Happy Hour at the John Street

Due to circumstances under my control, I neglected to start adding my tales of silliness until now.

When I started working in lower Manhattan, I was fresh out of college. I had a tolerance for beer & liquor that has yet to be revisited. I was commuting on a daily basis from New Jersey and loving the lack of sleep. The building I worked in was about a couple of blocks from John Street. One of the guys I worked with, we'll call him "Michelob", had been a courier in the financial district and had an intimate knowledge of the New York bars. He told me and some of our other coworkers of a Happy Hour special at the John St. Tavern: $10 all you can drink pints from 5-8 p.m. This was right up my alley. The benefit of ending the work day at 4:30 for us was being able to take full advantage of such a special. We went down to the Tavern, a bar downstairs from an OTB location, and started ordering pints of Saranac. As luck would have it, there was a Saranac sales rep at the Tavern that evening and he had a bag full of T-shirts. He kindly offered to give me a shirt if I would continue to order Saranac throughout the evening. I was more than happy to comply. I had at least 6 or 7 pints during the happy hour and managed to finally collect my shirt only after harassing the sales rep to hold up his end of the bargain. In the meantime, Michelob's friends from Bay Ridge met up with us and we were having a grand old time. I had originally planned on finishing the happy hour and hopping on PATH train to Newark and then riding back to Jersey on the train. Michelob's friends convinced me to stick around and head over to Brooklyn to round out the night. We picked up a cab just outside of the World Trade Center and headed toward Bay Ridge. At one point near the end of the ride, one of Michelob's friends looked at me and said, "yo, we're going to beat this cab, as soon as the car stops, follow Wayne." Keeping in mind that I'm still wearing my work clothes, I ran like hell behind Wayne, a guy who could probably be a blocking back on most football teams, ducking down alleys and between rowhouses. We got to the next destination and got another drink before moving on. At some point in the evening all of the saranac hit me and I lost the ability to speak coherent english. When we finally got to the Salty Dog in Bay Ridge, I looked at Michelob and said, "If I could speak english, I'd try to hit on one of these girls." At the end of the night, Michelob brought me over to his buddy's house so I could pass out.

The next morning, I woke up to a cordless phone being pushed in my face, "Yo, are you up? You should get rolling soon to get here on time." Karlo and I got moving while he convinced me to drink a V8 Splash. Not a good idea. We got on the R train from Brooklyn into Manhattan and settled in for the 25 minute ride. Karlo got out about 10 minutes into the ride and told me where to get off. As the ride continued, I started to feel the swaying of the Subway car, and the previous night was catching up to me quickly. I started to gag, and the guy on the other end of our row of seats knew what was coming, and he moved to the other end of car. At this point, the V8 Splash came back to me as I tried to hold it in. Unfortunately, a little bit of puke got on my shirt. Not good. The rest of the puke ended up on the subway car floor and I got away from it quickly. Luckily, I only had 2 more stops. Even more luckily, I had my Saranac T-Shirt! I walked in to work and explained the situation. My boss gave me the okay to wear the T-shirt, he figured my foolish attire would be entertaining for everyone. Everybody wins. With the exception of the fact that I left my housekeys and money clip at Karlo's house, everything turned out pretty well.