On Bartending in the Bottoms

It ain't for the weak of heart.

Us freaks in the Bottoms love to say that we live at the foot of The Cross. In truth we live on the anvil under the mighty hammer of capitalism. You never have to go far to find someone in the neighborhood in desperate need of mental healthcare or financial aid.

I understand why most Americans want to live in nice neighborhoods surrounded by everyone within the same tax bracket. I also understand how quickly life like that can mollify any drop of radicalism in the heart. After all, if the status quo is working for me and all my friends, why shouldn’t it work for everyone else? All the poor have to do is work a little harder.

Socialist legend Eugene Debs once said, “While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” That quote will always resonate with me.

Billionaires and corporations have spent a lot of money over the last 40 years to convince Americans that the problem with this country is the people down the economic ladder from them. It’s much easier to look down your nose at someone and feel superior than reconcile the increasingly small cabal of lizards that amass more and more wealth even in the midst of a historic pandemic.

Most Americans have more respect for someone like Amazon owner and soon-to-be trillionaire Jeff Bezos than they do for the average fast food worker. This is because they were indoctrinated from a very early age that the only requirement for success is “hard work.”

The definition of “hard work” changes when you don’t associate with anyone in your personal life who makes less than $35,000. To me, it’s easier to work 60 hours a week as a corporate attorney in a climate-controlled office than it is to work construction in the sweltering sun on a summer day. But the former is taking home less than the latter.

The other day I got a mailer from Adam Miller, my Democratic state representative. He is assuredly an upgrade on the representation I had in my time in Piqua, but it’s never sat well with me that a lawyer from a small wealthy enclave in the district represents the two poorest neighborhoods in Columbus while spending large swaths of his time serving in Afghanistan as a four-star general in the National Guard.

When deployed, he can’t even make a political post on Facebook, which seems problematic for someone elected to serve in the Statehouse “during these unprecedented times,” as corporations like to say.

His big issue seems to be some legislation to fight “prostitution and sex trafficking.” The other side of the mailer touted him bringing “new developments” to the district and “finding solutions” to urban blight, which is the politically correct way of saying “get these poors the fuck out of here.”

This message is intended for a certain kind of crowd; the kind of crowd that has already descended upon East Franklinton — or “The Scioto Peninsula” as the odiously named Downtown Columbus Development Corporation is trying to rebrand it.

The message landed different with me, insane communist just west of the 315 overpass that has become the divider between old and new Franklinton. I threw that mailer in the trash and decided to go to my last shift as a bartender.

The Patio, the oldest bar in the oldest neighborhood in Columbus and where the first lesson is that there is no literal patio, looks from the outside like a good place to get shot. And make no mistake, that could absolutely happen if you talk shit to the wrong person and utter that famous phrase, “let’s go outside.”

Overall, I liked bartending. But the downsides became too much to ignore. Like Jason the Pizza Shop owner thankfully told me, “It’s a bad idea to work at a bar if you like alcohol.” That’s especially good advice during a pandemic while working in a crowded indoor space where a majority of the customers you rely upon for income can’t even be troubled with wearing a mask when they enter the bar.

I’ve served panhandlers, prostitutes, crane operators, nurses, major drug traffickers, convenience store operators, gang members, gang leaders, steel workers, roofers, post office engineers, counterfeiters, retired bank robbers and arsonists, felons, real estate agents, Taco Bell managers, lawyers, waiters, accountants, plumbers, professional bass fishermen, meatpackers, brick layers, and the criminally insane. Sometimes in the same day.

I learned something from every one of them because I try to see the humanity in everyone, other than powerful politicians who only have platitudes to serve up to the working poor.

This neighborhood doesn’t need “developments” or human trafficking legislation. It needs fully funded schools, mental health and drug addiction services, jobs programs and infrastructure like paved roads and alleys, sidewalks that don’t look like they were bombed in World War II. We can’t even get a covered bus stop with a bench because our city is scared a homeless person might take a nap on it. We can’t even get our streets swept.

The local Democratic machine values the Short North Elite and the Downtown Cocktail Crowd over the people in my neighborhood. They rob us of school funding, adequate mass transit, and other basic infrastructure, and then look down their noses when desperate people turn to any combination of crimes, drugs, or alcohol.

But they need us more than we need them. They might have all the money but they can’t build anything. They need people to serve their tables, clean their houses, take care of their kids, drive them to work in silence as they sip some $13 mocha from Starbucks. Our neighborhood would continue to function if every developer ceased to exist. Their world would grind to halt because they depend on exploiting our labor.

I bartended long enough to become a known entity in this neighborhood but, at the end of the day, drinking Tito’s all day and blacking out six nights a week isn’t going to stop the storm that looms on the other side of the 315 overpass. Tweeting sure isn’t going to do it either.

On Tuesday, I’m going to work with Shawn, a fellow Bellows Avenue soldier that drinks Bud Light and American Turkey Honey. I was talking with him last week about how I want to learn to do more with my hands than type sentences and serve drinks. I said I admired him for being able to do all kinds of renovation and construction work.

He said he was actually looking for a new crew member. I said I’d be down if I knew how to do anything other than bang a hammer. He said that’s no problem at all my friend you can come work under me and I will show you everything you need to know.

I said what the hell, why not?

I won’t regret my time bartending, short as it was. But I don’t know how anybody works that job without going insane within six months. People think it must be fun having customers buy you drinks while everyone else is carrying on and the answer is it’s not that fun being drunk all the time.

Sure, there are moments of joy or hilarity. But there are also moments of pain and sorrow.

I had one eccentric customer, Plumber Joe. By eccentric, I mean he was outright weird, but he was a good-natured guy who drank Jack Daniels doubles and tipped $5, which in my world made him a mob boss.

One day he is drinking and he asks about my childhood. I said well my childhood wasn’t perfect though it was certainly better than most. Not that I can complain.

I was pouring his drink when I said it and figured that would be the end of the conversation. When I turned around he said, “My father left our family when I was three. My mother beat me my whole life and my older brother molested me and my sisters. Then my sisters ignored me for 30 years until they learned my mom was lying about everything she said about me.”

I’m thinking, holy shit, I used to think you were weird. Now, given these circumstances, I’m shocked by how normal you turned out.

I learned that most bad decisions in the neighborhood occurred from a lack of resources. People who are at their wit’s end, two months behind on rent and waiting for their landlord to file an eviction notice. Why wouldn’t you abuse alcohol or drugs if they were the only thing readily available that will make you forget your material circumstances, if only for a few hours? Why wouldn’t you be quick to fight if you felt somebody disrespected you? Your pride is all you have to lose at that point.

This winter will be the hardest of our lives. Leaders in both political parties seem intent on not passing another stimulus relief package because they think the voters will blame the other side. Well, only one of them will be right!

In the meantime, more and more Americans will be pushed to financial ruin. More will be pushed into financial insecurity for the first time in their lives. They will face foreclosures and evictions and be pushed into the street if they have nowhere else to go.

A lot of Americans are going to find out they have way more in common with us freaks in the Bottoms than they ever will with our political elite. They are going to find out that our rotted institutions won’t come to their aid in their darkest moments. They are going to find out that our country’s elite detest them as much as they detest those below them on the economic ladder.

Hopefully it’s a lesson we all retain when we come out the dark end of this tunnel.