Sunday July 4th, 1010—Bar 175

Day 175—Saturday, July 3rd, 2010
Park Bar
Some days are weird and some days crash right into this bar crawl. It’s about 1:30 am as I type this. I passed out early and woke up early and decided to write the introduction now, since I’m sleeping fitfully.

Funeral days are never easy days. You see somebody all the time and you think you’ll always keep bumping into this person. And then the person is gone and you’re dealt a big mortality lesson. This has happened a lot to me in the past couple years. You get older and part of the penance for living long is watching others go. The population in my building has shrunk by five people in the last few years and it makes you wonder who’s next. And not in a Pete Townshend kind of way, whatever that means. Goodbye Ken, Goodbye John, Goodbye Bobbie, Goodbye Jack. I miss seeing all of you in the hallways here and asking what’s going on. You live and you learn that a big part of life is spent at the mailboxes saying, “How are you?” You answer, “I can’t complain but sometimes I still do.” I steal lines from Joe Walsh. You laugh and you think this is never going to end. It does.

Dennis and Deloy Stoll have been my downstairs neighbors for well over ten years. They’ve been stuck with having to witness me fall down the stairs in a drunken stupor, blare my stereo, cave their roof in when I forgot to monitor the roof overhang and listen to me pace around on the creaky floors in here in various fits of nervousness. I pace when I’m nervous. I’m nervous a lot. So I pace. The floors creak in here. One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. They’re good people. They deal with me.

Last week Dennis lost a battle with cancer and he died. One less neighbor, one less friend, one less person. One more lesson in mortality. But life goes on and a funeral crashes into this bar crawl. I went out yesterday after the mass and had some drinks at a bar with friends from the building and neighborhood. It’s what I do and I think Dennis would be glad I kept this crawl going. So, here’s some photos, I’m not going to caption them because I think Dennis deserves a moment of silence here on the bar crawl. Plus, I’m too hungover to do it and this makes a good excuse for me not to have to write captions. I think that would’ve made him laugh. Hang in there Deloy and cheers to everyone reading this. Treat every day like it’s your last and live in the moment.

I don’t usually ask for comments because I appreciate you just stopping by here and reading what I’m doing, but if you could put in a cheer to Dennis in the comments section, that would be great.

TO DENNIS!



Review

I wasn’t in the proper frame of mind to give this place a review so here’s one from New York Magazine:

On a quiet block just west of Union Square sits this hotel-ish bar with a twist: There's no hotel attached! The wood-paneled walls, white-tiled floors and bartenders in pressed white shirts and black ties may say "old money club," but nobody's really fooled by what's essentially a neighborhood bar for the lower Park Avenue nouveau riche. Suave young turks in Hugo Boss suits and the ladies who love them sip pricey glasses of Veuve Clicquot in the intime setting. But if it's Saturday night, you may want to think twice about coming here for that round of kir royales—weekends can get annoyingly busy. — Charles Runnette

Park Bar
15 E. 15th St. (Near Fifth Ave.)
212-367-9085