The Norm’s Spot – Norm van Maastricht

Posted By Norm van Maastricht on April 16, 2009

                                                                                                      
I really can’t remember how I met Dan but I do know we were looking for a doorman at the live music saloon called Barney Steel’s in Redwood City where I was the de facto manager.  I suspect it was through a mutual friend, Jan Condran, a waitress on my crew at the time.
 
If a perfect doorman ever existed he was it.  We had him for about ten years I think. 

Our bar did not attract a violent crowd but on a few occasions his gentle, wise, manner would get set aside and this brief but effective Grizzly Bear would pop out and, with little fanfare, settle the situation of the moment.
 
The rest of the time he was amazingly congenial, never seeming to tire of greeting customers with “Good evening, Welcome to Barney Steel’s.  The cover tonight is ___ and the band tonight is ____”
Endlessly…!     Always with a smile.
 
But he was much more than that.  I’m sure I share the same kind of memory as others in his deep listening and gentle responses as I/we vented our latest mental or moral trouble. Always the guy to encourage someone’s efforts.  A man of infinite wisdom and wit, wit that was never at someone else’s expense.
 
Most nights he was working I stood next to him a lot of the time to check the customers as they came in and occasionally give him a break so he could go on a “parking lot check” with someone.  I’d go on a ‘parking lot check’ with him from time to time too, where rumor has it certain herbs may have been smoked.  I can’t remember…
And we talked.  We talked for hours about “Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax…of Cabbages and Kings” as Lewis Carroll would say.  
 
I never saw him drunk.  Ever.  Maybe two beers a night if that.  A man who led by example.  He had a drive of about thirty miles at the end of the night and he would not risk a DUI… 
We had a lot in common, he and I, but at the same time we were very unalike, myself being everything they attribute to an Aries.  His Steady Mellow and my Intensity harmonized pretty well.
 
He was a pretty good pool player.  He never rattled….
 
After the bar shut its doors we drifted away to do other things as people will and we saw less of each other.  Distance and busy lives… we all know how it is.  And a visit from time to time, more of an incidental crossing of paths, were not be the same as the bonding we had at that bar.  A bonding we both missed.
 
But when someone Takes Flight suddenly like this I regret the opportunities missed to communicate, to have had at least one more dinner… one more e.mail…that kind of thing… too many things unsaid…
 
The Dan I knew never seemed troubled or worried but he must have been so at times because he was human with the same pains and pressures of life all of us face…some of the pains he had to go through  took their toll.  But you never knew because he hid it and made it About You.  You got his full attention.  Didn’t matter what it was that had you in a flutter and flurry, he would talk you down in his own inimitable way.  

Jan aptly put it this way  “He always knew the right words and his talent for getting you to realize the answer to your own question was uncanny.”
 
He would answer any question and even when his answer was “I don’t know.” you felt better anyway…
 
When I grow up I want to be just like him.

Category: General Writings | 4 Comments »
Tags: Dan York, Doorman Dan

Posted By Norm van Maastricht on March 30, 2009

Another segment of a project The Rise and Fall of a Saloon In The Latter Part off The Twentieth Century. These excerpts are not chronological. In fact very little logic prevails…

 

Book My Band Part One  ~ Conception and Birth

Most bands start out as a bunch of friends gathering at each other’s houses and learning (hopefully) how to play their instruments.  Sometimes this is done via music lessons but that is the rarity.  A large percentage of these formative bands are started by groups of friends with just a marginal understanding of their instrument.

This level of band is called the ‘garage band’, a name gained by the fact that most of the gatherings were banned to the garage by the parents who owned the garage.
Most garage bands and their musicians are inspired by some current popular group.  The classic example of this is how so many young men had no idea they even wanted to play guitar until they saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show.  Suddenly millions of hormonally stoked youth saw themselves as being on the receiving end of money fame and, most importantly, groupies.

They also found soon enough that you don’t get much fame, money or groupies in a garage.
It was thought that they must make The Record

And to make The Record they needed to become, if not Famous, at least very well known.  And one of the ways they gain notoriety is to “Play Out” and hopefully get paid.  And get groupies so they might get laid in the process…
Critical decisions had to be made.   A band name must be chosen and it must be a name that evoked some kind of imagery.  Only then could they have cards printed and when they had cards printed they were officially a band.  Cards trump musicianship.  Cards gave Identity.

They played parties, usually for free.  They played any event that would have them.  In the latter part of the twentieth century there were even things called “Battle Of The Bands” often sponsored by musical instrument manufacturers and were usually well attended, if noisesome, events where bands competed usually for the prize of a “record contract”.  It is uncertain whether these contracts ever produced a record  however…
For the most part the settings they played for didn’t pay at all.
To get paid they needed to build a repertoire, a list of songs that everyone in the band could play reasonably well for four hours.

Why?

So they could Play Out in local Saloons and Make Money and get Famous.

In the latter part of the twentieth century there were indeed local saloons that would pay bands to play for their patrons.
There was something like a multi leveled circuit of bars and saloons that depended on and, in some cases, exploited the small musical groups looking to get ahead.

The entry level bars had the bands playing in a corner, usually cramped, with no visible stage and no in-house sound system.  These joints usually cited ‘experience’ as the best pay they offered with some vague hint at ‘maybe later on’ paying something.   There never seemed to be an end to bands who would sign on to such venues.  This was exploitation of course because the “maybe later on”  promise of more money never materializes in that kind of venue.

But it served to winnow out some of the worse bands.  Quickly, too!

As time went on and the surviving bands gained some following they would graduate to venues like The Bar that actually paid money.  A good band could do fairly well playing the local circuit of saloons like The Bar that actually had a stage and a real dance floor.  They played saloons like The Bar as more or less bread and butter as they set their sights on the next level, the large stage and road shows.  Those venues often had them again playing for free (or close to it) as ‘opening acts’ for the ‘headliners’ and eventually being a ‘headliner’ themselves.
Getting to this level increased the Fame factor and usually made getting The Record more attainable.
But that’s not what this is about.  This is about one of the bars on the circiut…

The Bar was a very good room for music.   They had overhead stage lights, a fourteen channel sound system, good microphones, monitors, a rock steady stage and a parquet dance floor.  The Bar was better suited for live music than most of its competitors.  The Bar charged a cover on weekends and if a band was a good draw everyone made money.

There were some bands that seemed to have been around forever and saw frequent bookings… bands like Stu Blank and His Nasty Habits, Back In The Saddle, Mark Ford Band, Merlin, Uncle Rainbow, Daddy-O,  Chuck Wagon and The Wheels… most of those bands are just dusty names now but there was a time when those bands would just fill The Bar with happy folks on the strength of their name alone.

However the bands  starting out did not have the name impact.   Nor does a new band have a real  following. 

To build up a following what some of them would do was to create a mailing list where they would take the name and address of their ‘fans’ and send monthly notices of where they were playing.  Saloons did this too and sending such notices by US Post Office could be an expensive proposition.

Nowadays, of course a band will have a website with pictures of the musicians (still looking sullen and unhappy).  They will have audio clips and some will also have links to YouTube usually showing the band at a live venue sounding terrible along with being badly photographed.  Perhaps this is why many of the bands look so sullen.  They just don’t sound good and they know it.   A little smoke here… a mirror or two there.

So we have our former garage band with cards, repertoire and mailing list ready to go big time and hit the local club circuit…

Now all they needed to do was to get hired by the paying venues.

Book My Band Part Two ~ Sparkle

The section “From the Bar ~ Make ‘Em Dance” makes the following claims:

 A successful live music saloon is successful only if they can attract women.
 Women, when they go out to saloons, fully intend to be entertained and I think it’s safe to say the majority of them go because they want to Dance.

If a band could not deliver the Dancers, as a rule they were not booked more than once.

From the Saloon’s standpoint there was no shortage of new bands to choose from.  All of them had freshly printed business cards with clever names.  Some had 8 x 10 glossy photos of the band members all in a row looking stylishly sullen.  Why bands think a photo of a line of sullen, largely unhandsome men is attractive to the public deserves further study but I’ll leave that to others.
Some bands even had a demo cassette.

Ideally the best way to audition a band would be to see it at a competing venue.  This was not always possible and sometimes  all The Bar had to go on was word of mouth or a demo cassette and an occasional 8 x 10 photo.  A pursuasive “manager” or band spokesperson could be valuable too.  As indicated, a demo cassette was of value.

The Rule for a band is if you make any kind of demo tape is to lead off with your best song.  This is because the person booking the bands is not going to listen to the whole tape.  Some bands were clever enough to blend a series of partial songs to give the booking person an idea of what they had to offer but long demo tapes seldom got a full hearing.

What the band booker finds is that unknown bands tend to have a sameness in their sound and this works against them.  This sameness is usually because, when they built their repertoire, they didn’t strive for Sparkle… the indefinable thing that makes a band stand out.

The bands that got a lot of work were distinctly different.  Sometimes it is one or two members who were really superb musicians.  Sometimes it was a person of uncommon beauty or voice.  Sometimes it was the simple but effective method called “rehearsal” where the bands would get together and focus on Really Sounding Good.  Rehearsals are not fun and a lot of work which may be why many bands withered and died.  But a well rehearsed band had a bit more polish, more Sparkle than the bands constantly ‘winging it’. 

What we have established is that to get steady club work you have to have a band that made people move on that dance floor.

But to get multiple bookings the band had to have Sparkle either in their music or their presentation or both.

The Bar booked primarily rock and roll because that’s what the customers (read ‘women’) wanted.  There were some country flavored bands that did remarkably well but those country bands that did well were definitely closer to the infinitely more danceable Western Swing than they were to the Johnny Cash/Merle Haggard format.

Even the tried and true bands did not hit big at every booking.  It was discovered that you could not book the same band on a Friday and Saturday back to back and expect good revenues on both nights.  Also booking a band more than once a month was risky largely because the bands were only locally famous.  Not even the most loyal fan could afford to attend every venue their favorite band played.  There are only so many times anyone would pay money to hear the same local band play the same set list they did last time.  Having to listen to “Proud Mary” done more than once a month by someone not Creedence Clearwater Revival could be a strain.

Another factor was that a band that did very well at other venues, particularly the Other Place, did not always do well at The Bar .

So they had to try new bands from time to time to fill in the gaps and hope to stumble on the Next New Hot Band.   This was a risky business because a band that did not draw was a liability and few bands were a sure thing.
 
T.O. once said it took $700.00 in the register to cover the expenses on any given Band Night.  This was in the day when a premium drink sold for 1.85 and the cover charge averaged 3.00.
So the pressure was on to make the new bands bring in a house… have their following come to The Bar and make enough of an impression at the register and at the door to get at least one more booking.
The Bar needed to make money and it was up to the bands to bring in the crowds…

Book My Band Part 3 ~ Payday

There is a long tradition that is a never ending point of contention between musical acts or bands and saloons.  And of course it involved money.

Most saloons and most bands at that level in the circiut were non-union.  Had they been unionized things would have been pretty straightforward.  The house would pay (and the band would accept) whatever prevailing union scale was with the rare exception of the band being a guaranteed high draw which would allow them to demand more.
Since The Bar was a saloon that did not subscribe to union hire the two factions, Band vs. House (“House” in this case being The Bar) would be at odds, each faction trying to get the best deal for themselves.
The house usually charged a ‘cover’ of one to three dollars a head.  There were rare bands that warranted a four dollar a head cover.  There just weren’t that many bands that could get it.

There were three different ways the house paid for musical services:

      1.  The house pays a flat rate for the band.  House keeps the cover charge fees.
      2.  The band takes no money from the house instead they take the Gate, all of the cover charge fees.
      3.  The house pays a certain amount to the band (usually about twenty dollars per member) plus a percentage (usually about thirty or forty per cent) of the door receipts.

There was an understanding that the house would provide “drink tickets” comping band members a certain number of drinks.  This could really add up figuring the rate of four tickets per bandsman if the band had any size to it.
The above listed pay rates are always decided when the booking is made, before the band comes to the club.  It is never a thing decided after the end of festivities.

All bands were expected to commence playing at 8 and stop at 12:45.  They scheduled their breaks so they either played four moderate sets or three long sets.  Breaks were up to the bands.

The Bar usually provided the sound tech and the person collecting the door charge.  Sometimes the band brought their own sound tech but if they did this The Bar did not pay for him or her.
The cover collector was usually the bouncer or what passed for a bouncer at The Bar.  Being we had so little in the way of truly problem customers the bouncers were generally pretty genial people.

Ideally, from the house standpoint, the door fees would be such as to cover the doorman, sound engineer and the band.  On a really good night the door could actually cover all of these expenses.

This seldom happened of course, but it was a nice idea.

Very important was the factor of “draw.” ‘Draw’ is the band’s ability to attract a house on name alone.
The other factor was, of course, advertising.

Bands were expected to have a following.  The bigger the following the more negotiating power the band had, they were expected to notify their fan base when and where they were to be playing

The saloons were expected to put the world on notice who they had upcoming also.
The Bar had a ‘band board’ that had an easy to read list of who was playing that week.    This board was visible from any point of the room and had the weekly band roster there for all to see.  In fact, it was posted at the hallway that held the rest rooms.  If you had to go pee you saw the band listings.
They also saw to it that The Bar’s musical offerings were listed in what free local print media and newspaper listings that were available.  The Bar had a good sized mailing list and printed flyers to put on the tables and available at the door.

Neither faction, house nor band, ever thought the other did as much as they could or should to bring in a good house.

There is one ongoing argument between bar owners and band leaders that contiues to this day…

“You don’t advertise enough…”

The music business at the saloon level was a hard, hungry life…

That’s the way it was…

And I’m sure that’s the way it still is…

Category: Music Files | 5 Comments »
Tags: bandstand, booking

Posted By Norm van Maastricht on February 17, 2009

Another segment of a project The Rise and Fall of a Saloon In The Latter Part off The Twentieth Century. These excerpts are not chronological. In fact very little logic prevails…

                                                            Hiring Crew

                                                  Job Focus:
                                                The perfect customer space:
                                                             A clean table
                                                             A clean Ashtray
                                                             One drink
                                                             One dry napkin
                                                             No dead glasses

                                                               
                                          My Crew Rules were simple:

No drugs or drunkenness on the Job.
Wear What You Want…you know what Looks Good on you…
Gawd HELP you if you show up with chipped nail polish.
“Check your dip.”

 

Wearing what you want.  Most of the women preferred this.  They did not care for uniforms because uniforms are not always flattering.  They felt this could affect their tips. 

The Nail Polish rule  Customers see your hands.  A bad manicure looked shabby.  Most girls, even those with short nails, used polish because wiping out dirty ashtrays made keeping nails clean difficult at times.
 (I kept a bottle of polish remover in the office for those who did come in with chipped polish)  I also kept a box of sewing thread and safety pins on hand.  You learn that safety pins are a needed item sometimes.  “Wardrobe malfunctions” are not confined to Super Bowls.

The ‘Check Your Dip’ rule
This was in reference to what a customer should or should not be able to see when a waitress bent to serve drinks.
You can’t fight nature.  A woman’s nipples have a mind of their own and will appear boldly for any number of reasons and can do wonders poking through even several layers of cloth but I drew the line at customers getting a Full View as a girl bent over placing drinks on the tables. Their clothing and their cleavage, their “dip” should never allow the customer to know the color of their areoles.

The drugs were always An Issue.  This was the period of high cocaine usage among the Young and Invincible in saloons across the country.  Saloons, after all, are not churches.  Still, T.O. had a sudden death, instant termintation rule about dealing drugs at The Bar.  It was not worth risking his license for Stupidity In Action.

Personal usage, of course, happened but was never officially condoned.  When it or drinking became too evident or distracting… ‘Off with her head’ so to speak and she’d be gone.

“No Dangling”  This was in reference to smoking tobacco. 

There are people reading this today who really have no idea what the air in a Saloon was like in those days.   People smoked.  A lot.  I did.  Some (but not all) of my crew did.  But what I forbade them to do was to ever (and I mean EVER ) be seen with a cigarette dangling from their lips.  I would cross the room and yank it out of their mouths   To me it made the girls look hard and tough and I Just Would Not Have It.  Tell them it made them look tough didn’t seem to faze them.  Tell them it  made them look old (not ‘older’… just old ) worked better.

                                                                ~/~
I hadn’t been on the new job very long when I found that managing a crew of women had its quirks.
  First and foremost was the fact, already stated, that waitressing, at least cocktail waitressing, was a transient occupation.

You may find ‘lifers’ in your diners and restaurant chains but not in a saloon.  Sooner or later the girl wants out.  To get married.  To finish school.  To just find a different job in a different bar hoping maybe the next saloon might pay more or give them a shot at bartending.  Whatever the reason the problem remained that there was a turnover that had to be reckoned with.  

Many times I would find that some of the women were unstable and needed weeding out. Some emotionally so and some due to drug use.  Some just never caught on to the trade.  Firing someone is never a pleasant task but I kept it private and short.
I initially learned to dread the onset of menses as much as if not more so than any married man could. I finally came up with something of a solution that I probably couldn’t get away with it in today’s politically correct world.  During my ‘You’re hired” speech I would tell them to let me know when “the moon was on them” so I would know not to kill them because of the mood change.  The honesty of this worked out pretty well, actually.

 Another thing I did was to read a good, easy to understand book on ailments common to women and they soon found that I understood these things more than most men did.  The women already on crew told the New Hires what to expect from me and I had a generally loyal, happy crew. 

Some managers like to manage thru fear and intimidation.  I didn’t care for that because waitressing had its own stresses without them needing to be afraid of me.  My management “style” such as it was was simple.  I was a guy in the unique position of hiring the very women I worked with.  My ‘style’ was this:

Love them.  Love them all.  Pet them when they did well and keep it short and private when they did not do well.  What happens is their dignity remains intact.  Give your crew some love, respect and praise and they will kill for you.

Still, I found it prudent to have an on-call list of temps… girls who, on short notice, could and would get in there with a tray and cover a shift so I was constantly looking for attractive females to sign on as temps or potential New Hires.

T.O. didn’t have much respect for the trade of waitressing.  He often said he would like it if I could replace the entire crew every six weeks or so for varietey’s sake.  He was the only one who felt that way.   There was no ‘waitress tree’ where all you needed to do was walk over and pick one…

 Whether to hire an experienced girl or not was always a changing decision.  I liked the ones I called my ‘War Horses”.  There are some women who are so good at waitressing that they can cover bigger floor single-handedley than two lesser girls put together could. 
I called them ‘Warhorses’ after the special horses favored by the plains Indians, horses that would go into the thick of a fight with heart and not shy or spook.  It was one of the highest complements I could bestow.  The difficulty was keeping a Warhorse on crew because they anticipated bigger tips and disliked sharing a floor with other women.  They would get frustrated thinking there was more money to be made down the road…

 On the other hand there is an endearing quality about a fresher girl, one new to the trade.  They were usually younger and hadn’t had time to gain the cynicism that many of the more experienced girls had.
 The down side of that of course was that it takes a while, at least a month, for the new girl to get the hang of the call order and until a girl learned a proper call order and other skills of the trade some bartenders were almost cruel in their impatience with them.  This also meant customer service was slower.  We didn’t have a good training regimen for New Hires which was bad but on the good side the survivors were keepers.
 Some New Hires couldn’t take it and would quit.  Some bucked up and took hold and became keepers.

Some got thrown back.

 When I took over the crew T.O. had already cut back on live music from six nights to three.  He had jazz on Tuesday nights and rock and roll on Friday and Saturday nights.

One reasonably qualified girl could handle Tuesday’s jazz crowd but weekends needed more crew because those bands tended to draw better.

 On weekends I would book three girls.  I called the shift turns “Legs”.  The “First Leg” would come on at six and work until eight at which time the “Second Leg” would come on duty giving the other a break of maybe a half hour.  Sometimes the First Leg wanted to keep working particularly if she had a couple of hot spots of good tippers.

 As lead girl, the First Leg, got to make the call which side of the room she was to work for this very reason, to keep her good tippers in her section.
 When required, the Third Leg would come on no later than nine and so it would go.  If, as it sometimes happened, the night lost part of its crowd I would allow the girls decide to send one of their number home.  I did this to avoid claims of bias.  It worked pretty well.   Most of the time.

 Sometimes I would have to pull rank and make the woman on duty let the next girl come on line.  The starting girl obviously wanted to make as much money as possible and would be reluctant to allow the next girl up.  But there comes a point where customer service suffered and something needed to be done.

 I had to be careful to not show too much favoritism although this was not always possible because my crew was seldom equally skilled.  Like any other skilled trade some were just better at it than others.  I developed personal biases, too, because I was human.  I’d be lying if I said otherwise but I tried to keep a balance.  If I had a favorite I was careful not to let her act like an Overseer.

 In one area I had a brilliant stroke.  That was division of the floor in sections.  I made copies of a hand drawn layout of the tables in the building and gave two copies to each of the girls currently on crew at the time and asked them to draw what they thought were fair boundary lines for a two girl floor and a three girl floor.
 I took these maps and used them as a basis for the “Official” floor diagram which all of them agreed was a fair, acceptable compromise.
 This of course made for “turf” and sparked some infighting if a girl happened to do a little pirating in another’s section.

 Great fun was had by all…

                            The Mississippi Two Step

When I saw too much infighting starting to happen I would go to each one of them and say “We got a Mississippi Two step going on here and it Will Stop.  If it does not stop I will get a bucket of water and hold your heads under ’till the bubbles stop.”

That usually worked.

No one ever asked me what a Mississippi Two step was.  They already knew what The Problem was.  When I said a Mississippi Two Step was afoot they knew I was aware of The Problem  and, amazingly, it would cease. 

Usually. 

Sometimes a firing was needed but in the long run they felt better served working with what they had rather than breaking in a New Hire.

 The position of being waitress manager made me look at women customers a little differently particularly if my on call backup name list was getting thin.  That pretty customer might be my next New Hire.

When looking for a New Hire I learned how to scan a woman like other women look at them.  That One First Look-Over that is a mental flash picture…a rapid scan.  A quick glance that takes in her clothes, how they fit, how she moves, what she thinks of her body and herself which is reflected in how they groom themselves.  I learned this by listening to the women discuss how they discussed other women among themselves.

Most guys seem to focus just on The Face or The Boobs.  It’s a rare man that learns to do this all encompassing quick scan.  It’s a skill that cannot be taught.

…a woman doing this very same scan is merely sizing up the competition…

I additionally learned to ‘look at their edges’ and see if they might have a Daemon or have a Dark Cloud over them…  “Looking at their edges” was one of the unexplainable feelings I had.  I wouldn’t call it psychic because I have a dim view of such terms but at the same time I felt my knack of ‘looking at their edges’ was more accurate than any other method for spotting a woman who had problems lurking beneath the surface and sometimes the feeling was so strong I would not use the girl or if I did, I used her only sparingly. They sometimes came on board with social or chemical problems of the day and this always complicated matters.  And if you complicated matters too much you were Gone.

 Most “interviews” I conducted were pretty brief.  Talk to the girl, check out her grooming.  Always had her show me her hands because this spoke volumes sometimes.  You could tell a lot about a person by how they react to “let me see your hands”.  I liked a well kept hand and I knew customers always saw a girls hands.  They didn’t need to have long nails but they did need to look clean.

If I had any doubts about her willingness to work or even show up  I would ask if I could think it over and ask her to come back in a day or two (always specifying the day).  If they didn’t show for the second interview I saved myself a lot of wasted time.

Some went like this one…

I was standing near the pinball game.  A guy and a girl are playing.  I look over at her.  Blonde.  Blue eye shadow.  Short, nice figure wearing jeans.  Pretty girl.
It’s quiet.  It’s a Sunday night.  Not many people in attendance.  My back is to the pinball machine and I’m looking over the main room.
Suddenly I feel like I’m being watched and look down to see the blonde standing next to me, looking up at me.
“Who does the hiring here?”
“I do most of it.” I said.
She looks out into the main bar.  “It doesn’t look like it but could you use another waitress?”
“You any good at it?
“Yeah!” she said with a defiant yet almost bored emphasis.  I got the distinct impression it was the same way Bill Hickok would have answered someone if the asked him if he could shoot a pistol well.
‘Warhorse!’  I knew instantly that she was Very Good at what she did.  I also knew she might be overqualified.  But it so happened that I had the Tuesday jazz night open as was second leg on weekends.
I told her as much.  Not a whole lot of money but it would be a start.  Pays minimum wage.
“Can I try it?”
I looked at her a little closer.  Looked at her ‘edges” and saw a murky soup a-stirring… Looked into her eyes for the first time.  Had a blueness to them that was more than just the color.  There was sadness but also there was just an edge of defiance…
“Lemme see your hands!” I said.
She held them horizontally and spread her fingers.  Beautifully kept, red painted nails, one small ring on her right hand.
I took her hands and turned them over, looked at her palms a little and turned them over again.
I looked at her and said “I gotta be honest with you… I think you’re trouble on the hoof but I need somebody.  You want to see how the place feels come in at 8 on Tuesday.  Give it a try.”  Tuesday night was Jazz Night.  If she didn’t show it wouldn’t be a disaster but it would be nice to have someone on the job.  I needed women to work the quiet gigs as well as the busy ones…

She asked what she should wear and I said “…anything you wanted to but no jeans.  And check your dip before you get here.”  She looked at me quizzically.  “Bend in front of a mirror before you leave.  The customer must never see the color of your nipples.”

Tuesday night came and she arrived in wearing a strapped green dress; one of those ‘bare shoulders’ things that allowed good cleavage and displayed the tops of her breasts nicely.  The dress had a cleverly wrought skirt section that opened as she moved and exposed her legs as they were brought forward in her walk.  She had beautiful legs.
And she worked the floor like the pro I knew she was.
I thought she would choose not to stay on because she was a class A Warhorse and those seldom stayed long but stay on she did.
…and brought a freight train of baggage and became a Featured Player in many scenes at The Bar ‘disaster movies’ as she lived her somewhat chaotic life.

That’s how it was… I loved then all…

Never a dull moment…

Category: From the Bar | 4 Comments »
Tags: hiring the waitress

Posted By Norm van Maastricht on February 5, 2009

This is one of my most uplifting results.
Copied from a young lady in a Playboy layout.

She came out pretty well even if her proportions aren’t what they technically should be but, y’know, if I’d presented myself as a cartoonist no one would bat an eye.

                                                                    

In any case she is one of my most delightful efforts.  You can’t help but smile at her happy exuberance.

Like the idiot I tend to be sometimes, I gave her away and when I looked into buying her back I found that she was again given away…

                    >sigh<

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Posted By Norm van Maastricht on January 8, 2009

Another segment of a project The Rise and Fall of a Saloon In The Latter Part off The Twentieth Century. These excerpts are not chronological. In fact very little logic prevails…

 From CIA World Fact Book:
                                                                        Tonga

The archipelago of “The Friendly Islands” was united into a Polynesian kingdom in 1845. It became a constitutional monarchy in 1875 and a British protectorate in 1900. Tonga acquired its independence in 1970 and became a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. It remains the only monarchy in the Pacific.  It’s king is named Taufa’ahau

It is in the Oceania, archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, about two-thirds of the way from Hawaii to New Zealand

Tonga, a small, open, South Pacific island economy, has a narrow export base in agricultural goods. Squash, coconuts, bananas, and vanilla beans are the main crops, and agricultural exports make up two-thirds of total exports. The country must import a high proportion of its food, mainly from New Zealand. Tourism is the second largest source of hard currency earnings following remittances. The country remains dependent on external aid and remittances from Tongan communities overseas to offset its trade deficit. The government is emphasizing the development of the private sector, especially the encouragement of investment, and is committing increased funds for health and education. Tonga has a reasonably sound basic infrastructure and well-developed social services. High unemployment among the young, a continuing upturn in inflation, pressures for democratic reform, and rising civil service expenditures are major issues facing the government.

 The “High unemployment among the young” mentioned above tends to make many Tongans go elsewhere in the world leaving the balmy South Pacific for the hostile colder climes of the US and Europe.
 They are a robust, healthy people and, like any ethnic group, tend to cluster in communities for linguistic and cultural comfort.
 They are good, hard, workers and usually can be found it heavy labor jobs such as construction and gardening.
 In Tongan culture, fighting among the males is looked at differently than European based cultures.  A good fight is considered just that and grudges are seldom carried as baggage.  If it is possible to deem it so, they are good natured fighters and while they don’t deliberately look for a fight they tend to be fearless and definitely will not turn away from a bout particularly when it’s another Tongan making the challenge.  Even so, they are generally good humored, friendly people.

Some of them, male and female, are quite large.

 T.O. had a friend who was in the demolition/deconstruction business who used Tongan men almost exclusively on his work crews.  Because he hired so many of them and paid them well and fairly the Tongan community held T.O.’s friend in high esteem. This was reinforced by the man’s frequent trips to the island kingdom.
 T.O.’s friend talked him into going with him on one of these jaunts and T.O. was charmed by what he saw.
 Polynesian cultures are mesmerizing to outsiders because of their apparently languid lifestyle, easy laughter and haunting music.
 T.O.’s friend was treated like a visiting prince because the islanders knew and appreciated that he hired many of their sons.  T.O. saw that the Tongans seemed to revere their monarch and most of all they loved to party.
 And drink…
 Prodigiously…
 T.O. later said they drank as if it was their national pastime.

 When T.O. got back to the states he Had A Plan.

 He was put in contact with one of the local Tongan men who had a band.
 T.O. declared that rather than try to attract a fickle, unappreciative, middle class American audience he declared he would book this guy’s band on weekends and bring in this untapped goldmine of island guzzlers and make a mint.
 I had my doubts and expressed them.
 “You tried that with the Hawaiians, and while it was finally starting to pay off it still didn’t do what you had hoped.” This was in reference to a previous deviation from standard saloon fare,  It involved the local Hawaiian community and, while pleasant, did not really do as well as he had hoped.   (See ‘Aloha Way’ in another section)

…and these guys ain’t Hawaiians.”
 “Meaning what?” T.O. said.
 “Look.  I just read a long article in The Chronicle about the Tongan culture and one of the things the article mentioned was that the men enjoy fighting and thought it of no consequence.”
 T.O. responded “I know these people. All we need to do is put flowers on the table and they’ll be as mild and friendly as lambs.”
 “T.O., you’re not serious!   Flowers on the tables are going to make people into pacifists? “
 “Sure!  And I’ll get a picture of their king and put it up.  They won’t disrespect a bar that has a picture of their king hanging in there.”
 “T.O., these are human beings that were raised in a different culture.  This does not make them simpletons and, while they may like flowers and their king, you know damn well Tongans have a reputation for liking to fight and now you want to bring them in here in large numbers?”
 “I think you’re a racist to be making comments like that.”
 “’S’cuse me?  Racist?  Not hardly.  You and I both know that That Other Place has had several brawls requiring multiple police cars involving Tongans.”
 “They didn’t handle them right.  They didn’t put flowers on the tables.”
 “T.O., you can’t “handle” an ethnic group.  You just can’t do it.  People are just too independent. And jars of flowers ain’t gonna mean a thing”

 But T.O. would not be swayed.  He dismissed my objections as words from one who did not know what he was talking about.  After all, he, T.O., had been to the islands and therefore he knew all there was to know about Tongans.  Their pugnaciousness is a myth…racist gossip.
 “You realize, of course, that you’re going to lose your American clientele.”
 “So what?  The way these Tongan’s drink it won’t matter.”

And so the die was cast…

 T.O. was very excited about the band.  It was a Tongan band and they played Reggae music which didn’t particularly excite me because I thought Reggae was largely like Delta Blues in that it was repetitious and boring.  Neither Blues bands or Reggae bands seemed to work well at The Bar.  Besides, reggae is Jamaican in origin.  These guys were Tongans.

 T.O. said he was particularly impressed with the guy who ran the band, a guy named Lopeti.  He was a bit older, maybe in his late forties.  T.O. was impressed because even though he was not particularly good looking, he always had women around him which meant he must be some kind of stud or at least someone with Tongan Mojo.
 T.O. pulled out all the stops.  Brought in extra chairs, ordered extra beer, insisted on having three waitresses and three bartenders in anticipation of the grand opening of his path to riches.

 Friday night came.

 At eight o’clock there were five people in the place beside the crew, mostly members of the Dice Players watching to see what came of this New Idea of T.O.’s.

Nine o’clock came and the band wandered in and started to set up.  I got his first look at the legendary Lopeti.

This is the charismatic Tongan?  He was a short, dumpy, plain looking guy with all the charm of a potato.

 At nine-thirty the band started playing.  More like warming up because there were no customers of Island descent present.

 Ten o’clock.  Several of the guys from the Dice Playing group left.  They didn’t like Reggae either.
  Ten thirty.  The band took a break.

 At ten forty five some cars drove slowly through the parking lot.

   And then it happened.

 Around 11:00 they came from nowhere and they came like the Mongol hordes sweeping across Asia.
 All the women seemed to be gum-chewers with stock in Wrigley’s…  All the men seemed to be six and a half feet tall.  Some of the women were seemingly six feet tall themselves and most of the ladies had the bunned hairstyle often seen in island people.  All were in good humor.  They had come to party.

 They were demanding as children.  They ran shams on the bartenders and waitresses ordering rounds and pointing across the room saying “Get you money from he.  He be buyin dese’a.”

 They did not tip.

 It was pandemonium.  They drifted in and out of the club going to their cars.
 The waitresses on duty required all of my persuasiveness to stay the night but they assured me they would not work another night like that.

 One of my ex-waitresses was tending bar that first night…    She was a nice looking girl with long, thick blonde hair.  She was standing by the side door around 12:30, taking a break…  The night was warm so the side door was open to let in air.  There was a heavy chain at upper thigh level to discourage people sneaking in at the side door.
Suddenly, my bartender found herself grabbed by the hair from behind at the side door and dragged over the door chain and out into the parking lot by one of the mumu wearing Amazons.  It was only through the intervention of several of the Tongan men that kept the bartender from getting beaten by this giantess.

 I learned a new thing about Tongan women.  One of the men told me that some Tongan women did not like ‘blonde girlies’ because some of their men were fascinated by American blondes and the island women felt threatened by them.
 ‘Great!  Most of my crew is blonde!’ thought I…

 There were only two fights that night and both were short ones outside in the parking lot.

 At two o’clock they poured out of the place as if it was on fire.

 And left evidence of a sort that T.O. hadn’t figured on.

 He hadn’t taken into consideration that most of the Tongans worked for wages that were something less than what Americans were paid.  They were blue collar people.  They worked in construction and heavy labor jobs which sometimes paid well but they were often paid at the same scale as the illegal Latin populace, which is to say not nearly the wage American workers tend to expect.  They had the same cost of living expenses other people had which was high in CA and that meant they didn’t have a whole lot of leisure money.

 Still, they loved to laugh and loved to party so what they would do was follow their homey band wherever it was booked and load up on beer and booze at their favorite liquor store.  Then they would either smuggle it into the bar or drink it in their many trips to their cars in the parking lot.  This way they could avoid paying the relatively high bar prices.

 After the last stragglers had left I had our lobby dustpan out and was gathering some of the debris. 

I was sweeping up beer cans (obviously from outside since The Bar only sold bottled beer), miniature liquor bottles such as dispensed on airlines and small half pints of cheap but powerful alcohol, things like Ever Clear and fortified wine.
 A lot of them.  Not just a few, but a lot of them.  Enough to fill two very large plastic garbage cans.
 This was something that took some planning and forethought.  This was a modus operandi.

 Needless to say, since they ‘brought their own,’ the register hadn’t done much business, certainly not enough to warrant paying a band but the band needed paying anyway.

 And it was only Friday.

 Saturday was still to come… I needed to get a new crew since my Friday girls were in shock.

Saturday dawned and it was, of course, a new day.

 I got on the phone and lined up two more victims for cocktail duty.  The hair-pulled bartender opted out, not wanting a repeat of being hauled around by her hair, so it fell to T.O. to staff the bar.

 T.O. tried to put a good face on it, claiming it was just a fluke.  Now that the Tongan community knew for sure the band would be here on weekends word would spread and they would flock in earlier and spend more money.
 The crew and I had our doubts but there wasn’t much we could do about it since it wasn’t our names on the business license.

 So with a crew that felt much like the Texans at the Alamo we awaited sundown’s fast approach.
 
 It became immediately obvious that the Friday event was more portent than fluke.
 Once again the early hours of the night consisted of an almost empty bar. 

        A few people, “regulars,” stopped by but it was evident that the former ambiance of the bar was gone and it its place was an anticipation that was closer to dread than optimism.   These wandering souls did not tarry.  They went to The Other Place looking for a Tongan free setting which was more to their liking.

 Once again the hours between eight and eleven were situations where the band and the staff outnumbered the patrons two to one.

 And, once again, at eleven, in they came.  More than on Friday and a bit more aggressive.  More of the round robin attempts to not pay for drinks.  The doorman was pressured to let in large, intimidating, young males with questionable I.D.’s.  Theree were a few more fights than the night before but somehow they were kept outside.

 I discovered that I had a problem that I had no solution for when one of my cocktail waitresses came outside for a break.  Visibly shaking due to fear and adrenaline and close to tears, she told me “If it was anyone else but you I’d drop this tray and run.”
        Needless to say she said she could not work another night like this. 

        I was officially out of crew.

 We got through it somehow with the same end result…smuggled empty beer cans and liquor bottles of all sizes emptied in the bar and even more in the parking lot.  Crummy tips and a register tape that read like there had only been about a third of the patrons that actually had shown up.  Truth be told, the register may have made it almost worth while but the smuggled empties were a mockery and quite frankly a danger to the license.  It is illegal in California to bring in your own alcohol in a Saloon.

 The next morning I tracked T.O. down and told him that we had an emergency.  There was no waitress crew.  “I ain’t about to feed women into that grinder.  You can’t pay them enough.  If you want waitresses we need to make the Tongans provide their own.”
 T.O. called Lopeti the bandleader for a meeting.  I made my case about the waitress situation and asked Lopeti if the Tongan community might be able to provide two women to work weekends.  I told him that there was no other option.
       Well, I found that I had asked the right guy.

 The next Friday went a little better.  The bartending crew had learned to ask for money up front before they dispensed drinks and the two Tongan women who came in to cocktail wasted no time in putting the boisterous revelers in their place in no uncertain terms.  They “Straightened them out like a piece of wire!” in a manner of speaking.  One of the girls was petite and very pretty.  She brooked no nonsense from her countrymen and was so brusque with one man who towered over her he asked her “Hey!  What kinda Tongan are you?”

 By now the bartending crew knew to expect that the Saturday crowd would be descending like avenging hordes at eleven p.m. and they were not disappointed.

      Having Tongan waitresses meant that things were not so chaotic on the floor but a new ring in the circus cropped up.

        There was a major brawl in the parking lot that involved about twenty men of varying ages.  The doorman and I were taken totally by surprise.  We could discern no cause for the donnybrook but it didn’t matter.  The fight started with little of the posturing and argument that usually preceded a ‘regular’ bar fight involving common drunks.  The fighting just exploded.  A patrol car happened to be passing by and shortly there appeared several police cars and the combatants were soon aligned kneeling in the parking lot.
  One of the officers questioned the wisdom of catering to the group but didn’t make much of a point about it.  Police departments have no love for Saloons.  After dark a large part of their business involves alcohol related problems.  We were reminded that if a Saloon had too many trouble calls the City would apply pressure via license suspensions. 
      There was no recrimination to The Bar by the police this time since a complaint had not been issued from the bar.
        I.D.’s were checked and several of the combatants were taken away on outstanding warrants.

 Inside the bar the revelry continued with seemingly no concern for the hapless men being ferried to jail.

      Oddly one of the eight balls turned up missing from the pool tables.  It was later found, chipped and scratched, having been hurled across the main drag (a four lane highway) during that particular parking lot brawl.  Definitely an omen.  Whoever threw it should probably have pitched for the Dodgers but that would be a digression from our current tale and we’ll not go there.

        It was the same net result as the previous Friday portended,  The register picked up some because of the Tongan waitresses keeping the customers honest but the tips were stingy and a vast amount of smuggled empties in the bar and in the parking lot still underscored money spent elsewhere.  Had the Tongans bought all of their booze and beer from The Bar T.O. would have been vindicated because the empties represented a goodly amount of money The Bar did not take in.

 T.O. would not admit that he had made an error in judgment.  He insisted things would get better.  When I grumbled about the problems of dealing with the increasingly obstreptuous crowd he claimed, once again, that I was acting like a racist bigot.

      He was still impressed that Lopeti, not a handsome man by any stretch of the imagination, was always seen with an entourage of between five to ten women around him at all times.  A studly tribute to his magnetism was how fast he had brought in the two women to waitress.  Obviously a concession to a better culture than that which they had emigrated to.

 Meanwhile the rest of the business at The Bar suffered also.  Tiffany’s daytime crowd thinned out.  Lunches were still pretty good but her afternoon crowd dropped noticeably.  The Dice Cuppers and some of the hardcore regulars and loafers being the only dependable customers but they did not linger as long as they used to.  Everyone sensed a difference in the mood of the place.

 The nighttime business, which had been on a decline anyway, went flat.

         T.O. blamed it on disloyalty and castigated the regular customers for not supporting his place of business.
 
 The weekend pattern went on for seven or eight weeks with little change.  There were more fights but they were small and brief and, thankfully, outside.

         Lo, It came to pass that the Tongans decided to have a Sunday afternoon party.
         Their version of a luau. 
         I disremember the occasion.  It might have been a birthday or it may have just been a party for the heck of having a party.
 T.O. was ecstatic.  The Tongan gold mine was about to deliver!  A nice Sunday afternoon party… flowers on the tables… it would be great. 
        No waitresses could be lined up since American girls refused to work a Tongan house so I was to be pressed into service bussing tables for empties figuring rightly that the Tongans would not mind going to the bar.  It was, after all, their party.
 No band was hired since the party was funded by the Tongans themselves and as earlier pointed out; they are not a wealthy community.  Besides, the band members wanted to be part of the party too.

 Sunday dawned and preparations were made.  A barbecue rotisserie was rented and a whole pig bought and roasted.  About four o’clock about 75 to 100 people showed up.  They seemed to be in good spirits and even I thought it might be a better than usual gather of the Tongans.  I didn’t have to worry about my waitresses getting traumatized and the overall mood was congenial.  Most of them were out on the patio area enjoying the camaraderie of good food and drink on a beautiful summer day.  The patio area was an addition created by redwood fencing and Astroturf and was outside on the side of the building.  There were several picnic tables arrayed there and it was quite comfortable on a nice day.

 One guy stood up…
 He wasn’t particularly young nor was he old… probably in his late thirties…

 “I feel like fighting.  Who wants to fight wid me?”

 “I will!” laughed a younger man who stood and in very short order, swung at the older guy.  Next thing you know it was pandemonium as no one wanted to be left out of the social exercise of pummeling your fellow man.  Soon all the males joined in with joy and enthusiasm.

         I was across the room at the bar with several other people just staying out of the way.  The fight started to move inside I saw some of the men going for the pool cues.  For some reason I became indignant at this.  Without hesitation I passed my walking stick to the off-duty Doorman (who had no interest in getting involved) and strode across the room.  I yanked the cue sticks from unresisting hands “Gimmie that!” I snarled as I gathered them all up and took them away from the brawl and headed back the bar.
 As I stalked back to the bar, arms full of pool cues, I saw the Doorman and the bartenders looking at me saucer eyed  as if I’d walked out of  hell itself by some miracle because no one had laid a hand on me and no one even tried to hang onto a cue. 
 The police weren’t called.  You might say the fight was allowed to run itself out but it was more like it was over rather quickly.  The Bar was declared closed for the day and the victors and vanquished, looking sheepish, slunk away.  The women looked to be on the verge of tears, embarrassed that what had started as a lovely party had come to such a ruin.
 The place needed closing.  It was a shambles.  It looked like a mini-tornado had run through one side of the building.
        The gate to the patio and some of the redwood fencing got broken in the melee as well as two of the redwood picnic tables and several of the accompanying benches.

 That Sunday marked the final curtain for the Tongan experiment.

        It was only a day or two later when I brought T.O. a newspaper, one of the little local rags.  Someone had called me on the phone and told me to pick one up.  There was an article in the Police Blotter portion I needed to see.  I looked and in it was an article that said Lopeti, our Lopeti, he of the Reggae band and the entourage of females, had been taken down in a drug bust.   It seemed that he had been under surveillance for months because of his connection with the distribution and sale of large amounts of cocaine.
 Cocaine, the drug of choice in that era.  It didn’t take rocket science to connect Lopeti’s “success” with women to his treating them to his stash.

But no Lopeti meant no Reggae band.  No Reggae band meant no Tongans.  Weekends now resembled the rest of the week.  We had become a neighborhood bar.

 And the slow, painful, process of trying to regain the interest and patronage of the old customers and attract the new commenced…

We started the cycle of booking  rock and roll bands on weekends again. 

 But The Bar never really recovered.

 In fact, its demise was coming…

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