This Tuesday night, Oct. 7, my nephew was in town, so we went out for dinner at Artie's on Broadway near 83rd Street. I had taken him to Yogi's a time or two, and normally we would have stopped in to see the luscious Theresa, the queen of Tuesday nights for about the last seven or eight years.
Before heading to the restaurant, I passed by Yogi's to see if somehow my recollection that it had closed this past Saturday night was just a hallucination implanted by alien kidnappers from a hostile galaxy, or maybe some falsehood claimed in a campaign attack ad. Maybe I had dreamt it all, and now that the beer from the previous week had worn off (except on my dirty laundry awaiting cleaning), I would discover that it was all some big misunderstanding.
And maybe I would also get a text from Halle Berry saying that her hotel key was under the doormat of room 1410.
The place was dark and locked. It was night when I arrived and hard to see inside, but it looked like any ordinary, boring, spiritless bar. The big labels on the beer taps appeared to have been removed. There were some things littered about, although the liquor bottles still seemed to sit there. And outside, the bear was gone, gone for the first time in about 25 or so years. It was as if its heart and soul had been ripped out.
I only stayed outside the bar a couple of minutes, but in that brief time I heard several passersby commenting on the countdown clock and saying, "They held out as long as they could." If such decisions were left up to the community, and not some faceless real estate bandits, I might be drinking there right now instead of posting this.
My nephew and I both decided to split after dinner instead of getting beers somewhere else. He has a very busy schedule while here, and I just didn't feel like suddenly looking for a new bar home on the Upper West Side after first having gone there, when it was still McGowan's, at some time I now wish I had recorded, in the mid or late 1970's.
That is what Yogi's was to so many of us, a place for our drinking family and a place for our real family. I had taken countless people there from all around the world, and mostly made ready converts of them, even on the slowest of nights.
First what made Yogi's special was the people. While every place has its share of assholes, the people plus the setting made most folks quite friendly, and friendlier than any bar I have frequented either regularly or even a few times.
The music played a large role in that. The main message of the rockin', outlaw country music which filled its semi-functional jukebox was that life and individual happiness should be celebrated. There is a true passion for freedom in these tunes, freedom in the individual and social sense and not just meaning formal freedom like voting, etc. You could celebrate
you right there, while drinking your beer, singing and yee-hawing along with the songs, and then trying to wade through the soggy men's room when it was time to unload.
The gorgeous women behind the bar also, of course, made Yogi's special. Most of them, especially the veterans, made you feel right at home. Many of us guys in there couldn't pass as metrosexuals if it meant getting a chunk of that bailout loot. It usually didn't matter quite what you looked like, and especially what you were wearing - so long as you tipped nicely, thank you.
And the cheap, cold beer, that elixir of the common man and woman, was the cornerstone of this perfect quartet which made so many of us fall in love with this filthy, little place.
The people, the music, the women, and the beer - all guarded by the bear, which has since gone missing.
Now we are orphans again, left to search for a new bar home either farther away or with a different vibe. Hopefully The Duck, which opens Thursday, will do well, and there are always gems like Doc Holliday's remaining, but East Harlem and the East Village may be too far to travel for those who liked to get smashed while listening to Merle and Willie on the Upper West Side.
At the behest of drinking buddy Joe, I hung around as long as they would let me to be the last paying customer to exit Yogi's, forever, at this location anyway. He said it was only fitting, since I probably had been going to this bar the longest of anyone there that night, and certainly among the longest.
A crowd hung around outside for some time afterwards, just as it started to rain, as if David Allan Coe went to pick up his mom again. The raindrops hastened everyone's retreat, the countdown clock with all those zeros told the story, and it was over.
The
NYCBP.com message boards have some great recaps of the last night there by many of my rowdy friends. I am not posting my fuzzy pictures taken with my camera phone, as there were many folks there with real, fancy, digital jobs who have promised to flood us with these memories. But I still have my pics to save.
The last song played on that ole jukebox was Sawyer Brown's "Some Girls Do." Its line of "I ain't first class, but I ain't white trash" describes a lot of us who walked in the door past that bear. And for those who loved Yogi's, whether or not they were white anything, the line, "Some girls don’t like boys like me, but some girls do", summed up a lot of our experiences, both there and elsewhere.
There is no hiding the sadness so many of us are feeling now that Yogi's is gone. It was surreal knowing what the countdown clock said, and it will take some time and frustrations like I experienced Tuesday night for it to sink in. A lot of us put in some extra tours of drinking duty during this last week at Yogi's, so we may not be all that ready or eager to whoop it up this soon. But the emptiness will hit you, sooner, probably, than later.
Labels: beer, dive bars, Eddie Goldman, New York, Sawyer Brown, Some Girls Do, upper west side, Yogi’s
Regardless of which holiday you celebrate (or, for people like me, don’t), you can’t help being bombarded this time of year by armies of Santa Clauses, usually seeking a bailout, and from you.
