PUMPS
Join me in taking a trip back to 2016 - back to when I wrote this and first thought to do a bar review blog
1089 Grand St. Brooklyn, NY 11211
Most any trip to PUMPS results in at least some noteworthy ocurrance. So, it is hard to decide which one warrants being THE one. Rather than tell you about the time we went after the GhettoGothik party in a warehouse down the street, in the middle of winter, in 7 degree weather, with products that are measured in metric units in our pockets, or the time we took Bubba for his farewell party and when we tried to pry him away from the bar at 3:50am, to get in the cab outfront, he refused to be separated from his two new dancer friends, who he was buying Champagne for, and he was heartset on getting both his and his father’s credit cards frozen - I’ll tell you instead about the night we agreed to swear it off for good.
I got off work early from my restaurant bartending job, for once, and went to meet my friend Tyson at my other bar bartending job. Tyson makes me a Mezcal margarita, for which I squeeze the juice of one lime and decide it yields a vastly superior experience to the bottled stuff we served the general public. Tyson declares his girlfriend is out of town and, to honor the occasion, insists we must get fucked up. Now Tyson is, generally speaking, a man of his word; especially when you wish he wouldn’t. He says what he means be it not what you wanted to hear nor even taking into account whether you were listening. Luckily on this day our ambitions had perfectly aligned. We detailed our plan of action in order to best accomplish our objective.
“Alex you get two beers, I’m gonna get us two shots, and after those we will get two more of each.”
“Of course, and excellent delegating. This will undoubtedly aid us in achieving our goal.”
Several rounds later we were in an eight person dice game and the pot had been triple-juiced. Neither Tyson nor I won. Which was for the best since had we we would have played a $100 1 v 1 game for which there would have only been one of two outcomes:
1 - Tyson wins and I lose $100. Although upsetting, I would have been comforted by the fact I could say I had played a $100 game of dice; having doubled my previous record of $50 (which I lost). (EDIT: since 2016 I have played many $100 games on dice only a few of which I don’t regret.)
2 - I win the game and Tyson gets sour about it. He asks for his money back, to which I oblige because I don’t like taking money from my friends. This is assuredly what the outcome would be, since that’s exactly how all 3 of our previous $20 games have ended. I won each of those and each time I returned my winnings. Meaning I although I won I had in fact lost since in the games before I had lost a $5 and $10 leading up to the $20 so returning the $20 means I still lost $15. Tyson got his $20 back and won $15. But I was not upset. I couldn't hold a grudge against this smiley midwesterner. A hosier more specifically. No matter where you go there is a hosier doing something important there. Vonnegut wrote that in Cat’s Cradle.
Cooler heads prevailed and we made a pact to play a $100 dice game the moment we met in San Juan, Puerto Rico for a vacation a couple weeks after that night. (EDIT: We both had the good sense to pretend not to have said that and neither of us mentioned it. We lost our money at the Ritz instead.)
At some point Tyson decided we needed a change of scenery. More importantly we had run out of cigarettes. Whilst en route, we ran into a co worker mine from my other job getting off her bartending shift. We told her our plans to get hammered at Mr. Fong’s and she said she will meet us there. Now we know we at least have a free round in our future since there’s nothing a tired and overworked bartender likes more than to spend her recently acquired tips on buying upper shelf tequila for a fellow drinker. Spending your whole night charging strangers for alcohol does something to imbalance the chemistry of your brain in such a way that the only proven method to recalibrate it is to go out of your way to spend your money on giving others free drink.
We stopped by the bodega and orchestrated the standard $8 Virginia pack transaction (that’s 2016 prices). I am not sure what people still paying full price are doing but they must lead happy lives blissfully unaware of the burden of discount. Once you get used to spending $8 for a pack you cannot allow yourself to pay full price and instead will go days without the pack of your preference just to adhere to your frugal convictions. (EDIT: sounds like I did not really smoke that much back in 2016 because you can totally go back to paying full price and doing so every other day so idk what 28 year old Alex was talking about). You will even go to the lengths of trying out whatever other strange varieties they provide at discount; flavors such as full body organic menthol and the paradoxical ‘orange pack’ of American Spirits. The orange pack bares all the common and expected qualities of a cigarette - cylindrical, 20 in number, requiring fire for use - but they are not in fact cigarettes. They operate in the same manner but without any of the pesky taste, sensation, lightheadedness, nor even a detectable presence of heat. Hopefully the bodega soon refilled its stocks with the help of our generous southern countrymen.
At Fong’s we were promptly served a free round from the bartender. As it was, he knew Tyson and I were worked in the area and he was motivated by the same mental condition I described my coworker having. We drink these and then pay for the next. My coworker arrives and gets the next. By this point I was in a state of which I hadn’t born witness to in months. (Doesn’t sound like that much to me now but whatever.) I checked in with Tyson to see how our task for the night was progressing and he assured me we had reached our goal. After a short strategical huddle we decided to celebrate our success with another round.
We enter a sacred space of the human experience. Some ideas are the fruits of long hours of labor and careful consideration: philosophy, political argument, mathematical theorems. Others are the random collisions of ions of potential energy striking the inebriated. Deciding when and when not to go to a strip club resides in the latter. At the next moment the following sentence was uttered, at really the only time it makes any sense or has any merit being, offered up. “We should go to PUMPS,” Tyson said matter of factly.
I didn’t agree. At least not immediately. I was tired and I must be have been too drunk at this point because Tyson kept asking me how I was doing. But being drunk I was not able to argue my side of the issue effectively. I was only five blocks from home, in the Lower East Side, and PUMPS is all the way in Bushwick and I didn’t like Bushwick. (Still don’t) Furthermore, I really didn’t like having to cab all the way back to LES, at 4:00am, drunk. Tyson offered that I could cab home with him to Crown Heights and crash at his place but the idea of getting myself home in the morning under what I could only assume would be a fantastic hangover (it was) overrode any convenience that would have afforded me.
Outside I lost a quick game of “First to Land a Tre-flip” and we meandered our way down Madison Street to Allen Street; in search of more fertile cab hailing territory. (Then it was. Now? Good luck.) Here is a charade you may know. It was a piece of theater with the plot synopsis “my phone is dead, so I can’t call an Uber, but I’ll hail the first cab we see.” Tyson played the part of the phoneless well and imparted upon me no cause for suspicion he did not intend to do what he said. The problem lied in how long could I stand to wait for said transportation to materialize? Tyson was victorious when after five minutes when I declared I could not wait and would call an Uber. Tyson, fully in the right, said “OK I would have gotten it but if you wanna call one, sure.”
What I wanted to do was walk home. What I even could have done was taken the Uber home, and, generously, allowed Tyson the opportunity to continue on in the car to either further his adventure or retire to Crown Heights. What I did do was sit in an Uber across the Williamsburg Bridge, widening the gap between myself and bed. Although previous experience gave me no reason to believe so, I tried to comfort myself with the hope the lap dance would make up for the total disregard I have had for my own needs that evening. This complicated array of intentions was doing strange and disorienting things to my mind and equilibrium. I realized as we hit Grand Street, in Brooklyn, the alcohol and spirited driving of the Uber driver had disrupted my orientation and I politely requested the driver pull over for a brief moment so I could think more clearly and perhaps breathe some fresh air. I exited the vehicle and moved behind it. I had a quick conversation with the ground and decided I didn’t like it’s attitude and expelled my lunch onto it. With a fresh perspective and a nominally clearer state of mind I re-entered the cab and made the first healthy decision of the night.
“Would you mind taking me back to the LES to right where you picked me up?” I asked.
“You want to go back across the bridge?” the driver replied.
“Yes.”
“No PUMPS?” Asked Tyson.
“No PUMPS.” I answered.
“Ok homie, get home safe.”
By some miracle of midwestern constitution Tyson got out of the car and successfully piloted his skateboard down Grand Street as I was swept back to my own neighborhood, on the island, hoping vomiting had taken the edge off tomorrow’s hangover.
The next afternoon I woke up to an email from Uber informing me I had lost an item in the driver’s car the night before. I also woke up fully clothed and thanked myself for making it that much easier to rush out to the coffee shop. As it happened Tyson had left his wallet, and a pack of cigarettes, in the Uber - the contents of the wallet having been of special significance to Tyson and the pack of his cigarettes having been of special significance to myself. In the wallet: a winning lotto ticket for a $1 prize, a check for $1,300 and a $100 bill. If I knew Tyson even a little bit he was really gonna want that $1 lottery ticket back so I proceed through the proper Uber lost item protocol and left the man a message describing the artifacts in question. I should mention that the driver’s profile said his name was ‘Jean’ but when I called his phone the message machine said ‘Kevin.’ Soon I received the first of several calls from Jean or Kevin and was cordially reminded by him ‘he is going out of his way to come all the way to the LES to drop of the wallet and cigarettes’ somewhere between 7 and 15 times. I understood this to mean I was supposed to tip handsomely.
“How do you want to do this?” Jean/Kevin asked.
“Well I have to work later and I live in the Lower East Side so if you’re in the area at all today and could swing by that’d be awesome,” I replied.
“Ok but I’m in Brooklyn so you want me to go out of my way to the Lower East Side to drop it off?” [Without the slightest hint of sarcasm]
“Yes, yes I do.”
“Ok sir you got it I’ll come out of my way and be there soon.”
How did I want to do this? Man I don’t have a car, you have the car, a quick hop over the bridge is nothing for you. Yeah I want you to drive over here. What am I gonna take the train to Brooklyn to get someone else’s wallet? I don’t particularly care about the wallet, I really only want the cigarettes. After that unsuccessful cab ride I could at least use a free pack of cigarettes and for all practical applications you and the car are one. You are the car. (Wow 2016 Alex. Now very chill vibes from you rn.) I called Tyson and told him the good news.
“Was my lotto ticket there?”
“Yeah.”
“What about the hundred dollars?”
“Nope.”
“That’s fine I really just want that lotto ticket.”
“The check is here too.”
“Oh, cool.”
Tyson that night had only had a couple bucks in his pocket and his phone was dead and he didn’t know where he was and had no wallet which he learned when trying to get a bodega sandwich. Also skating from Grand and Union to Crown Heights is far. Although though we didn’t make it to the strip club that night, I have been back since then. The last time I went to PUMPS it was like 3:30am and I never managed to get a dance but I had already purchased the little lap dance token with shiny letters saying “good for one dance.” After the exploits of this night I have now told you about we decided mutually to not do this again. We made a new pact to stop going to PUMPS and this one we kept. (EDIT: no we didn’t. I’ve been back plenty of times since then and I no longer have that token on my desk as I am about to tell you. I went back to use it at some point in the last 7 years).
I still have my Pump’s token on my desk, on top of a stack of hard drives. I pick it up from time to time and rub it in between my fingers and let the shiny letters play off the overhead light. I think it’s probably good luck. If you haven’t been to PUMPS it’s like walking through a portal to Portland Oregon. Also it’s more deserving of the description of “titty bar” than strip club. The Champagne is a novelty item; don’t order that. It’s fun but if you didn’t already know it existed then you don’t really need to.