Last Thursday, I was late at the office when a phone awoke me. It was my good friend, Monkey Boy.
“Monkey Boy, what are you doing calling me at work?” I asked. “You startled me so much, you almost knocked my feet off of the desk!”
“Dude! Tomorrow’s New Year’s!” he said.
“I already knew that,” I said. “Didn’t you read last week’s Current, where we listed a whole bunch of parties?” “This is not about partying,” said Monkey Boy. “We haven’t completed our resolution for 2004 yet!”
This was dire. Here it was, Dec. 30, and Monkey Boy and I hadn’t completed our single resolution for 2004: to start drinking.
Start drinking? You may ask: Isn’t it customary to quit drinking as a New Year’s resolution?
Maybe so, but I never really understood these people who quit things as a New Year’s resolution. Smoking, for example, is really bad for you. Shouldn’t it be easy to quit? Or losing weight? Hello, I’m going to try really hard to do something obvious that’s going to vastly improve my life?
No. What takes real willpower is starting a bad habit. To pick up and light that first cigarette, sucking that toxic car exhaust into your lungs, making your teeth yellow, making it difficult to breathe, having to stand outside in the cold when you go to the city, increasing your risk of cancer, and losing dozens of dollars a week. And having the gumption to do it over and over and over again.
Now that takes will power.
Me? I don’t have that kind of will power, so I decided to start drinking. Drinking’s easy – it’s just like drinking non-alcoholic drinks, but with alcohol. It’ll kill ya and cause some rough mornings though, so I figured it was the perfect challenge.
“Geez, it’s 5:00 on a Thursday and I’m here in Hoboken. Where are we supposed to find a place to go drinking, Monkey Boy?” I asked.
Ten minutes later, Monkey Boy showed up at my door with Frank, Cal, Captain Fluffy, and Stan, and we hit the bars for the last weeknight of drinking for 2004.
Parking and drinking
Where to drink in Hoboken isn’t really a problem. It’s easily solved once you find the answer to the real Hoboken conundrum: where to park. Once you find a spot, a bar will be close by.
We found a spot on Sixth and Washington and headed into Sullivan’s. The bar was crowded enough that people were on their feet, but there was room to walk around. At 10 p.m., Sara and Francis Pauline, a couple from Hoboken, were finishing up dinner. Hoboken residents since 2001, Sara and Francis frequent Sullivan’s, which they describe as having a casual atmosphere because they are familiar with the crowd.
“No one’s working tonight,” said Sara, who works in the fashion industry. “So it’s a little too much of a meat market.”
Sara, 29, and Francis 33, are on the cusp of two Hoboken scenes – the single, hard partying twentysomething crowd, and the older, new-family crowd. It’s a new scene where a young adult can find him or herself recovering from a night of hard partying while surrounded by strollers and parents heading to brunch.
“The one thing I miss about this bar is the college students,” said Francis. “The Stevens kids were pretty cool.” Damn those drinking age laws!
Young parents may not have to completely forgo nights out, but some adjustments are made.
Alicia Smith came up from South Jersey where she lives to visit Kerry Johnson from Jersey City. Leaving her children with their grandparents, Alicia and the crew were celebrating New Year’s Eve one night early, ending up at Sullivan’s after stopping by P.J. Ryan’s in Jersey City and the Black Bear in Hoboken.
“When you’ve got kids, you have to come out a night early,” said Alicia. “This is our one night out.”
Apparently, besides the sounds of a child’s laughter, one of the perks of grandparenthood is getting to celebrate holidays on the same day as everyone else!
Louise and Jerry’s
After Sullivan’s, we headed a few blocks down Washington and across the street to Louise and Jerry’s. While the people we spoke to earlier in the night were more of a “newcomer” crowd, at Louise and Jerry’s we fell in with the old-school, born-and-bred Hobokenites.
Louise and Jerry’s has an air of neighborhood to it. As I waited for my drink, a person reached over the bar with a $10, calling to the bartender, “I gave you a $10, not a $20.”
Melissa, a local resident who wouldn’t give her last name, made some room at the bar for us to join her and her friends.
“Re-Pre-Sent!” she said, taking care that I wrote the word in three syllables in my note pad.
Irene Smith pointed to her favorite Hoboken artifact, a Little League jersey on the wall with the name Rocky R. on it.
“This is the only town where the Little League has more than one Rocky, where you need a last name,” she said. At the end of the bar close to the windows, some of the local rock stars congregated, such as Jaime Della Fave, front woman/lead singer of Eugene, and Rad Del Prete, guitarist of High Speed Chase. Della Fave and Del Prete are anchors of the local original music scene – on Jan. 21, both bands will play at Maxwell’s along with Karyn Kuhl, Motel Creeps, Butterspy, Crewman Number Six, and Marc Gianotti for “Hoboken Rocks.”
Hoboken Rocks is not only a great chance to hear some music from the bands who frequent the Hoboken Clubs, but it should be a scene for some of the local bar-going crew. Now that Monkey Boy, Stan, Frank, Cal, Captain Fluffy, and I have joined the ranks of the rest of the world’s drinkers, we’ll probably check it out!