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.
1670-1288 W. 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:
Wild Oats/Whole Foods: 1555 W. Lane Avenue
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tommy’s Pizza: This would the campus edition (174 W. Lane Avenue) which is not that far up the road from their Upper Arlington one. Both have been around forever, though, so it must be working.
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.
