The Session #34: Stumbling Home

The host for this edition of The Session, is James Davoli of Two Parts Rye. This month, James wants us to write about our favorite watering holes, our drinking buddies and of course, how we stumbled home. Although he does have some limitations: no drinking and driving, must be within walking and/or biking distance, or be public transportation/taxi friendly. Here it is in his own words:

It’s time to give a shout out to your favorite watering hole.  How good are the beers?  Any interesting cast of characters?  What are your drinking buddies like?  They probably need to be embarassed on the internet.  Now’s the time.

You don’t have to limit yourself to one.  Feel free to reminisce about the good old days if you like.  Maybe you are a shut-in like this guy, and don’t get out that much, talk about the home bar.

There is a catch.  This booze stuff has interesting side effects.  That means, you can’t get behind the wheel.  You gotta walk, take public transportation, or be a regular supporter of your favorite taxi company.  Bicycles are acceptable but you still need to be careful.  I have the cracked helmet and scars to prove it.  Gotta love the 5 mph one man crash.

To set the record straight, I have never stumbled home. Never. I have been carried back home. I have passed out in backyards and in front of fireplaces. I have crawled up stairs and have been cradled in the arms of a woman I have known for all of 10 minutes, if even that.

But I have never, ever stumbled home. In that respect, this will post will be a little difficult to write about  but I’m sure I have a story to share.

Despite living in the rich, craft ale area that is the San Francisco bay, my particular neck of the woods is somewhat of a beer desert. Yes, there’s the San Jose Gordon Biersch but at the time I’ll be referencing, I wasn’t a regular. There is also the Tied House, but their San Jose location closed down earlier this year. Lastly, there’s Rock Bottom but they consider themselves a Campbell brewery.

In the end, none of this matters as I wasn’t into craft beer as I am today. At the time, I had just graduated from college. I was earning a decent salary at my first “big boy” job. Unfortunately the girl I had been dating at the time decided to end our relationship of nearly 5 years. I did not take this very well. What I did take to well was the bottle. Took to it like a newborn baby to a teat. I drank a lot, excessively, really. One could argue that most college graduates making a decent salary partied hard. Did their parties start on Monday night and last until Saturday night? Mine did.

To say we frequented the local bars in downtown would’ve been an understatement. So I’ll just focus on a single place: San Jose Bar & Grill. At SJBG, the doormen no longer asked us for our IDs while select waitresses would buy us our first round with no expectation we would ever stay. Of course we would. At its heart, SJBG was a sport bar. They served sports bar food and had crappy sports bar beer. This was homebase for us and Newcastle was my go-to beer.

In the middle of this maelström of self-destruction I had my good friend Raul watching my back. He was my designated driver. We were acquaintances in high school and eventually roommates in Phoenix where we attended a trade school together. We lost touch for several years before reconnecting in the driveway of my parent’s house. At the time, and unknown to me, he lived a block down the street. Even more serendipitous, the company he worked for was right next door to mine. Despite this, we never carpooled.

One Wednesday, I called up a bunch of my friends to hang out with Raul and I over at SJBG. There was no real good reason to call the entire gang out to play other than it was Wednesday and there was nothing else better to do. Plus it was 50-cent tater tot night at SJBG. There’s very little in the world more satisfying than deep-fried, greasy potatoes when you’re drunk as funk. I bought a round, rounds were bought for me, life was good.

At one point in the evening, Raul, myself and a buxom friend of mine were engaged in conversation. Somewhere along the way, Raul stopped paying attention to what we were saying and was focused intently on her breasts. This fixation was not lost on her. “Hello?!” my friend would say while waving unsuccessfully at him to get his attention. It wasn’t until she waved her hand directly in front of her lovely lady lumps did he finally snap out of his trance. To his chagrin, Raul eventually looked up to see us laughing at him. Blushing, he just shrugged his shoulders and laughed it off.

I look back at SJBG with a mixture of nostalgia and melancholy. On one hand, many good memories were made there. SJBG was my Cheers. And while not “everyone knew my name” it was a place of comfort for me, a place to escape my troubles. Of course I never did escape my troubles, did I? That’s the other side of the coin. I was foolish to think I could just drink my problems away. I was just postponing the inevitable. Once I confronted my issues, I drank less and things began to turn around for me.

It would be a good two years before that happened.

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