Ray Pride

It's the last call of the last night of the last weekend of a prime dive. "We're at Tuman's, off Chicago and Leavitt. Tuman's. The Alcohol Abuse Center. Yeahhhh," a skinny kid honks on his cell. Tuman's, yes, more commonly revered as the Alcohol Abuse Center, throne to the broke, broken-down, billiards-cheating and bike-messengering, and where on the wrong weekend night, all the goatees left over from "Singles" are let out to play.

"Jeez, it's depressing, this is closing," someone mumbles loudly in the surging dark. Word is out. A poster is pasted to the twenty-foot mirror behind the bar: "Pay your respects" sketched beside a heart tattoo carved with "TF" (Tuman's Forever). The closing was rumored for years. At the boundary waters of Ukrainian Village, Tuman's, with its Old Style ON TAP sign out front was known for affordable pour, all the blear you could swill from low-priced high-brow brew--tell us where else two bucks gets a draft Guinness or Harp?

Tonight, the taps are dry; they're down to bottles. Nostalgia. What nostalgia? It's just space, ripe for a build-out, an upmarketing, a demolishing. Who really needs a commonplace cathedral, a workingman's joint, rich with the bedevilment of hands-on craftsmanship? All the stuff you can do with your hands, aside from hoisting a pint: the cream-painted pressed tin of this tavern runs beyond the ceiling down the walls. The dark wood of the mirrored story-high bar gleams with the soak of smoke's stink, even across decades. The sectioned Tiffany glass drop-ceiling is partially swabbed, as if the Filth God had taken the cleaner mid-job. Broken chairs and tumble-down barstools vie with empty beer kegs as seating of choice. The patio-brick no-fall flooring seems like the keenest of contemporary afterthoughts.

Every damn conversation is mopey, meta-nostalgic, ruing the lost moment in the moment it is getting drunk up. I smile when I jackleg into the men's, discover that amid the Day-Glo graffiti, CBGBs-deep, the only Roman characters are "One of your homies should have told you to shut the fuck up."

I order another $2.50 Heineken, study the CDs on the jukebox, their song lists scrawled on index cards: Fugazi, Swans, Gang of Four, Nirvana. Past couple visits, I've heard sad songs rich with death: Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, the Clash. C'mon, Tuman's was filthy and adorable: seedy, but the sweetest stinkbox this side of a Delta juke. What's that crazy wail drunk-howling on the box? "I will always love you in my own crazy way."

(2003-01-08)

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DVD Tip of the Week
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My Big Fat Night
(2002-12-04)

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