Last Call - For Alcohol

It's never too early to drink.

So while I’m waiting for the morning tea to brew (Bond Street English Breakfast - love it). I discovered the remains of my last alcoholic beverage from the night before and well, waste no, want not. (it’s a really good rum).

Outside there is an inch of frozen precipitation on the ground. I hesitate to call it snow, because it came down as ice crystals last night. The dog, who needed to go out, wouldn’t. So put on some warm clothes and out a went. Crunchy, slippery, the dog loves it.

But, let’s get back to the point: Last Call.

I’ve been through Last Call in a lot of states. In some places where last call is at MIDNIGHT (those law makers need punishing). It means the bar closes at 11:30. In a lot of places, the bar / club closes a half hour before ‘last call’. Because the duesch bags (technical term) wrote the law that way. So this means you’re flushing all those drunks out onto the street a half hour sooner than you could be. And while the average citizen is still out and about.

In NY where I grew up, Last Call - for Alcohol, was at 4am. At 4am, they stopped serving alcohol, and nothing was allowed to sit on the bar. So if a cop stuck his head in, he saw the bar was clear. So you order a couple of drinks, and take them to a table. So now you can hang out and keep drinking, or you can sober up before you leave. At 6am the bar reopens, in that they can start serving again.

Now the bigger clubs probably start shutting their doors sometime in there. But the smaller bars? On the weekends, they didn’t close, they stayed open round the clock (and would often have food in the mornings at some places). We used to have an expression for drinking through Last Call, i.e. - get a couple of drinks and go through those during that two hour close period, then start up again at six. But that was so long ago when I was in college that I can’t recall it. Typically we’d do it once or twice during the summer break because we’d have crappy low paying jobs (min wage was like a buck fifty back then and you were lucky to get that) and every once in a while you’d want to tie one on.

Neptunes, in Massapegua NY is the place I did it the most. There have been a couple of famous people who used to hang there, though they weren’t exactly famous back then. Brian Seltzer (did I spell that right?) of the Stray Cats, and later his own big band was one of them. (BTW, I heard that All American’s, across the road from there has closed down? End of an Era if so.)

Anyway, my tea is done, and so is my rum. Time to wake up and get to work.

Oh, and yes, it’s very cold and blustery outside. Slippery too. Looks like a good day to stay home.