The Day the Handlebar Burned Down
As I rode through some of the neighborhoods, I could tell it was stronger in one area and the neighborhoods downhill were all very foggy. I got a little pissed, but kept on my ride until I got to the bookstore. I was a little early because of the appointment, so I was just going to sit around and read until the store usually opened. I sat down and started reading the paper when a few minutes later the power went out. I thought it was an electric breaker so I flipped the switch and the power went on for a minute and then cut off again. I sat in the dark for a few minutes wondering if we paid the bill, then decided to call the electric company. A recording answered "Power in the downtown area has been temporarily shut off due to a major fire." I looked out the window at the hardware store across the street and saw what was causing that smell. Flames higher than anything I'd ever seen before were coming from behind the building, with a huge plume of thick grayish white and black smoke. It looked like the whole block was on fire. There was a church there and I assumed that was where the fire came from. I locked the store up and walked through the alley and saw the church intact and the fire was coming from someplace else. As I walked further down the street, I saw the direction that it was coming form and I again assumed that it was another one of the thousands churches that populate that area. But all the churches seemed to be doing fine. Then it hit me that the only thing left was the Handlebar. Ugh! I was there the other night. The owner’s son was tending bar, some British guy came and sat with a friend of mine and I and told us about how he was seriously injured about ten years prior in an IRA attack. He even showed us the shrapnel scars. Another friend was in town for a few days and Jimmie gave us a free beer (and some bottled water later to work off all the drinking from earlier in the night). The next time I saw Jimmie was from across the train tracks in the parking lot of the Handlebar, as firemen were shooting hundreds of gallons of water into his parents bar and our last punk club. When Sluggo's closed there was never the sense of urgency because we all thought that it would reopen in a few weeks. It kind of disappeared slowly instead of closing, which is sad but it wasn't immediate. This one was tough, though. Like a death in the family. There was a sense of mourning that was palpable throughout the whole town it seemed. Maybe not everyone was sad that it burned, but everyone I knew at least was very depressed. People came into the shop all day just to talk about it. It was more than a bar, but a place where we all saw each other. Our last place that felt like it was ours. It had been there forever and it was very sad to think that it was gone. Everyone all day coming in and talking about shows that they saw, the things that it used to be. There was talk about what it would take to rebuild it, but I saw the fire. Like I said, it was like nothing I had ever seen before. My roommate Kent just got a pretty steady job working sound there during the shows. A lot of my friends did shows there, all the bands played there, all the people went there. Even the straight edgers went. Didn't drink of course, but they were there too. I went to the coffee shop and told Mike who was working behind the counter that day and we had a beer in the middle of the street, while watching firemen down the street put the fire out of one of the last cool things in town. The whole day was kind of gloomy. I went to work at the bookstore a little late. During the day I hosted half the regulars, everyone asking if anyone knew anything. But there wasn't really anything that could be said that we didn't already know. I don't think anyone really thought they had insurance, or at least enough to cover the bar reopening anytime soon. Everywhere I went, it seemed like everyone was talking about it. "The first show I ever saw was in that building." "I remember seeing Black Flag there." "You know the Replacements played there once." "I was just there the other day...drunk of course." It was like a wake was in progress. Even at the Plasma Center I heard people talking about it. Looking at it after the firemen had left was crushing too. The building was about 150 years old and used to be owned by free blacks before the Civil War. I think it might have even been a brothel once too (that also might be true about half the places in this city though, so that in itself is not that a significant fact). Later that night, I was bummed, talking about it with a friend when she mentioned that we should go have a few beers in the parking lot across the street. It sounded like a good idea. When we got there, we found out that several other people had the same idea. Out in the parking lot, I saw most of the people I saw the other night in the bar. People I've known for years, people I see around, friends, acquaintances-all drinking. Including the owner's son, Jimmie. Earlier he had went inside and saved a few cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon from the burnt refrigerator and was passing them out to the mourners. It was around midnight. A few cops pulled up, and we thought that we were busted, but they just joked a little with us. They were there to set up a barricade for a train that was coming from the port and would pass us by. The cops just went about their business, ignored all the drunk punks with open containers, just told us to watch out for the train and rode off. Seeing a train ride down that road is a rare sight. They're usually pretty short trains that ride down to the ships and pick up cargo and go back to the train yard. They mostly ride at the dead of night because Tarragona is a pretty busy street and having a train ride straight up the street would obviously cause some chaos during the daytime. But at night, it's almost surreal. So as we sat there drinking, talking about the fleetingness of life and things, a bright light shone down at the bottom of the street and everyone just sat there in silence, listening to the oncoming train that was riding up the street. I live next to a train line so you get used to the sound of a locomotive only a few feet away. Still, it's a sound that commands respect. No matter how much of a hurry you are in, no matter how important what you have to do is, no matter who you are with or what you are doing, you have to stop when the train comes by. This was no exception. The ground shook for a few minutes as we watched the train pass us by on its way to the yard. We just sat there in silence drinking the smoky, slightly warm cheap beer in the parking lot of the charred remains of the last punk club in town. When the train passed by, I got up to leave and said my goodbyes. There really was nothing left to say. |