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Photograph by Thomas Crone
"This Bar is Closed."
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Photograph by Thomas Crone
Chairs and barstools, ruined remains of the Golden Nugget patio lounge, Missouri and Utah, South City.
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Photograph by Thomas Crone
Dead Bar: Faces.
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Photograph by Thomas Crone
A once-dead bar that's now resurrected: The Fortune Teller.
Conversations, when aided by alcohol, can twist and loop in interesting ways. Recently, sitting around a formica-topped table at a corner tavern, three friends and I reminisced about the bars of yore; three of us have known a 40th birthday and essentially grew up in St. Louis; the fourth is shy of that magic number and came of age out east. The three of us with the deepest roots in STL soil quickly fixated on a topic that bound us, drinks in hand: dead bars.
The trio of us, while underage, enjoyed times in the prime LGBT clubs of the ‘80s and ‘90s: East St. Louis’ landmark Faces and midtown’s Magnolia’s, aka Mag’s. For me, the former remains an all-time-favorite, first accessed at age 16 and long a place to take a first date; if you could find commonality in that space, in that freewheeling time period, you could probably find other things to talk about as time passed. Faces was a testing ground, and you never left without a story.
In fact, I can remember my last visit vividly. There are an amateur dance-off happening on a Sunday night. As luck would have it, a first (and only) date and I wound up there just as the event was going to happen and Faces, uh, didn’t disappoint on this evening. We’ll save the NSFW details, but the contestants vying for cash and fabulous prizes didn’t mind baring a bit of skin. By the end of the contest, most were in their birthday suits, as house music blasted in the background. If memory serves correct, Darude’s “Sandstorm” was the club hit of the moment, and it played on what felt was a constant darting in and out of the mix with abandon. I don’t miss first dates, but miss Faces with almost a physical sadness.
So we were talking about bars. First impression. Best stories. Things that you remember as go-to’s, years later. Here’s a crack at a few Dead Bar Stories. Some of these are being typed out for the first time and I do believe that they’re true.
Your own Dead Bar Stories surely differ, but I hope they’re still vivid for you, too. Maybe even accurate.
Bernard’s Pub (Lafayette version): As a teenage new wave drummer, I promoted our band’s shows the old-fashioned way: through flyering. We played a show at the older version of Bernard’s, and bringing flyers to the bar, I walked in on a punk show. Reasonably sure that it was Bad Brains onstage that night, though old punk heads can set me straight on if they ever played there. There were flying bodies and loud guitars involved, that much I recall, a pit and lots of heat. How fantabulously outta-touch I was, if that’s what I walked into and out of; goodness, youth and stupidity go together like peanut butter and jelly.
The Cockpit, aka The Fortune Teller: For a while, during the newness phase of Flickr.com, I’d hoped to capture shots from all of the City’s dead bars. A life’s work, basically. On September 14, 2005, I wrote these words to Flickr: “Cockpit Bar, 2635 Cherokee. Once the Hippodrome, in the 1980s and 1990s, this place was known as The Fortune Teller, which gave way to a Mexican bootery. Now, that business is gone and the place is shuttered, though the previous tenants left a Madonna-filled shrine in the front window. A neighbor says the building is owned by ‘a couple,’ inc. a fireman; here's hoping they're able to make a go of this duplex-style storefront. Doubt that there's anything bar-like left inside, but this was one classic barroom in its time and it's fun to daydream about a return of that space, unlikely though it may be.” Sometimes things go bye-bye, then return. Loved the original, all good with the current.
Creepy Crawl (Tucker version): Saw Sullen’s first show, convinced that they were going to be the best band ever to come outta St. Louis. Got drenched in the pit at MU300 shows, soaked to the bone on cold, winter’s nights. Hung out in the alley with doorman Wayne St. Wayne and talked about the wrestling scene in Manitoba. Accidentally walked into the kiddie cage with a beer and caught a quick rebuke. Pissed in possibly the dirtiest bathroom I can ever recall. Ah, Creepy.
Cummel’s: Is that Tory Z. Starbuck making me a sandwich by candlelight? Of course it is. Meow.
The Golden Nugget: At the corner of Missouri and Utah, the former vocalist of Pavlov’s Dog held an ongoing weekend residency. Bikers mingled with drop-ins, and everyone cried a single tear when David Surkamp played the club’s sorta theme song “Gold Nuggets.” In the backyard, you could grab a free pork steak. That it’s shuttered in the heart of a resurgent Benton Park’s a bit surprising, though a reboot wouldn’t be complete without the pork steaks and Pavlov’s.
Lo: The sake specials and jungle/drum&bass soundmix were what kept you coming back to the greatest tiny bar in our town’s recent history. But the shared, unisex bathrooms is all we could talk about for months. Radical, dude, Lo was radical. And way ahead of its time.
Other World: When JoJo Zahner announced that he was shutting down the club, he sought out the guy that insisted he order Izen Klar, the knockoff of Zima. Bought the whole case, maybe a second; sure did.
Slo-Tom’s: The only time I ever saw a man sneeze himself into a faint came at Slo-Tom’s. It was such an affecting moment that I spent a few hundred words on it on a vanity project. Hoo, boy. That was amazing. The reboot of Slo-Tom’s was not. Here’s hoping Tom’s has some life left.
1227: Landline to landline connection. “You wanna meet down at 1227? There’s someone named Screamin’ Jay Hawkins playing?” Lucky, lucky, lucky.
Velvet: I actually used to dance. In public. At clubs. Not a lot, but it was known to happen. Velvet must’ve really been special to invoke that kinda behavior. And it was never more magical than during the twice-a-summer Washington Avenue Beat Festivals, the best reason to ever visit the post-industrial Washington Avenue.
More to come...
