So many of these places have a back room, or a basement, or a corner not immediately accessible or obvious upon entry. There has been a resurgence of need or desire for hidden spaces, and exclusivity is not a sufficient explanation, though it may be an element thereof. I’m not especially interested in “speakeasies” or other perversions of the past playrooms of the generationally wealthy. Dens of iniquity certainly have their appeal, though it’s really more about whom you’re with, the condition of light within, and what is on the stereo, than any permanent address. Any actual club formal enough to exist as such, and exclusive enough to make membership desirable, is almost certainly one which would not have me as a member. But what I am charged with describing here does not fit any of these descriptions, so I am forced to consider another, and I can think of no appellation more apt than “clown bar.”
At the end of the upstairs bar there is a coffee station, ostensibly free for anyone who knows it is there. These are nicer brewers than they need be, the lighteners, both dairy and non, are well-stocked. The coffee itself is of a fine roast, and has been ground and brewed with more than a modicum of care. Jerry, behind the bar, does not like to be called “Jer” by the regulars, but will happily, and I mean happily, small smile on small face, assemble another pot for you, even when it’s really too late and he knows you’ve likely had enough downers to only need a cup or two of uppers at most. It’s policy, his policy, and that kind of policy needs more respect than most. He’s been there longer than this place has been this place, if you know what I mean, and classes the regulars according to who’s not even worth exchanging gentle ribbing with (former roommate, recently fired barback), all the way to who deserves immediate and frequent attention (me, apparently, which always gives me the feeling that “the talent” is often not as kind as they might be with “the staff”—we’re all capable of better, comrades). Our rapport is pleasant, and when he makes derisive, if jocular, jibes about “downstairs,” I do not think much of it.
Past Jerry—not Jer—and the coffee station, is a long, wide staircase which terminates in a locked liquor prison. The booze certainly appears to desire liberation (or libation, eh? EH?), but, call me soft if you must, they’re nice enough here and it doesn’t feel like my battle this time. So the liquor stays imprisoned, under the harsh fluorescents, gradually being granted release as the dutiful patrons adopt it into their gullets up above, with Jerry. Next is the ubiquitous venue office, posters of past glories stapled one over the other (did Pavement really play with Husker Du? Do I actually care? And did the new singers of the Germs and Dead Boys fight over which expired predecessor was snottier/more intelligent?), a printer which is three generations too old, and compatible only with the first model of internet-ready computer. The argument is circular, but still a nice source of grumbling solidarity for underpaid promotors and interns (“Can we just get a new damned printer?” “Well, it’s the only one that works with this computer, it can’t find the drivers for any other brand.” “Maybe that means it’s time for a new computer?” “Yeah, but anything nicer won’t have the connection for the printer.” “Is mass, ritual suicide a possibility?” “Ha, ha! I bet there are newer printers in hell! Come on, let’s have a shot with Jer.”).
Next we pass the door to the band dressing room, where inevitably there will be an opener scarred by someone who has neither time for nor comprehension of the concept of genital-obscuring undergarments announcing, and making good on, “taking off my pants.” He’ll happily have a conversation with you, but if you look down, you’ve lost the game and have to buy him a drink and enroll in hypno-therapy the next day. There will also be mediocre beers, and it’s far too hot to spend any time down there hiding, despite the rest of the facility having excellent HVAC. Tonight, complicated open-heart surgery is performed on each member’s instrument, such that none of them works quite right at the beginning of the set, and there are too many people not in bands in a room which is in no way desirable to be in. The walk-in cooler is across the hall, fifteen feet from a mysterious curtain, behind which, you may not have guessed: clown bar. I would actually like to put aside the question of why all of the booze, the offices, and the green room are separated from any bar, and particularly one of the clown variety, by nothing more than a cloth curtain, because I think it is rather simply answered: clowns respect curtains. They are, after all, performers who, even if not directly mimicking an earlier age, are at least very much aware of their own genealogy, and that includes adhering, not to say clinging, to aspects of this history which have allowed them to persist.
That said, no one in the place has much to say about five men in suits passing between the two worlds separated by the curtain (Dallow is not immediately present to make the obvious joke about the men behind the curtain, and just because it’s obvious doesn’t make it bad; he deals in quantity just as much as any other Borscht belt vaudevillian caught in the wrong timeline), and thus we see no reason to say much about them. It’d be overly romanticizing the place to avoid noting the weight in the air and the decrepitude in the environment, but then again, there’s not much to suggest it was ever a sparkling bastion for the tireless amusers of the young and the underamused. It has low ceilings, of course, but they are painted the same leathery tan as the walls, neither drop ceilings nor pressed tin to date the place more distinctly. The booths are in good repair, but this speaks to generally fine care and maintenance than any recent reupholstery. I hardly need to depict the design of the lamps (balloons), though the wall art solicits an attempt at description. Over each booth is a realistic, detailed oil painting of a clown in 1940s American middle-class attire: sharp shoulder pads with vaguely militial attire, or else wool or nylon constructed dresses and stockings; for the women, double-breasted, flap-less pocketed suits in window pane, and pinstripe for the men. As if this contrast weren’t enough, the clowns stood in woodland scenes, generally looking pleased to be out of their urban or circus environs. Behind the bar itself was a giant tear of striped tent, though I never approached closely enough to inspect it properly. We decide to pull up in a booth and observe this other world behind the curtain. Our purpose was simple enough: to complete a blind tasting of Modelo’s three flavors of canned michelada, and, should anyone care for the record, they’re all pretty miserable.
So clowns like to drink, that’s hardly surprising, and I don’t want to play into stereotypes regarding Norman Rockwell portrayals thereof. These are real people, and real people sometimes need a drink. What was more surprising, though I am not certain why anything seemed all that out of the ordinary in this context, is that none of the clowns wore white face makeup. The exaggerated lips and forehead lines, black circles around the eyes or red ones on the cheeks, accentuated jawline or chin dimples, even one with a version of Divine eyebrows sharply, and, honestly, gorgeously, swooping away and upward past the temples, but none of the whitewash grease makeup so common in our childhood dreams/nightmares. I felt doubly out of place for having no makeup at all, and for the condition of my own attire looking more like the clowns in the paintings than that of the locals, who loped from one table to another or around to the restroom (Dallow’s quip about “the little clown’s room” never more accurate) in tastefully tattered jackets and oversized pants, or Pierrot whites with poms dangling at their sides. The bar itself seemed to be unmanned, the clowns leaving bills in a vase off to the side as one or the other got rounds for the table. I want to fight any assumptions regarding the need of these clowns for that unique intimacy with a bartender, here apparently absent, though it did appear that whichever one was fetching drinks would take on the role of conversation partner for at least a minute or two. These clowns didn’t drink beer, as there were neither drafts nor cans, and the only reaction I saw from any of them at our presence was a hiccup from one of them, alone at the facing booth, each time we cracked one of the large cans of subpar michelada. But even that may have been coincidental. Regardless, the program down there seemed to be something more like bottle service: the drinks were almost strictly brown liquor, into which seltzer could be fired from a bottle produced from who knew where by one or another of them, or else presumably flat water from a plastic flower affixed to a lapel or overalls strap. A shorter clown dressed in antique firefighter gear may have had tonic in the comically small hose emerging from their pocket.
The soundtrack had been predominately calliope music in the half hour or so since we had sat down, though it was not exactly circus music, sounding more like Der Ring des Nibelungen, slowly building and swelling, than anything one might expect to background a juggling bear or plate-spinner. Zee asked me if I knew what it was, but I had no idea, and pointed to the dilapidated upright piano on the short stage to our right as a clown opened the top of it, looked inside cautiously, possibly for some kind of gag to pop out, and started tinkling out some chords. The clowns were generally de-gendered by their attire and various enhancements to their statures (one did walk around on knee shoes, the shortest person in the bar by some margin; others had lifts or slouched; any stilts must have been checked at the door, for obvious reasons), but this one had a breathy alto sounding out through a wide, forest green ringed mouth and painted stubble cheeks. As the music took form, it was unmistakable, Tom Waits’s “Tom Traubert’s Blues,” with all its black keys and maudlin beauty. I sighed with the weight of all the clown empathy I could summon: “wasted and wounded” indeed. The clown remembered the verses better than the man himself, seeming to genuinely need to borrow a coupl’a bucks from Frank. When the tune finished, a few bouquets of plastic flowers carpeted the apron of the stage, and the clown pianist sauntered back to a seat at the bar.
