Diving in Miami

“It’s Chilly outside. It’s Chilly inside. It’s a regular fucking Chili-fest!”  
     -Dennis Farina, aka Ray “Bones” Barboni, in Get Shorty

My first night in Miami Beach it was 33 degrees Fahrenheit, making it not quite as warm as it was in Frostbite Falls, Minnesota. As I walked through the neon-soaked streets bundled up in my peacoat, gloves, and knit cap, I kept on expecting to see the line for the ski lift.

There were several reasons I was in town. Firstly, I was on vacation, holiday, annual leave, snow-birding, or whatever they call it where you’re from. Secondly, I was in town to get plugged in to the nightlife scene: I had been given several primo contacts by Blanco from SF and the Acid King from NYC. Thirdly and fourthly, I wanted to see if Miami Beach was the kind of town I could live in, which would require finding a great dive bar to call my own. Replacing “The Syc” would be next-to-impossible, but this was a town with a tawdry reputation, or so I’d hoped.

Hope can be a cruel mistress.

My first stop was the ambitiously named Abbey Pub, promising monk-like devotion to Belgian and craft ales and cozy surroundings. Out front, the lack of signage piqued my interest. As I squinted through the half-light and smoke upon entering, I thought I actually spied a monk behind the bar. Upon closer inspection, said “monk” was just another gap-toothed Florida inbred, with a figure like Quasimodo,  a voice like Yoda, and a face like Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein.  

There was a beer menu up on the wall next to a TV that looked like it had seen it best days during the Reagan years. I picked out a stout from the list and signaled the bartender over by level eye contact, meaning I practically had to get into a batter’s crouch.

It took slightly under four minutes for him to cross the ten-foot distance from the other end of the bar.

“Young’s Double Chocolate, please,” I requested.

He snickered. “Old, that sign is,” pointing with his eyes. “A different beer, you must order. The house quadrupel, recommend I would,” he warbled sycophantically. I was doubtful. A quadrupel beer is an acquired taste, and usually comes in at about 11% alcohol. Usually not my thing at all.

Maybe it was a Jedi mind trick, maybe it was a “when-in-Rome” thing, but I acquiesced to try a taste of the house brew. He pushed a shot glass towards me of something that looked and smelled like oil sludge. I closed my eyes and drank it down, immediately regretting my decision.  I would imagine actually oil sludge would taste miles better. My vision swam, as the faces of the pub dwellers around me began to take on amphibian characteristics, like that hotel bar scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Before it was too late, I turned 180 degrees and bolted for the door, where the unseasonably crisp Miami air managed to quickly revive me.

I inhaled and exhaled deeply, and bolstered myself further with the fact that there were still many more dives on my list, all of them with 4 star Yelp ratings. For the most part, however, each one proved more disappointing than the last. Before I expound on their suckitude, I should mention that Miami has the edge over New York in two ways – one, bars are open until 5am, a solid hour later than NYC, and two, they allow cigarette smoking. The Puritans have not co-opted Miami yet, meaning you can still kill yourself slowly at the bar with a coffin nail in one hand and a mixed drink in the other, until the sun comes up over Ocean Drive. That being said, none of the bars here have a decent ventilation system, so your clothes need fumigating after a night of Miami bar hopping.

The places I went to that night had great reviews and names that Charles Bukowski would love: The Lush, Mac’s Deuce, Dewey’s Liquor Bar, Zeke’s Roadhouse, Ted’s Hideaway…but in a town that has more American Apparels than Starbucks’, where English is a non-native language and personalities are paper-thin and skin-deep, it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me than there didn’t seem to be a proprietor around who knew the proportions to that perfect cocktail of soul, depravity, atmosphere, character, and cheap booze that constitutes a great dive bar, a place where a beast like me can feel as comfortable nursing a pint by myself listening to some forgotten Neil Young or Miles Davis track as I would be chatting up the bartender.

Here’s a list of a few things dive bars should not have: hip-hop at excessive volume, skunked Heineken, female bartenders with considerably more pounds than IQ points, Red Stripe bottles that cost $6, or white Christmas trees. So far, all the places I’d visited failed on one or more accounts.

The last stop of the night, divewise, was Ted’s. Could one place redeem a night that was so far an epic fail? As I rolled in, sidled up to the bar, and collected the aforementioned Red Stripe, I became aware of an incessant squawking to my left. At first I thought it was someone’s parrot, on day pass from his cage nearby. Upon looking over my shoulder, however, it became apparent the squawker was too drunk to be avian. He was a different animal – that kind of lush who complains continuously, but in a hypnotic way - not enough for you to say “hey, let me buy you a drink” but enough for you to continue listening and nodding long past the point where you should’ve told the guy to fuck off. You know exactly the kind I’m talking about, because sometimes I’ve been that squawking lush.  

This fine fountain of negativity was looked to be on his first disposable razor still, but his grumbling and chain-smoking proved his prodigy status - a youth so disillusioned at a quarter century could only serve as an indictment of his surroundings: though the proud owner of two decent paying jobs, as a waiter and construction diver, he talked 40 minutes without a positive statement, before I altered his worldview by saying he should be putting his hypnotic rants down on paper. This pronouncement served to placate him, and he rose to his feet as quickly as if he had had the idea himself. He thanked me for my wisdom, pumped my hand with a smile like he just had just gotten a booty call, and sped off into the night. I followed his path as far as the jukebox by the door, where the sight of a 100-kilo 20-year-old pink-wig-wearing headbanging African-American girl fully distracted me. I had no idea that Black Sabbath’s War Pigs could have that effect on young girls. If I had, I would have for damn sure put that track on a mixtape a long time ago…

To be continued….

Comments

[Trouble]

Nohing beats sitting out the back or the Syc with The Smiths playing ciggy in hand (or a boy in hand depending on how the night is going). Come back to SF as my liver NEEDS YOU! x

[Irelandets]

not to shabby nebbish, not shabby at all