that it’s a sign to conclude our stay here. My impression of Gatsby’s overall, from the outset, is that, despite a decent clutch of early twentysomethings, this is probably one of their best nights of the year, and for the most part, it’s a middle aged, career minded, happy hour type hangout. An impression further bolstered when ten o’clock arrives, and even AJ is beginning to pack up his gear. We head on out to another bar before he is finished with that process. Paul’s birthday will strike at midnight, by which time we have ventured onward to the Arlington Cafe and then still later, Traditions Tavern.
II.
The next time I’m here it’s a couple months later, specifically May 13 of 2000. It’s a Saturday night where Damon and Melissa attempt seeing the Kiss show at Polaris, only to find themselves turned away at the box office because the place doesn’t accept Discover cards. At which point, considering the volume of traffic still pouring into the venue, the staff tells them they must wait a considerable amount of time before they are permitted to exit.
“Oh no, I am leaving,” Damon tells them. And then does precisely that.
“What did you do, drive through the forest?” I joke, upon learning of this, after these two have shown up at my apartment.
Melissa had actually left a message on my answering machine, to see if I wanted to attend the concert with them. But I was at work, and did not get the memo in time, not that it ultimately would have mattered one whit. Then, before even learning that they were going to drop in here unannounced, Ann called me. So this entire night comes about – like so many of them – in bizarre, unexpected fashion. Apparently a smidgen more impressed by Gatsby’s than I have been, up to this point, Damon suggests we go there. Ann shows up about a half hour later, looking tanned and somehow even a bit more blonde than usual, for whatever reason, and then the four of us take off in my blessed red “Ghetto Fabulous” Geo Storm. Although how these decisions are made is sometimes a bit of a mystery.
“You ladies wear earplugs?” I ask, while locking the front door, as the two of them giggle their way to my vehicle.
Damon and I kicked off the festivities by throwing on Daniel Johnston’s Fun album, mainly just to observe the reaction we knew was almost surely forthcoming. Most newbies sit through exactly one tune before blowing the whistle. This time around, we miraculously make into song #2 before Ann says something. “What is this?” she asks with a grimace, an expression quite similar to someone smelling a poopy diaper. But we don’t answer right away, merely begin guffawing.
“It sounds like the Violent Femmes mixed with…oh, what’s that one guy what can’t sing?” she elaborates.
“Neil Young?” Damon suggests, somewhat of a shot in the dark.
“Yeah! This sounds like the Violent Femmes mixed with Neil Young.”
“Actually, I’d say that’s a pretty good description,” Damon admits.
Ann is talking about her brother getting into Cedar Point before they opened one day, somehow, on some kind of press pass. This leads to her and I only slightly playfully arguing about how many people go through there on an average day, while Damon and Melissa laugh at this back and forth. Actually, the more I think about it, my figure was surely way off the mark, but whatever. Meanwhile, the girls are also sweating the E status on my gas tank, though Damon assures them this is business as usual. Riding the outerbelt around to Hamilton Road, the radio’s on and the women are singing along with that Macy Gray song.
“She’s got a really weird voice,” Damon observes, “either that or it’s an overdub.”
After pulling off somewhere so he and Ann can buy smokes, we continue onward at last to Gatsby’s. We park and approach the less than half packed bar. Inside, a band called Best Of Seven is playing classic rock cover tunes. It’s a warm, seasonable night, and the doors have been left open, carrying this music out to us as we cross the lot on foot.
The four of us grab a corner table from the many available. I order a Rolling Rock bottle, Damon & Melissa Killian’s drafts, Ann some other kind of domestic, I forget. Best Of Seven, it’s quickly established, are competent, and yet we can’t really get into them. Ann and I are sitting with our backs to the band, but even though the other two get to face them, we all have the same basic assessment and I doubt this arrangement changes much. It’s as though these songs are played too well, to near note for note perfection matching the recordings, and therefore have no groove to them.
“I hope they don’t play classic rock all night,” Ann moans.
“Why’s that?” I ask, “you don’t like classic rock?”
“I do, but it’s always the same, there’s never anything new. It gets old.”
This might be reading too much into things – for example, we do enjoy AJ Angelo’s music a great deal, think that he is a killer live performer and really delivers the goods – but overall, I would say this band neatly matches the basic Gatsby’s aesthetic. It’s no accident that a capable but robotic classic rock cover group is playing here on a Saturday night.
As it turns out, they will shake things up a bit, by playing some modern rock hits from the 90s, eventually allotting just as much time for these as they do the Doobies and Zeppelin oldies. We drink a few more beers apiece, converse, laugh, with the occasional eye cast toward the band. Many of the patrons have just gotten back from the Kiss show themselves, and in fact, the singer in Best Of Seven declares from the stage that he’d been there as well. How he had made it to his own gig on time we can’t even fathom, but this is what he tells us.
III.
In this section I will begin to post events calendars as I assemble them. You’ve got to start somewhere, and so here is my rundown thus far for the year 2001:
10/11/01 – AJ Angelo
10/25/01 – AJ Angelo
10/26/01 – Bob Piascek and Soul Kitch’n
10/27/01 – Retro Rockit
10/30/01 – Key West Jerry
10/31/01 – karaoke with Joe Hebdo
11/1/01 – AJ Angelo
IV.
I will return on a couple future occasions, of course, but my impression doesn’t change a whole lot. Though there are a couple of patios, its best feature might be the somewhat tree shrouded setting, partially framed by such on two of its sides and making Gatsby’s easy to miss from the road if arriving from the north. But I did find a few hilarious videos on YouTube, while researching this place, a few old commercials that some people have been gracious and wise enough to upload. As they say on the news, let’s go to the tape:
I have to admit, that’s some good camera work on the first clip (circa 1994, I think I read somewhere) in that it makes the back patio look positively gargantuan. Considering that this doesn’t mesh with my memory at all, I recently drove past it and around back just to confirm that it’s not quite so massive in person – so yes, an impressive bit of staging, but in fairness it is a fairly spacious one anyway. I have to also admit to never trying the food, as far as I can recall, which is looking pretty tasty at this late hour and maybe not the best idea for viewing material with a growling as I type this.
Also, they are currently featuring a banner on the side of their building advertising Buckeye Vodka, along with a disclaimer boldly declaring that this is never sold in Michigan. Which is another impressive touch. And any place that has been around since 1977 presumably knows what it’s doing, doesn’t need my stamp of approval regardless, and surely has legions of supporters. But yeah, if you are a career minded type driving past here during happy hour on a weekday, give this place a whirl – you can certainly do worse, and just might find your next great group of friends!
