Author’s forward and disclaimer: Welcome to the first
installment of our new, bi-weekly nightlife column, “Barfly on the wall.” As
the name attempts to imply, I’ll be exploring bars and other gathering places
(mostly bars) incognito.
My intention isn’t to spy on people and expose
their embarrassing nocturnal exploits to the public. That is, unless you’re a
recognizable public figure, at least to our libel lawyers.
For
example, say you show up at Jeremiah’s on Monroe Avenue during a Monday Night Football game — like the one last September 16 — on a motorcycle, with a biker buddy
just as bulky and leather-clad as you are. You both proceed to annoy and
intimidate staff and patrons alike with your Bally-meets-Budweiser machismo for
a half hour or so. Then you get back on your cocky little crotch rockets and
rev them loud enough to drown out all conversation inside the tavern for most
of a minute. In that case, I may be moved to write that when, for the first
time in my life, I witnessed an entire bar erupt in relieved applause upon a
patron’s exit, one of those patrons was former Amerks star Scott Metcalf. I
might also add that the other was, as both boasted to everyone in earshot, an
employee of high standing in the company run by a gubernatorial candidate whose
last name rhymes with “Gosh, I dunno.”
I hope
that’s clear. Thanks for reading.
For this inaugural
column, I’ve decided to write about an establishment that exemplifies my first
experiences in Rochester’s nightlife scene: The Rock Bar, at 655 Monroe Avenue.
The Rock reminds me of the old
Rolling Rock on Alexander Street, among dozens of other places. It’s
essentially a keg party where you give someone a couple bucks every time you
want your plastic pee cup filled.
On a recent Wednesday night, the
Rock was filled with what seemed like exactly the same crowd I used to see at
the other Rock years ago. All the girls were young and beautiful; all the guys
young and brutish — at least, as brutish as anyone can look wearing
Abercrombie & Fitch and an earring. And much like my experience at Rolling
Rock, everyone acted as though I didn’t exist.
Maybe they’re ghosts, I mused: drunk
drivers who died years ago and were sentenced by vengeful deities to strut around
on sticky floors, pick petty fights, and squawk like chickens in a factory farm
forever. Booming Top 40 rock and pop is the soundtrack to their eternity,
lukewarm Coors Light the only relief for their unquenchable, Camel
Light-induced thirst.
But no, I realized upon reflection,
they may seem transparent and scary, but they’re real. And just like my friends
and me when we were their age, they’ll get a little older and move on up the
street to bars like Oxford’s, J.J. Flynn’s, and Woody’s — places with a
little more class, or at least glasses.
The Rock is a primitive version of
those watering holes. Male patrons pee in a trough. It’s decorated with beer
mirrors and posters of thugs — The
Sopranos, Goodfellas, The Godfather.
I know it’s not necessarily fair to
pass judgment on a bar designed to appeal to people a decade younger than I am.
But I loathed meat markets like The Rock when I was 21, and hundreds of
subsequent visits to such places never changed my mind. Furthermore, I suspect
there are drinkers-in-training there these days who feel the same way I did,
and they should know they’re not alone.
There are only two reasons guys go
to these joints: cheap beer and chicks. But you can only get so loaded and
bloated on buck Bud drafts before the shallowness of the scene sinks in. At
that point, you realize that even if you meet the girl of your dreams that
night, should she ever want to go back there again, you’d dump her. And where
would you end up the next weekend, still single, bored, and poor?
Chances are some place with the same
nickname as a prison and just as many ways to escape.
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 1, 2002.
