As you may know, I often do what I call Google Maps Street View Tourism. It's where I simply zoom into a place and check out a location as if "I'm there" and look around to see what there is to be seen. At least according to the Street View car and its cameras when they took the latest shot of that place. But there's also "See more dates" where you can even "go back in time" to see previous Street View images, if they exist, of that same spot. But there's also the fact that it's a great tool to revisit old haunts that would otherwise be difficult to visit in person. This brings me to this above image and this post.
I got to thinking back tonight about the olden days when drinking was not just a casual once in a blue moon thing. It was a "I need a fix" thing that required a regular and easy-to-get-to source, preferably a little place one could get cheap 12-packs, plentiful and ready, quick and no questions asked. I had to have me my "product." My "glug glug juice." Beer that is. Bright gold and ice cold.
At the height of Koyo (You know Koyo. You read "The Chronicles, right? No? Well they're listed chapter by chapter right there on the side right there on the home page.) there was Pelican Discount Beverages. A hop, skip and stumble down the street from Cypress Springs aka The Palmetto Bug Arms. The Indian guy that manned this place (I guess, the owner since he was always there) surely knew me as one of his most frequent regulars yet he hardly said boo in the way of any greetings or small talk. Just as well. I was there for one thing only, and it wasn't chit chat. He sold it cheap, cold and fast, just the way I liked it.
Well here's the place now. Don't know if he moved his store elsewhere or just retired so he doesn't have to jibber jabber with customers anymore.
But Pelican was the spring and summer of 2004. Koyo had tentacles that reached farther back than that. Let's visit, arguably, the beginning. When I had a nice job, a nice apartment, and money enough to party in a bar. And, a bar that was located on the grounds of my gated luxury resort-style apartment community Park Central. JJ Hoops, with its sports bar early 2000s still trendy Chili's style and this poolside patio seating.
Yes the pic says "Splash Chill & Grill Bistro" which is what it became in the 2010s and now it's a Solarzano's franchise, but the layout and outdoor features were still the same back in 2000-2003, just the inside's changed a lot... for the worse if you ask me.
When I moved next to Ric after losing the Park Central place, he, Gary and I would often hang out here, the little Irish Pub a block away from Reflections.
And we'd buy our at-home provisions here, at the corner.
Funny thing though, if you drink too much and don't work enough to pay your even cheaper rent at your new apartment, you become desperate. Desperate enough to move halfway across the country to sleep on a mattress in a storage loft with the rats. But at least your host brings you for one drink at the local hipster neighborhood bar, oh so common here in the Big Easy, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Piss off the cray cray "wifey" and the sentient, judging ferret and, well, you're out. And from your new boarding house room, you pop over next door to here for some liquid refreshment. A little less in quantity than the multiple gallon handles of Popov those homeless guys were procuring that one night.
I'd also do as I did when Jay and the cray cray wifey kicked me out on Saturdays, hang out in the Quarter sipping tall boys "hidden" in paper sacks bought from the A&P on Royal.
Lookin' a little bit like this dude on that very corner, maybe without all my shit in a basket and certainly I wouldn't be caught dead out in public shirtless, LOL!
As Chronicles tells us, this would have been 2003 and I came back to Florida, stayed with Ric, now with Gary staying at his mom's house in Minneola where Ric and I would visit weekly and we'd all get our liquid courage here on the corner.
But living in Ric's tiny studio, one can only endure so many smashing mirror coffee table tops before moving on becomes an inevitable option.
Next stop was DeLand and my father's couch but that month or two or however long in reality is such a blur, I can't even begin to remember where my hooch came from other than the shit I stole from my father's fridge. So we move back to New Orleans.
After my night at the Hotel Capri, and the next near Alicison's husband's ashes in her room at Sandra's, I was back at Sandra's upstairs. Same Rite Aid source for the nightly and weekend trips for Metairie Chicken. And when in a few months it came time to move over to Gentilly with Alicison and stay on her kitchen floor (and have no alcohol in the house since she was an NAer) it lasted just a few weeks before I opted to be Ric's moral support as Gary was dying. Back to Orlando.
Yes, back to Mr. Smashy Coffee Table Top. All was water under the bridge. It wasn't the first big drama fight with Ric, and wouldn't be the last. But soon I was pullin' in some money with an okay job and got my own place. The afore mentioned Casa La Cucarachas. It's 2004. And we're back at Pelican. Maybe we never left.
But of course we did. And where'd we go? You know. NOLA, again.
Now in the converted garage in back of Alicison's place, my usual to was to hit up the little family-run grocery store on the corner of Elysian Fields and (what was then known as) Robert E. Lee Blvd., Ferrara's. It was destroyed in Katrina so Street View never got a glimpse of it since Google didn't start doing Street View until 2007, but here's the ruins from the early 2010s.
And here's what's there now.
More Metairie Chickens. More weekend days (though now not mandatory) in the Quarter. Even the occasional splurge visit to Bourbon Pub or Oz, oh la la!
But so it is written, so it was done, just as I was settling in to a life in this new reality, the stability of it was crumbling with a shaky job sitch and a druggy landlord and Ric catching a third DUI meant he was a shit-ton more humble and, well, ugh, back to Orlando, AGAIN!
Now on the dawn of 2005, I settled into living in Lake Mary, sleeping on Ric's loveseat at his Sun Lake apartment and working at Convergys, walking to and from work six miles round trip. On the way home each evening, I'd grab my reward at the "On The Run," a six pack and a couple loose ones, usually Fosters oil cans, the combo would be dubbed a "six and two" and would stick with me from then on. And I say Koyo ended around this time in my life. Hmm. Did it?
