Blue & Gold

Listening to The Cure's "Close to Me" always takes me back to the Blue & Gold, a little Ukrainian dive bar on East 7th Street near First Avenue.

I spent much of my college life at the Blue & Gold. The East Village in the early 1980s was still a mix of old immigrants, squatters, musicians, artists, addicts and NYU students who dared to venture past Second Avenue. This was before there were Starbucks and Gaps all over the place down there. It was still a neighborhood instead of a mall. Of course, it was that first wave of NYU dorks heading east that led to all that the East Village is now, so blame me and my pals.

Anyway, when we went there on a Friday or Saturday night the bar was usually a mix of old Ukrainians at the bar and students and punks in the booths. I'd call them hipsters but this was before the term was coined. If you had a booth at the B&G, you did not give it up. You were golden.

The walls of the B&G had drawings of old villages in them but you had to look hard to see them. It had a great jukebox, cheap drinks, a disgusting bathroom that I vomited in a lot and a pool table in the middle. There was a bar just like it right next door that we called the parallel universe. Strangely, no matter how crowded the B&G got, no one ever ventured next door to the relatively empty confines of the parallel universe.

There was an old guy at the bar every night at the B&G. He had gray hair and always wore shades and was always smoking. My friends used to joke that he was me at sixty. In all the years of going there, the only time any of us ever heard him say anything was when he once yelled, "up your ass" at no one in particular.

Often we would start at night at the B&G and then drift further down 7th to Vazacs at Avenue B. Some people know it as the horseshoe bar. It is a classic bar which is why many movies ("Godfather II," "Angel Heart" and "The Verdict") were shot there as well as numerous Miller Lite advertisements. From there we'd bob over to 5th Street and Sophies and then work our way back to the B&G to finish the night before staggering back to the dorms.

I remember one afternoon after we were done with Fall semester finals and me and my roommates headed there for a mid-afternoon binge. The place was pretty empty except for the usual assortment of old Ukrainians. We drank a ton of beer and I must have had four shots of Wild Turkey and was smoking filterless Camels. The lady who ran the place called us "crazy cossacks." I had to catch a train to Buffalo the next day to visit my girlfriend's family. It was one of the worst hangovers I ever had.

Obviously I have not been to the Blue & Gold in a long time. Even if i wasn't sober, I'm too old for that place now. Nothing worse than an aging doofus trying to pick up college chicks although if you are good at it then it's probably like shooting fish in a barrel.

I will ask my readers who tipped many back at the B&G with me to throw in their own memories.