History Revealed ...

It's days like this that I wish I had a digital camera (and a computer strong enough to upload images).

Today, Tuesday, I left my house and stepped into the cold, wet and dreary August afternoon. Temperatures are barely making it out of the 50's today and there is a constant drizzle with intermittent heavy soaking rains as band after band of storms follow the path of a stalled cold front that has been hovering over the city for the past 2 days. My house is a complete mess, filled with plaster dust after 2 weeks of repair work in my livingroom, diningroom and kitchen, all the result of damage from a leaky roof that had finally been replaced about a month ago. Now the time has come for some cleaning, priming and painting, but this will probably be the last day of cool enough temperatures to work indoors and my original goal was to wait until September to start. Besides, I had a few errands that I needed to run and, since it didn't look like the rain was going to end any time soon, I decided to brave the elements and head out into the city.

My first stop was the bank on Walnut Street. I tapped the ATM and was heading to Suburban station to pick up my weekly trans-pass, but made an about face at 17th Street and walked to The Post bar instead.

The Post has been my old stomping ground for years and has been the subject of many postings (no pun intended) within this blog. But, as history has often repeated with this establishment, trouble befell the owner in the couple of years. It is my opinion that owning this bar is pretty much a curse rather than a blessing. Three owners have died (2 by illness and 1 by a drug overdose) and the last owner is now serving time in jail for dealing crystal meth. The new owners (a lesbian with or without a partner) has taken the liberty of finally doing what had needed to be done for several years: close the Post's doors and completely gut the place and remodel. Outside of some new paint and the occasional taping of an extension cord, this is the first remodel the bar has seen in nearly 2 decades. I don't know how long this remodel job is supposed to take, but from what I've seen today, it looks like progress is going smoothly and fairly quickly. Hopefully, this will also break the curse.

Today, I turned onto Chancellor Street and noticed that the door to the bar was open. I decided to have a look at what sort of remodelling was being done. I was more than taken by surprise by both the progress and the reveal of a bar that has been around for more than 30 years.

The core of the main pub, the large oval bar, was completely gone. In its place was nothing more than a pile of old sinks in the center of the room. The tvs that had often filled the room with images from everything from superbowl games to Oscars to the somber images of continuous coverage of the world trade center attack were gone. The ceiling (long ago ripped down to fix a bad leak and never repaired, but instead painted black in an attempt to make the termite infested wooden struts look more industrial) remained, but the ceiling fan was now dangling, hanging at an odd angle like the ghostly images of the barnacle encrusted chandelier taken at the site of the Titanic wreck.

Beyond the main room, past the narrow doorway that once led down a small ramp to the "game room" and the back bar beyond, the black painted walls were stripped, revealing the studs underneath. A lone green light (which instantly reminded me, for some reason, of the green light at the end of the dock in the Great Gatsby)dangled from the ceiling in that room. From my vantage point in the front door, the light seemed to hold a certain sadness to it, the way it dangled from a weak cord. I guess that was why I was reminded so much of Fitzgerald's book, something I hadn't thought about since Junior High when I read it. But I remember the symbolism behind that light in the story; how it represented Gatsby's longing for, not only Daisy, but everything: money, happiness, success. But it always came back to his one true love. And that's what this light brought to me. It was like I was suddenly seeing this bar's true history for the first time and how it longed for what it once was. The bar has seen so much tragedy and chaos. This light (to me) seemed to reflect that.

This image in my mind, this sense of history being revealed and the bar's longing to capture it (as strange as it may sound) became more relevant when my eyes scanned the main room and fell upon the graffiti riddled wall that once held the incredible male nude sketches done by the former owner's lover. As I said, all the walls have been stripped, but what lay underneath the drywall was evidence of another time, a long forgotten time.

I can only imagine that the writing on the wall had been done many many years ago back when the original Post bar was stripped of it's rich history for the first time, back when the rich panelling (from what I heard described) was torn down and the original bar (with its four strong columns standing guard on each corner) were removed. On the wall infront of me today was layer upon layer upon layer of spray-painted messages, some unreadable, some overlapping others, and some stood out: "Rodney Loves Phil", "Glory Daze", "This Sucks - Mike". These were just some of the messages on the wall that I could read (and remember before getting home to write this). It made me wonder about the men who spray painted these messages. Were they regulars back in the '70s? Was this their time capsule, so to speak? I wanted to walk further into the room and examine the writings more, but I heard noises coming from the back room.

As I write this, I am filled with a mixture of emotions: curiosity and wonder. Whatever happened to these people? Are they alive? Have they passed on? What would they think if they saw their little "tribute wall" had been exposed after all these years? Other emotions are happiness and sadness. Happy because I was able to stumble upon this and I know that not too many people will ever see this reveal. Sadness because, like that light, I long for the times when the Post was like family to me. Now all the regulars are scattered, their common thread destroyed by the greed of one man and his drugs.

No matter what is done to the post, no matter how many improvements they make, it will never be the same. Too many things have changed in the last couple of years. People--friends--who were tight back then are no longer talking to one another, while others have found new watering holes.

When that wall of writings is once again covered, it will be joined with the memories of the last of that generation along with the memories of a new generation that had never witnessed what The Post was like in its true hay day. The memories will be drywalled, spackled and painted over, forever covered. Sure, there may be times to remember and talk, but like everything else, the images will begin to fade, being replaced with new memories, some good and some not so good.

As I write this, a new band of heavy rains begins to beat against my bedroom window. In August, I'm wearing jeans, a t-shirt and a button down flannel. The sky is still grey and cold.

...And a bar stands alone, its ghosts calling out from a mold-covered wall.