Are People Actually Mad At Trump For Skipping Opening Day?

The GSC panel examines the uproar over President Trump skipping the ceremonial first pitch for a second straight year.

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Rainy Nights In Soho

Ever since the idea of drinking in bars appealed, I had always wanted to join a member’s club. Some antique place in a neglected part of the city full of cigar smoke and old stories from the war, woven together with men in expensive suits drinking whiskey on the rocks and muttering things like “God damn” or “Terrific news!” In short, I wanted a little slice of the forties. With ice. Thank you.

And not long after I moved to London, I got it. Trisha’s bar in Soho may be a bit of an open secret but it is the only place where you can enjoy a quiet drink on a Friday night. Or a lively drink on a Tuesday.

Behind an old blue door, there’s little to tell you that anything other than backstreet murders happen down there until a friend or an acquaintance drags you down the worn steps at 3 am with a wide eyed enthusiasm and the reassurance that you have got to see this place.

What greets you is a small, unfussy bar with Frank Sinatra on the soundsystem and Dean Martin posters plastered on the wall, joined by a few heroes of the London-Italian gangland. The Pope stares lovingly over a bottle of Grappa and James Gandolfini of Sopranos fame beams out of the frame with his arm around an ecstatic regular.

Trisha herself is rarely around but stories of her eccentricity crop up like an excitable shadow. People swap stories of their experience with her or rumours at the very least. There was a story going around that she used to be married to a mob boss or she once transported a varying amount of cocaine to some exotic location or she used to run a brothel in Liverpool or Manchester or somewhere north of Watford. Perhaps she’s still on the run. The fact that her grown up sons neither confirm nor deny anything feeds Trisha’s mystery deliciously but it also means that there is a bar in famously ‘mind-your-own-business’ London where strangers actually converse. As such, Trisha’s mystery doesn’t exactly become unique behind the old blue door.

Here are just a few more.

“Dean Martin.” Began the barman, “cooles’ geezer on the fuckin’ planet. People say Sinatra was best but nah; Dino could sing, he could act and he could tell a joke or two. Watching Frank is like watching fuckin’ paint dry.”

Without disrespecting Dean Martin too much, an unwise move when his biggest fan is serving you drinks, Frank Sinatra wins. He just does. It’s like that old Beatles/Stones argument; The Beatles are clearly, clearly better; but it’s pretty cute watching the Stones’ enthusiasts try and defend themselves.

American.

Either a Boston native turned down or some guy who had been around a lot of Jewish Manhattanites. Those chewy vowels stretched like audible taffy. Craawsby. Craaaawwsby.

American businessmen aren’t uncommon in Trisha’s. Always alone. Always still in the tailored suit they had just done a presentation in, some of them had been coming through the old blue door for years, where the combination of good spirits, alcoholic and otherwise, seems to satisfy the extroverted American temperament.

“Bill.” He states and engages me swiftly in a firm, manly handshake, his face morphing into a smile as antiquely American as old Rat Pack movies.

“So you’re a fan of Bing’s huh?” He buys me another drink and we begin talking. He tells me he had his niece turn a few of Bing Crosby’s numerous radio programmes into podcasts and ever since he was little, he admired Bing’s deep voice and White Christmas got him in the holiday mood every year but all the while I was barely paying attention to what was being said, instead focussing on the words, drunkenly marvelling in this phonological playground. Pwwwwodcaaast. Vwwoooooice. Haaawlidays. All said with the ease of someone reciting their surname.

“So what brings you over to London?” I ask.

“Eh, just business. For Ford.”

Ford. FORD. FWWWOOOOORD. Never had one vowel sound been so perfectly doughy, so infinitely lovely and, boy, I was getting drunk. I would have happily fainted right there and then had I not swiftly realised that I have been talking to The Man. The Man that could make or break careers and people. The Man that is loved by the legions of city boys and loathed by the squat dwelling hippy. The Man! And with that, The Man bought me another drink.

I was barely staying vertical at this point, swaying gently on the barstool, embodying all the thousands of words for drunk, grinning gormlessly. I was just about to stagger home except Bill’s hand found itself on my thigh and his mouth three or four inches from my ear. He whispered “I’m only staying here this one night, so…”

And then he leaned in.

The one element that would make Trisha’s complete is this; cigar smoke. Now, I am not suggesting for one minute that the Smoking Ban was a wrong move; It has mildly irritated Nigel Farage, it has taken the hideous stench out of pubs and millions of people are now marginally healthier than they would have been otherwise. In fact, the only situation where I would argue against the smoking ban is in Trisha’s where not only should cigars come on the house for ambience purposes but better use should be made of the smoking area which, all being told, is perhaps the size of a large fridge.

Sure, Trisha’s itself is so minuscule it would catch fire immediately but that’s not the point. The smoking area does, however, help even the cagiest Londoner open up. It’s only appropriate then, for Bessie Smith’s smoky, confessional voice to have near constant rotation this time of year when the nights are closing in minute by minute and you find yourself in the dark, alone.

“I can’t be working any more nights…” Groans a bouncer. “The friends you have that are still awake at 4 in the morning are not good people, mate, not good people.”

He tells me everything but his name, address and bank details; had been fairly nocturnal since leaving school, doing night shifts at care homes, bars, pubs, even the Ritz (“All off their fucking tits.” He giggles). He tells me of the wild parties he’s had over the years, all the while with the distant eyes and the half smile of someone recalling their favourite Christmas. And maybe it’s an old hangover from the Ritz days but as he tells me this, his posture is exceedingly regal, perched on the old metal stool like an ex matador. He grins, weakly.

These unpinpointable states of funk rarely have clean, heroic endings. Either you brush yourself off and do something ‘proper’ or, more commonly, you just keep going, going, doing more nights, serving more customers, staying over a dodgy friend’s place again and again and again. And this too is fine. Not ideal, but fine. As long as you don’t let it take over completely. Because no-one knows you when you’re down and out.

I swear Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison is following me.

I first heard it above a spit’n’sawdust pub deep in the Westcountry when a few of the locals accidentally recruited me to their covers band to play bass. Luckily, I knew none of the songs and could barely play bass so while my membership was somewhat short lived, Brown Eyed Girl had successfully entered its twangly way into my subconscious.

Next I heard it at a cousin’s wedding. Like the guys in the old covers band, most attending the bash were both large and hard so Brown Eyed Girl should have sounded wimpy in comparison. It didn’t. They loved it furiously, its mix of country, folk and Blue Eyed Soul spoke to them deeply in some kind of masculine morse code, every twist and turn and sha la la allowing them some excuse to shy temporarily from their stony unfettered exteriors. That or it’s just a bloody good tune.

Brown Eyed Girl featured in my travels most recently at Trisha’s, not on a quiet Friday night but on a raucous Tuesday, through the …enthusiastic voice of an old Irish Scouser out in the smoking area. He was serenading about twenty of his nearest and dearest, all of them packed out there, clutching their thin, damp roll ups, a few reluctantly joining in the larger serenade for a line or two. Until the bestie and I staggered out of the main bar and matched the old man’s enthusiasm:

“Whatever happened

To Tuesday and so sloooooooow?

Ooor going down to the old miiiiiine with a

Transistor radioooo?”

Then a son in law joined us, then a great-uncle, then a brother and then a sister, daughter and two aunties until the Sha la la’s rang out proud, each in a different key to the last.

And then it dawned on me, as the evening grew darker and a fine drizzle settled on our small patch of Soho that this song I had absent mindedly plomped along to a hundred or a thousand times, the song that had followed me for years was trying to say something.

D’you remember when?

And all those times when the hardest, toughest men in the vicinity allowed their foot to tap a little too enthusiastically, they were remembering. Remembering when their backs didn’t ache, when their parents weren’t a fall away from the nursing home, when their children were small and wanted to play ball, when a handsome young man woke up next to his own svelte brown eyed girl, when looking in the mirror wasn’t such a chore, when the world was just… right, y’know?

The bestie, myself and the Scousers, however, would go on to bawl a range of half remembered standards from way back when. Stand By Me, Sunny Afternoon, Wonderwall until a flustered barmaid reminded us that the smoking area would close in the next five minutes.

“Hey, erm, how about Brown Eyed Girl? Just one last time?”

A pause.

“Dooo yooou remember when…”

Are People Actually Mad At Trump For Skipping Opening Day?

Rainy Nights In Soho

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