Lost in transit

More Posts About Buildings and Booze

I’ve been told that pub culture did once exist in the United States, but that it was smacked to its knees by Prohibition and never quite recovered. I don’t know if that’s true. I do know that the countries I’ve been to have had pubs, and that I’ve enjoyed this so much that I can’t now imagine life without them. A place to go for a quick meal or an all-nighter, where the servers recognize you and remember your favorites; a place where you may run into friends, other regulars, or may not; a place where moving between tables and talking to strangers is okay –although not doing so is not considered odd. Socializing is standard, but not required; flirting is encouraged but anything beyond that is exceptional; darts and pool and music are all considered bonus; fighting is rare.

I used to go to a bar here called Korab. Korab was small, maybe five tables, tucked in an alley off one of the "bad streets", down a narrow flight of stairs. The owner was balding, with long greasy hair in back, rotten teeth, the build of an aging rugby player. His wife was kind (unless crossed), a true barmaid, with the alcohol tear tracks on her face.

I loved that place, because no matter what you did you weren't going to be the worst person there. Hana would serve beer commando, bending from the waist in her short short skirt. A man tried to navigate the stairs (the toilets were upstairs, in the alley) and fell down, passed out at the foot of the stairs, pissed himself. They mopped around him and kept going. This is not the pub where I saw the dead guy, but it could have been. I did see a particularly nasty fist fight, once.

These were hard people. These were people who had grown up under Communism, and whatever ambitions they might have had were fairly well drowned. If capitalism could have offered them a different life, it was in any case too late for them to find out. Bartenders, truck drivers, garbage men, construction workers. But also: an opera singer, a teacher, an attorney. They started drinking after work and stumbled out when the owner got tired, usually about six hours of heavy drinking.

It’s the only place I’ve gone where the next beer was consistently on the table just as I tipped back the last swallow of the first one. Zdenek would sometimes pass out at a table for five minutes, stumble back to the bar in time to get you your beer, pass out again. Excellent beer, too, not that you can go wrong with Czech beer, but it was good tapping, in Korab.

They were hard, but it was different from any hard drinking bar I’ve been to in the States. They played children’s board games, they had potluck parties (called “poison your friends"), and they listened to some of most varied music I’ve ever heard in public.

It’s closed; it closed three years ago. And I’m still missing – I don’t know. Not the people, exactly. Something. There’s a very nice pub down the street, though, with excellent cooking, and we went there the other night and played Scrabble, and the waitress called where we sat –where we usually sit– “your table”, and although the place down the street is considerably more refined, that was the closest I’ve come to feeling like I used to feel in Korab.

I feel stupid for complaining about my dear beloved lost pub, because at least I have alternatives. There is not a single bar in the California neighborhood where my parents live (three Starbucks, two mega grocery stores, a Target…). Here, I have a choice of places within walking distance of my apartment, where I can go get a good plate of pickled cheese and a tasty beer at 10 p.m., should I wish. That’s a good thing. Now I just have to find the place where they put the beer down before I’ve got my coat off. Then I’ll know I’m home.

Posted by anne at March 4, 2005 09:54 AM