I offer this obtuse explanation as a starting point for why I have a fascination and passion for Unusual Gin Joints from around the planet. The best of these establishments I am going to detail for you over a series of posts. They all have a particular ‘Mos Eisley Cantina’ vibe: far-flung or hidden locations, bizarre characters, a sense of décor charitably characterized as ‘eclectic’, wicked drink and perhaps a hint of menace. Yet most importantly all serve as hub for the juxtaposition of diverse (and perverse?) individuals from a cross-section of planets to interact while whetting their whistle.
Many of these Unusual Gin Joints no longer exist, especially the ones from deep in my past. I have included them nonetheless, lest their memory be lost to time. (I recently read of a fascinating religion that believes that the spirit doesn’t depart until the last person that remembers it dies, but that is a posting for another time.) I have tried to include links where I can.
The common denominator, of course, is me. After all, the most unusual and delicious juxtapositions involve placing your self directly in the Maw of the Weird.
(* Note: Originally I was going to start from favorites on down. But I have elected instead to attempt to go chronologically so as to witness the evolution of my passion.)
ST. JAMES INFIRMARY
390 Moffett Boulevard, Mountain View, CA
St. James Infirmary holds the distinction of being the only place I’ve ever seen someone die. That was on March 18, 1993. I’d love to tell you that the date is etched in my mind out of sorrow for the loss of life, but unfortunately I can recall the exact date because it happened during my senior year in college and, being parsimonious college students, we were drinking pitchers of heavily discounted, day-old St. Patrick’s Day green beer while watching a wet T-shirt contest. The deceased was a contestant with, as we would later find out, a heart condition for which she refused to take medication. Her expiration took place in front of her fiancé after a bucket of cold water was tossed on her. This was definitely not a dignified departure for her but for me a memorable one.
SJI is sadly long gone now, razed by arson in 1998, but it and nearby Antonio’s Nut House formed the early foundations of my love affair with Unusual Gin Joint. To begin with almost it seemed that nearly everything in St. James Infirmary was stolen or to use our college parlance of the time, “liberated”. Many of the items are what you might expect: street signs of well-known locations or with unintentionally amusing names, highway signs, kitschy nostalgic advertising. But SJI went further and larger. There were whole vehicles (sleigh? Wagon?) slung about from the ceiling. The surfaces of all the tables and the bar were covered with vintage pornographic postcards sealed in dingy, uneven resin. And if the little, nude Prohibition-era lasses peaking out from under your burger didn’t get your motor started there was the piece de resistance of SJI: a thirty-foot tall Wonder Woman, of murky provenance. It’s very existence and its habitation in SJI still beg many a question that I fear will remain unanswered.
In addition to being a feast for the eyes, SJI did not disappoint on the gustatory front either. Fifteen-plus years later I have yet to meet a chicken wing its equal. They didn’t just insult you with a wee banzai leg with a thimble full of actual meat; they served it up with the thigh as well. The sauces were tight and prices within reach for the fiscally-challenged. The bar itself was enormous, wrapping around in a U-shape that could probably seat several score to worship at their sixty taps. This should probably be put into some perspective. When I was frequenting SJI in the early 90s, it pre-dated the explosion of US microbrews, the extensive beer distribution and overall beer connoisseurship that exist today. So a joint with 60 beers on tap was something of a Big Deal.
Lastly, SJI offered entrée into the most critical ingredient in the evolution of the Unusual Gin Joint, a potpurri of humanity. Being in Mountain View, it was too far from Stanford to be a college bar. We only made the trek occasionally and we would usually form a majority of the Cardinal Crowd in-residence when we went. SJI drew its clientele partly from Moffett Field located just down the road from SJI and from the phalanx of Silicon Valley geeks and bandits.
ANTONIO’S NUT HOUSE
321 South California Ave.
Palo Alto, CA
A defining element of the Unusual Gin Joint is the deployment of cheesy double entendre and cutesy wordplay with a crass edge that adds up to what I’ll call ‘guffaw humor’ in their décor. It’s the sort of prominently displayed ‘Liquor Up Front, Poker in the Rear’ sign that elicits a chuckle as your reaching for your first handful of peanuts. (I must admit that at this point I fear I have seen them all and that the impact is certainly waning.) The ‘Nut House’ did live up to its double entendre providing both free peanuts and patrons of questionable sanity and both by the barrel.
ANH is definitely something of an anomaly in tony Palo Alto. Let me step back a moment and say one or two things about Palo Alto itself. Despite the looming presence of Stanford five minutes away, Paly could give a shit about the students, especially those of an undergraduate nature with featherweight wallets. There was very little then, and believe even less now, of relevance to everyday student life in Palo Alto. Things got slightly more interesting when you became of legal drinking age, but then you still had to have drink money to make it work. The most popular place in town was a sushi joint with a line that you had to cut through to get to the only place with cheap eats, Pudley’s. (Gold Mine Special – burger and 22oz beer for about $6). Pudley’s has since gone out of business and become a sushi joint.
Anyway, my general point is that Palo Alto is more of a free-range chicken and overpriced chardonnay type of town that definitely sneers at the Unusual Gin Joint, if it even bothers to notice at all.
Which may explain the entrance to the Antonio’s Nut House. The front of the building was some lunch counter kind of place that I never recall seeing open, let alone venturing in. The door to the bar was in the back parking lot. It was unmarked except for a sign that read: ‘Please knock. If nobody answers slide money under the door.’
When you entered there was a modest bar on the left, a half dozen pool tables in the back and to your right, a mechanical gorilla in cage guarding a barrel of peanuts. The gorilla buzzed and turned with a range of motions that suggested C-3PO on Quaaludes. The floor was littered with the dusty corpses of shelled peanuts.
ANH was my first experience with a bartender who transcended beyond anonymous drink slinger to the ranks of the Iconic Bartender and thereby is granted institutional status. Monica stepped of the celluloid of John Water’s film and my memory paints a portrait of her being the Biker Mama version of Charlotte Rea in the Facts of Life. She drove a fair dinkum jalopy – a Pink Studebaker the kind driven by Fozzie Bear in The Muppet Movie – and she made a drink with name so reprehensible I won’t speak of it here and I would only whisper of it to my closet friends. (It was a diabolical mixture of 100 proof Stoli, 100 proof Yukon Jack and Kaluhua, served in cocktail glass garnished with a plastic hanging monkey found in the child’s divertissement Barrel of Monkeys)
In many ways, Monica embodied the stereotype of her craft and her station as would be portrayed in pulp fiction of screen or print. She had been there, done that and had heard every line, excuse and tale of horseshit imaginable. She took no shit and made that clear. Yet like the stereotype she was charismatic, funny and personable. Up to this point, I didn’t know such a character could exist in the flesh and yet here she was.
At this point in my life, the Unusual Gin Joints like the Nut House and SJI served me like an air lock to the Dreaded Real World. It was a spot where I could safely observe people unwinding from ‘Real’ Lives and ‘Real’ Jobs and then return back to the insulation of college a little wiser about what was potentially waiting when graduation broke open the seal. It also helped me understand why people seek out the Unusual Gin Joint. The best of these provide a temporary portal where the normal rules are suspended. ANH was a place in snotty Alto where you sneak behind the curtain, order a profanely named drink, litter the floor with impunity not in secret from your fellow man, but in full view with their encouragement. It is an Air Lock for all of us and it is best shared.
I have two stories from my visits to ANH to share and then I need to wrap this up.
The first involves our gal, Monica. We were in there one night and apparently it happened to be her birthday. One of Monica’s friends dropped in and handed her a present over the counter. Monica unwrapped the present and announced with remarkable sincerity ‘Ooooh, you didn’t’ She held up the present for the whole bar to behold. It was a magnificent giant black vibrator. We all laughed. ‘I’m going to use this right now!’ announced Monica. We all laughed even more. She walked out from behind the bar and headed in the direction of the ladies room. We were all doubled over in laughter, tears practically streaming down our face. ‘Good one,’ we must have shouted waiting for her to spin on her heel and return to the untended bar. Five minutes later the laughter had subsided and was replaced by looks of disbelief. ‘Nawww..’ At ten minutes, those of us at the bar now turned our heads at the empty bar and wondered if we should help ourselves to either more booze or even for the more desperate, the cash register. Fifteen minutes later, she returned a bit flushed to a subdued bar and announced ‘Who needs a drink?’
The final story occurred not long after I had turned legal age. Towards the end of a prolonged drinking session with a friend who had literally just turned of age himself, Palo Alto’s finest sidled into the bar. The officers were an older man and woman that it made it feel like the Paly Po Po was a Mom and Pop operation. I felt a shiver of guilt for a second, brought about years of residual underage drinking guilt, but it passed when I reminded myself that I was finally ‘of age’. Anyway, it wasn’t us they were after. They were looking for the pair of older folks who had also been wiling away the afternoon at the bar with us. Apparently, they were both blind (none of us noticed) and had been brought to the bar by their caretaker, who had gotten sloshed and staggered away leaving behind her forgotten charges at the bar. Oops.
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