Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Preliminary thoughts on a tragedy


From an e-mail to friends from a Sophie's regular on Dec. 20:


It goes without saying that that item from today's Page Six was badder than bad. Devastating. Tragic. Unjust. And, I hesitate to admit, expected.
I just got back from an extended lunch at the Barrow Street Pub (Tavern? Saloon?) to digest the news, gather intelligence, cope, and curse the moon and stars. After the laughter comes tears. For those about to die, we salute you. Make that a triple.
There's cause for hope, I've been happy to learn. And yet four dollar beers may turn into sixers; flushing toilets may replace the cesspools into which we've all gazed, starry-eyed, on more occasion than one. Time will tell.
For now, I encourage you all to frequent Sophie's with a previously unsurpassed sense of devotion. Raise a glass to all the fucking crazies and lunatics; the gamblers, tall-tale tellers, booze-hounds, stray cats, sports experts, pool sharks, street philosophers, junkheads, and college kids; The nicotine-stained, glass-eyed, trembling, bow-legged, black-lunged, red-eyed, and crinkle-cut; The doughed-down, dunked-up, drowned-out dudes and dudettes
who hang out in there. The good people. And Ducky, too.

VIVA LE SOPH!

1 comment:

JOR said...

Well, went there (Sophie's) a couple of weeks ago on late Wednesday afternoon, and I was carded! -- the bartender probably even wasn't even born when I started going to Sophie's. Anyway, I don't know if it was her way of pushing us out (i'm not Caucasian and I was with a Caucasian person) or it was a compliment or she's just following "rules" and that she was just too young (she looked 19) to know whether a person is old enough to drink. Only stayed for a beer and left. I guess that's my farewell to that place and soon to the EV. Yeah, EV's gone, I gotta move on.