Drinking in the Shadow of Bukowski
by JD Clapp
“When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.”[i]
Until I made the mistake of becoming a dean, the bulk of my career involved studying alcohol. Not in the smart-ass college frat boy kind of way. Not in the jocular homeless dude holding a handwritten sign reading “Support My Alcohol Research” way either. As a social scientist, or more aptly, a “field alcohologist,” I study how people drink alcohol in situ—the complex and dynamic relationship between drinkers and their environments. A good deal of my work occurs in bars.
My niche is small. Perhaps a hundred or so other researchers sit on the same bar stool. Many of us chose this field because it is so damned interesting and transcends disciplinary boundaries. I’ve always appreciated how literature often reflects what science tells us so well. Relative to science, no writer described drunkenness and drinking in bars better than Charles Bukowski.
I had spent the prior 15 years running several research centers focused on drinking. I had fun doing it. I studied how much old people drank in a retirement home using a bogus recycling program; I did a study of a 180 college parties…Now, I fought with faculty over who would get the window office when some old windbag retired or went to that great ivory tower in the sky. Being in LA, a bit miserable in the direction my career was heading, missing my bar research days, I rounded up my younger charges and headed to Hollywood in search of Bukowski’s old haunts.
“…there was a civilization of lost souls that lived in and off bars, daily, mightily, and forever…”
Stop 1: The Frolic Room looked the part. Fifty years ago, it was the real deal. If a movie studio redid the décor, they did it well. Pure late 1960s vibe—large red and blue plastic light disks on a wall, old murals, a simple wooden bar, backlit pedestrian liquor bottles, the alcoholic’s version of Christmas lights. The vintage TV playing a soundless John Wayne western to Jason Isbell on the house system was too much, but central casting did well with the loud crying women in the shitter, and the Perry Farrell lookalike barkeep, open shirt showing off a rosary tattoo ending just above his waxed navel. The tourist crowd made it a one whiskey stop.
“I disliked Hollywood, the movies seldom ever worked for me. What was I doing with these people?”
Stop 2: Musso and Frank came next. Musso seemed a cliché tribute to old Hollywood, except it is old Hollywood. Her maroon leather booths and bar stools sniffed many a famous ass over the decades. As I sat at the bar with my young and thirsty charges, the din of tourists wondering if that woman in the bar was “her, the girl in that Netflix thing,” mixed with the conversation of two people who actually produced a different Netflix show. Dark polished wood, moody lighting, and the savory aroma of dusty celluloid and roasted prime beef screamed authenticity. A three drink stop.
The waiters and barkeeps all sported natty red topcoats reminiscent of Hollywood’s more formal era. The average age of the staff was akin to that of a shady hills retirement home.
The bartender behind the bar gave us the gist. He knew and drank with “Buk.”
“That was his booth,” he said pointing to the high-walled two seat booth right behind me. “He used to write poems there.”
But that came after the 2:00 minute warning when “Buk” was old and famous.
“One afternoon I was coming from the liquor store…I had two 6-packs of bottled beer and a pint of whiskey.”
Stop 3: On to the Pink Elephant. The only hint of Bukowski, a colorful pink elephant mural on the outside wall. Inside, a typical “Thanks Boss” SoCal liquor store. I grabbed a bottle of Dickel. My two half-my-age female compadres demanded an authentic good time after all.
Bottle open, we drove down his old street. No ghosts staggered among the living. Now drunk, I sappily poured a shot’s worth of whiskey out the passenger side window, like some movie gangster. For fuck’s sake, is this what LA does to people?
But seriously: Some occasional heavy drinking and inebriation also serves a purpose; first-hand knowledge of what you study yields unique insights and ideas born of experience. Or as I like to say, debauchery fuels science.
“I’ve found the best way to drink is to drink alone.”
Stop 4: Back to downtown. At my building, a soulless place atop a Whole Foods, my young female charges declined my offer to keep the party going, opting to do the responsible thing on a Tuesday at 10:00 p.m. and head home to go to bed. They deposited me and the half-empty bottle on the curb.
Upstairs, with my bottle out on the balcony, I looked down over the half-empty parking lot. I took a swig. The view of Porsches, Lexus, and Tesla sedans was most un-Bukowski.
If we are honest, the types of bars Bukowski favored are no longer with us. They have been spit-shined by corporations and made safe through innovations like responsible beverage service. Our little tour represented the end of old Buk’s glory days, when he had some cash in hand. Still, it was an admirable effort. That said, I was disappointed that it was 10:00 p.m. While nicely buzzed, I wasn’t blotto, and the night had been mostly upscale.
As I was about to call it a night, I looked onto Olive Street and watched an old homeless woman take a shit behind a spanking new Mercedes.
“Close enough,” I said to myself.
I took another big pull and went to bed.
Disclaimer: Don’t try replicating this adventure without the consultation of a professional! I know enough to moonwalk giddily down the razor’s edge of sustainable and safe indulgence and check yourself into Betty Ford over-indulgence. But even a professional like myself, occasionally falls with a thud of temporary shame and regret on the latter side of that edge. Notice I didn’t say wrong side. If you need to judge, judge… and stick Carrie Nation’s temperance ax up…ah, fuck it.
[i] All quotes in italics are Charles Bukowski, from Charles Bukowski on Drinking (ed. A. Debritto). HarperCollins. New York City. 2019.
JD Clapp is a writer and social scientist based in San Diego, CA.