MEET ME AT OUR USUAL
Joint redux: Ventura, California’s favorite “joint”, the Star Lounge.
By MICHAEL PERKINS
I RECENTLY READ WHAT MIGHT BE, in tavern terms, public notice of a wake of sorts, advertising the partial return of a favorite local hangout that winked out during the darker days of The Plague, capping twenty years of a generally fine stretch as an Irish pub in the main streets of Tempe, Arizona. I say “partial return” because said hangout will not be returning to its original address, but will be merely a seasonal “pop-up” within the nearby Arizona State arena district, with a small commemorative bar and fixtures from the old site on display, pulled out of storage for some strange museum effect, or, to my mind, a kind of open casket viewing. Think relics of the Titanic with a liquor license. Not exactly warm and cozy.
I have, over a lifetime, availed myself plentifully of bars, but I am nearly religious in my zealotry for what are often called “joints”. The word is elusive in its precise meaning, and we can have many a beery dispute about what qualifies this or that place for the title. Suffice it to say, however, that most joints are also bars, but many bars fail utterly at being joints. It’s a term of endearment, one which must almost always be earned.
Right this way…
The fine establishment you see here, the Star Lounge in downtown Ventura, California, meets my very subjective criteria for a joint, and indeed is specifically known as one to the locals. As a photographic subject, you can see that it offers tons in what could loosely be called “atmosphere”. It is weathered without being seedy, unpretentious without being subtle. It’s comfy as an old bedroom slipper but still slick and busy and boisterous around the edges. Chain restaurants break their necks trying to make their mass-produced watering holes pass the joint test, and most of them come no closer than a TGIF or a Chili’s. Bars they may be; joints they most certainly are not.
I love taking images of places that have earned their slot in permanent cities, as opposed to strip malls. Joints are community assets, gathering places where great ideas are argued, great songs are sung (mostly loudly) and great reunions and occasions are arranged. In short, they are more than the sum of the accumulated furniture, which is why they can’t be replicated by merely showing off a few fixtures. Joints, in a way that a photographer can truly love, aren’t pop-ups.
They’re stick-arounds.
REQUIEM FOR A DIVE
By MICHAEL PERKINS
LENGTHY TIME-OUTS, whether imposed by illness, separation, or the combination of both that we find ourselves presently enduring, limit our ability to create new experiences, but they do provide ample space for deeply breathing in the vapors of old ones. If, like me, you’ve found yourself reviewing a lot of old images, either to burn time or enrich your memories, then you’re bound to stumble across pictures of more than a few things or people that make the photographs truly poignant, because the subjects they depict are simply….gone.
Not just gone from your reach or your convenience, gone as in destroyed, razed, demolished. Victims of “progress” or disaster. Casualties of time or carelessness. Locales that recall amazing days with friends, or lonely nights of longing. Places that are so gone that a photo is the only testimony to them ever having existed. I don’t know why so many of these places, for me, are joints; remote watering holes, out-of-the-way dives with no distinguishing charm or saving grace. The word bar is far too exalted for grungy little crevices such as those that I most dearly cherish. The decor ranges from random to desperate. The menus are the stuff of dyspeptic nightmares. The customers inhabit some purgatory between Damon Runyon’s subterranean sharpies in Guys ‘n’ Dolls to the sweat-soaked retreats of defeated fighters to the hidey-holes of lost souls. And I have done my best, in rotten light and good, with or without the management’s blessing, to do them justice with whatever camera I have had handy.
The late and lamented (at least by me) Greasewood Flats, Northern Arizona.
The place you see here used to grace a dusty stretch of rural biker retreats north of Scottdale, Arizona collectively known as Greasewood Flats, and, take it from me, both the food and drinks did the name proud. No pink cellophane toothpicks in your girly cocktails here, dearie. We came to drink until we need help sorting the denominations of the beer-soaked bills out of our wallet, till the door to the parking lot becomes a major navigational negotiation. Sadly, the Flats fell to the wrecking ball a few years ago, and I have yet to summon the courage to see what civilized nonsense occupies the land today. I only know that I can still smell the burgers (broiled outside over big pits, then walked inside), and I will never be able to hear Dwight Yoakam again without a distinct pang.
But I got the picture.
So here’s a toast to whatever divine dives or forgotten apartments or first girls your pictures bring back into your heart in these long, long days. They are good companions and good friends. And powerful. Because other than a great picture, only a good friend can really make you cry.
(FIAT LUX, Michael Perkins’ latest collection of images, is now available through NormalEye Books.)
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