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Recollections of Oar House Antics       from   Vance  Lang

I used to bus dog for Jack and Scanlon on Monday nights for about a year. By 10:00 p.m., behind the bar, they would have something that they were sipping on---Jack would make a round, then Scanlon, then Jack, etc. I started coming around to service their stations, and while I was at it I started finishing their drinks. I think I would get Scanlon’s first, and then Jack’s.   It was so busy that it might be an hour before I would return…So, say 3 shots would not slow me down, really. My metabolism was so high washing and stacking glassware, giving bartenders breaks, and carrying cases and moving kegs…the booze didn’t faze me too much.

To their credit, they took it as good fun and never tried to freak me out in any devious way---no Tabasco sauce, no straight booze, no crazy concoctions. After all, I was only a lowly bus dog, and they wouldn’t think of abusing their dumb animal.

 Here's  some other great  memories

1. One night, some drunk smacked our manager out front of the bar. Johnny Who and I chased him through several backyards, and we flushed him out and he ran down the street. He climbed up the front of one of the condominiums on Second Street. The occupant came to the sliding glass door with a rifle. The guy stood on the balcony and waited for the cops to arrest him.

2. One night, there was a riot outside of the Oar House. All of the doormen and a few regulars went at it with some like soccer team or something. One of the cooks went out and got himself knocked out by the Banana Republic. I was managing at the time and was pretty much ordering everyone back inside. The fight was all out in the street and about a block long. When we heard that our cook, Josey, was knocked out, Johnny said that he was going bring him back, and I sent two doormen to go with him. Johnny, was a life-guard, and it is said that he performed CPR on Josey because he wasn’t breathing at the time. They carried Josey back and he started to revive.

3. This one joker was a manager. He robbed the safe of $3000 dollars and high-tailed it to Canada. What a looser.

4. I remember, one doorman went into the kitchen and ate a hard-boiled egg without permission. He was fired. At the end of a busy night, another doorman, said he couldn’t pick up any more glassware. He was fired on the spot.

5. Oh, this is classic. I was managing one slow night. We had a huge, off-duty doorman (nicknamed Baby Hughy) up in the DJ booth (beer wagon) spinning records. There was one particularly skuzzy patron there that night, that had been recently 86-ed. I saw him, and I politely reminded him that he was 86-ed and he apologized. He was only looking for a friend or someone. So, OK, I led the way and he is walking behind me. No problem. We walk by the DJ booth, and I head out the door.  OK, so then I am outside and I’m waiting there…and the guy is not behind me. I’m like, “Where did he go?”. Then there he is!!! The DJ is carrying the guy by his neck. The guy’s feet are a foot off the ground!! Then the DJ threw him head long to Main Street.

6. One particularly busy Burger Madness, the kitchen crew was really flying. The grill was blasting. The grease caught fire and the flames just started up, ten feet into the flue. We tried slowing it down to buy us some time by covering the flame with a large piece of wet cardboard. (I know…wet cardboard? That was the best we could do.) Well, one of the cooks had his hand on the fire retardant/fire alarm, and he asked if he should pull the ring? He patiently waited until he got the go-ahead from me. Everyone casually walked out. People walked away from their food without a fuss. The fire department was right there, but the CO2 system had smothered the fire.

7. After hours, the doormen, bus dogs, etc. would bet dollars throwing peanuts into a pitcher for kicks. Before that, for several Monday’s in a row, we were throwing bottles into a trash barrel from about 15 feet. It cost a dollar to play. The last guy to miss won the pot. The sight and sound of the flying glass was great, but the resulting mess was unfair to the morning cleaning crew.

8. One night, a small brawl broke out in front of station 4. There was a skirmish and the dance floor quickly emptied---it seemed the bad guys were all hauled away. Then I see one of the doormen getting up off the floor. He had a couple of footprints on his back. Jack nicknamed him, “The Rugman”.

9. Sad story: I was still working at the bar. I already had my BA from a great university, but I was stuck in the beachside, bartender mode. Well, along came a new manager, and he wrote me up, wham-bam on a few ticky-tack things and then fired me.  The final incident was when I was at the day bar and a guy ordered a draft. He was old enough so I poured him a beer, but he did not have an ID, so I set the beer on the mat and called for the manager over and over. The manager did not come and the guy kinda grabbed the beer and sat down, saying he would be over at a table. When the manager showed up, he fired me for it. Six months later, I went on to start working for Ted Turner Network.

10. Then there was the story about the alcoholic that lived in the potato shed in the back parking lot for about a week.

11. Once we went down to the beach for a Buffalo Chips group photograph. A bunch of guys grabbed Johnny Who and tried to toss him into the Pacific. But his body became like lead. I don’t know how he did it, but the whole gang could not lift him up. They did manage to get him into the surf.

What's your story then?