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South Broadway Athletic Club, April 2014. Photograph by Byron Kerman
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South Broadway Athletic Club, April 2014. Photograph by Byron Kerman
It’s strange, in these modern times, to read news reports of the South Broadway Athletic Club taking to social media for funding. The club, with a headquarters and clubhouse just north of Anheuser-Busch’s brewery and a training center just to the south of the same, has been locked in a different day and age for decades now. To hear of the SBAC going to the web for crowdfunding feels as likely as a dog piloting a rocket to moon. Oh, it could happen someday, but… really? In 2015?
True story, with facts subject to the ravages of time and the frailties of the human mind: there was a time when I was a member of the South Broadway Athletic Club, in good standing. I’ve never been a Moose, or an Eagle, or an Oddfellow, or a Mason, or a member of any secret society, but becoming a club member at the SBAC was the closest thing I’d come to having one of those titles. Having been to dozens of wrestling nights at the club and a few boxing matches, too, I knew the general vibe of the place before joining: paneled, smoky, kinda-perfectly worn-in.
What I didn’t know was that the room was essentially run by a social club (the “C” in SBAC), one that dated back to that age when countless American men (and plenty of women) joined groups of like-minded folks, setting up shop in halls all across the country. In the case of the SBAC, the comradeship didn’t center on a specific line of work; members hailed from a lot of walks of life, though the trades were well represented. Joining the club because a friend wanted to run some boxing and other entertainment programming there, I was part of an influx of maybe 10 guys, most of us in our late 20s and early 30s, who all joined at once. We were sworn in with the rest of the general membership. Who, even a decade and change back, tended to be 50-on-up-to-80.
Here’s where things kinda got interesting. To become a member, you needed a sponsor, and enough money for a super-modest, annual fee. You had to present at the membership meeting and not come off as a total ass. You had to do a bit of service work; I distinctly remember selling beer at Mardi Gras one year, as well as at a couple of private functions. (Bartending at wrestling nights, when the crowd was thickest, fell to the more-senior members; ch-ching.) With full membership, you could bounce by the club during afternoon socials, when a group of maybe a dozen members would hole up in the bar, drinking cheap A-B products, watching the local news and, funny enough, buying milk and eggs.
These hangtime hours were typically for the guys. The women involved in the SBAC had their own sub-set of activities, run through the, no lie, ladies’ auxiliary. At membership meetings, the women would sit in one corner of the room, having prepared a table full of cold cuts, breads and condiments; so, yeah, sandwich foods. The important votes, whether by membership or the board, took place on the boys’ side of the room, and this other-age co-mingling was accepted as the way of the world. At least, the way of this world.
It’s been a long time since I was a member of the SBAC. Probably, I’d owe about 12 years of back dues by this point. It’s also been a long time since I’ve been to a wrestling match, which strikes me as especially weird, having organized a monthly table for the better part of a couple years, hopelessly devoted to the antics of the Lumberjacks, Gary Jackson, John Blackheart and their brethren. Looking at video of matches held in recent years, I can tell the room’s been rehabbed, gotten some paint on the walls. That, too, is weird, assuming that the paneling came with the building. Times change, though, our interests with them.
This weekend, with the club scrambling to raise $20,000 on the quick, I’ll try to stop through, maybe buy a beer after the Mardi Gras Parade.
Could be that I’ll get hungry and there’ll be a nice lady there to make me a sandwich. The beer and the sandwich would run, what, eight bucks? But the trip back to 1965 will be on the house.
Good luck, SBAC. Long may the distant past be your future.
