NIGHTLIFE
Adventures of the Lost Expedition, Part VI: Partytown at its peak
Oct. 22, 1982
CAPTAIN’S LOG, BAR
DATE VI: Still bedazzled by the blue neon ribbons of the Elmwood galaxy,
the Captain strode to the staging area for what promised to be the most manic
episode in the continuing mission to drink in every bar from the foot of Main Street Buffalo to the Genesee County North
Buffalo . Partytown at its peak on a roaring Friday night.
Designated
as base camp was Cassidy’s, a long-running teen and collegiate oasis at 2680
Main and Amherst
Assembled
in a human wall at the front door were the members of the Lost Expeditions –
all present, totally accounted for and unanimously in favor of leaving.
Immediately. Was there a choice? The amped-up incantations of Jim Morrison made
conversation impossible in anything but body language and young bodies were
sandwiched into the bar area like sardines. Chances of obtaining a round of
drinks in anything less than a light year were nebulous, at best.
From this
overpopulated scene, we transported posthaste to quite a different environment
at Jingles, 2938 Main at Hertel. Though it was
well past 10 p.m., the place was bereft of life forms, save for a blonde and
remarkably buxom young barmaid named Dawn.
Expeditioners
quickly manned their stations. Some took command of the video games in the far,
pine-paneled corner. Another contingent held down a table in the center of the
main barroom next to the jukebox. The rest were positioned strategically at the
end of the bar. World Series Game Three played soundlessly on the barside color
TV. The Captain watched long enough to determine that his Brewers were getting
roundly trounced.
At first,
there was no sign of the evening’s main attraction, a group called The Fems,
which New York Rocker magazine has commended as “the year’s top ‘---- you’ band.” Carrying amps and instruments, they
arrived shortly before 11 with the first contingent of punks and punkettes, who
quickly turned the place into a casting call for the film “Class of 1984.”
Among them was one of the city’s most flamboyant musical personalities, the
irrepressible Mark Freeland of Electro-Man and numerous other off-the-wall
projects. He was merely sitting in on drums, he reported.
The sound
system switched from WUWU-FM to Gang of Four and trekkers, fearing entanglement
in the $2 cover charge, set off for the next stop, Broadway Joe’s Office and
Cocktail Lounge at 3051 Main , the place which
suffers from the city’s most overwhelming case of bar-next-door syndrome. The
adjacent drinkery is the hugely popular Mickey Rat’s City Bar, whose clientele
creates a parking implosion that extends for blocks.
True to
form, Broadway Joe’s had a leisurely air. About three dozen college-age patrons
lined the bar and surrounded the wooden beams fencing in the pool table, which
had so many quarters on the rim that our billiards technicians gave up any
thoughts of showing their form. A large-screen TV projected fuzzy soundless
images of the Cardinals fattening their lead on the Brewers and boxes of
multiple small speakers around the room roared with the Rolling Stones and Bad
Company.
Next door
at Mickey Rat’s, the customary line at the entrance had not yet formed, so the
expeditioners merely had to ante up the $1 admission fee. The place was packed,
though perhaps not quite so severely as Cassidy’s, and obtaining drinks from
the auxiliary bar was miraculously quick.
Of all the
stops this night, this place clearly had the most flash, both in décor and
dress. Mickey Rat’s is done up to the nines in light wood paneling and stained
glass, the only odd note being the meringue-like stucco around the lights over
the bar. The big, square bar area was a milling sea of singles, whose mingling amounted
to a series of random squeeze-bys. Rich Walborn, chief engineer for Moog Music,
surveyed the dance floor serenely with a post-Judas-Priest cocktail.
It was with
no small relief that the safari fled this singles-scene overload in favor of
the final stop, an outpost in the great Frank Turgeon empire at 3151 Main formerly known as The Sign of the Steer and now
designated simply as The Steer. Only other change has been the addition of
another side to the bar, allowing drinks to be poured on both sides of the
cozy, old-fashioned club-like area downstairs.
The adventurers
had worked up considerable appetites and, happily, the kitchen would be open
till 2 a.m. Out came a couple specialties of the house – thoroughly satisfying
chicken wings at $2.95 for a single, $4.95 for a double, and a half-rack of
outstanding barbecued ribs at $6.95. This being past the peak midnight hour,
there was a choice of tables and the waitresses were blessedly efficient.
Thus
refreshed, most of the safari bid good night, but the chief science officer, in
the interest of research, prevailed upon the Captain to take a second look at
where we’d been, since we were returning to Main
and Hertel on foot anyway.
Our iridescent
hand-stamps got us re-entry to Mickey Rat’s, where the scene had assumed a
certain ripeness of music and mingling. Rich Walborn nodded hello. As we picked
through the pack to an exit, an aggravated young woman protested with a flurry
of arm wrestling. Good grief, the Captain reflected, does this place aggravate
latent cases of agoraphobia? If this lady didn’t want to be jostled, she
shouldn’t buy her way in.
Better she
should go next door to Broadway Joe’s, which was a perfect picture of open
space and inactivity. Jingles was still hopping, though. The Fems artfully
extrapolated a turgid, throbbing sound for a side room filled with lurid
dancers in studded leather, shocking smocks and even more startling haircuts.
Sudden
silence. “We decided we’re going to take a short break up here,” they
announced, resuming when they were good and ready. Talk about a “---- you”
band. Their fans accepted it politely. “These folks are really pussycats,” the
chief science officer reported. “One guy stepped on my foot and actually said: ‘Excuse
me.’”
The crush
had subsided considerably at Cassidy’s. No push-and-shove was necessary. The
bartenders cavorted noisily and owner Andy Chambers, recognizing the Captain,
proposed a celebratory round of shots. The Wheel still runs on Wednesdays and
Saturdays, he said, and the place has done so well, there’s been no impetus to
change. Surveying the wet remains of this Partytown Friday night, he added that
he still has the same little old cleaning lady too. “She’s amazing,” he said. “I
don’t know how she does it, but by tomorrow afternoon, everything’ll be spic
and span again.”
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