A long time ago, in a neighborhood far, far away from where I live now, I used to drink myself into a drunken distortion of truth. I was able to tap into the magnificent forces of the ‘drunk.’ A power that is somehow able to teleport you from the barstool to your bed or hopefully someone else’s before you even knew you wanted to go there.

The place that really honed my skills in the drunk was “Charlie Browns.” In this endeavor I was learning from an old master, his name was Jimmy. He would have a shot of Jameson with every beer and that somehow included his two for one that they used to offer on special.  While becoming one with the drunk I would look around and see the old women and men belting out show toons to the fingers of Pauli, a piano playing virtuoso who looked like a mix between Jaba the hut and Droopy the dog, dancing along the keys. Some nights I’d even find myself singing away to some song though I couldn’t tell you what it was.  

 By the end of the night and luckily after a lot of free drinks the bartender would pull a special bottle of ouzo “from the homeland” down and begin filling our drinks. As those we also my scotch days I was already unable to see, sort of like a blinder in the first star wars, but somehow I was always able to find my cup as well as my mouth.

Anyway, those days are over. What once had the bee hive bartender who alluded Kerouac’s advances, Pauli the Piano playing droopy, and a smoky veil has receded into the pools of average with one free drink on your first drink for happy hour, an overly happy piano player.

I still like Charlie Brown’s. I really do. And while in reality there are better places to go for happy hour, finding love or a night time excursion, finding the crazy drunk, or the strangely odd bartended; I still love the patio during the summer where they have fashioned essentially a smoking room despite the Denver Law. There you almost always can scream across to a table and get in a good conversation. Their pizza, which is served almost to close, is actually really good, and they still give free hot wings for the Friday after work happy hours. But I miss the old atmosphere. The one where you could see the old ghost of beat writers and presidents all mingling together trying to pick up on the a piece of tail or simply bludgeon their sorrow till either it or their own face was lying face down in the gutter. This is another bar where I’ve had some of my best experiences and some of my worst experiences. But at least it’s a bar where experience can still happen.

Papa Sobriety