Fear and Loathing in the Near Room
This is the second installment of my open-ended and self-indulgent virtual (OK, mostly mental) tour of some of the bars, clubs, taverns and other disreputable points of interest my friends and I frequented back in our salad days, c. 1978-1985. In addition to the “featured” location, this time I thought I might start adding an honorable mention to the end of each entry – places that didn’t make the A-list but had one or (rarely) two redeeming aspects worth noting.
This week, we look at a place that wasn’t really one of my favorites at all; but I included it anyway because it was in some ways the exact antithesis of the Cactus Lounge , and because the overwhelmingly ominous feeling and sense of foreboding I got every time I walked into the place was so powerful it is still palpable to me today.
2. Fat Dawg’s. Fat Dawg’s was located on Railroad Ave. near Lamar University, across the street and tracks and down to the southwest a bit from the Cactus Lounge. It is hard to remember where exactly, but it was generally in the area of the Tex-Joy warehouse, the old 7-Up bottling plant, and/or the Sunbeam bakery (now SE Texas Food Bank.)
In contrast to the Cactus, which was cramped and crowded and sort of reminded one of being in a somebody’s backyard storage shed, Fat Dawg’s was like a large open barn. The was a bar all along the north wall, an open area/dance floor in the middle, and restrooms at the back. The décor was sparse, and women scarce (I don’t believe I ever saw anyone actually dance in there.) To tell the truth, it was kind of a biker bar.
The place was owned by Crit DeMent, who was a local entrepreneur, I guess you could say. He wasn’t much older than us, and over the years owned a few other bars and a couple of restaurants in the area, and ended up with a string of dry cleaners in Houston, I believe I heard. I never saw Crit in Fat Dawg’s, though.
I can say with some confidence I never set foot in the place myself with a blood-alcohol content of less than .15, or before about 12:30 A.M. We only used it sometimes, as a landing place after the Cactus closed up at midnight; because it was nearby, and because they served Foster Lager in those motor oil-sized cans for $1.25 as some sort of promotion, Foster’s having just begun to be distributed in the area.
So whenever we went in there, I was already three sheets to the wind and growing ever more bleary-eyed, as usually were most of the rest of us. Add in boredom and the Foster's, and that is a pretty good formula for trouble, especially when a group of college boys loudly stumble into a place that otherwise featured as patrons various ex-cons, a couple of drug dealers I knew, and most of the local chapter of the Bandidos motorcycle gang. Who all looked at us askance upon our entrance. Hence the frequent sense of foreboding.
Actually, the only real trouble I ever witnessed in the place was started by a friend of mine. A group of us were in there one night, including my friend and two of his brothers. We were all horribly drunk, and then at some point, for no reason I could discern, my buddy and his siblings decided it was imperative they remove the men’s room door from its hinges and toss it out to the middle of the dance floor. Even in my anesthetized state, I knew that wasn’t good.
The bartender called the cops, and then he and a few of his patrons/buddies decided to do a citizen’s arrest on the entirety of us, and hold us all until the law got there. None of the guys attempting to detain us went less than about 6’ 2” and 2 ½ bills, and I am pretty sure I remember at least two who had chains – big ones, like for towing a car – dangling at their sides. Nevertheless, it occurred to me that I was not prepared to let a few large-ish hardheads hold me against my wishes until the police could get there and haul us all away in patrol cars. I told my buddy we needed to make a break for it, and he agreed but wanted to clue in his brothers. I said, “Fuck them, they can take care of themselves.” They could, too; I’d seen both of them at one time or another in brawls, and they were pretty bad-ass.
Anyway, my friend and I were closest to the exit, so we took off, soon with two or three Bandido-types chasing us out into the parking lot. We made it to my Camaro, jumped in and romped on it, going careening out of the parking lot and onto Railroad Ave. As I hooked a left onto Park Street, in my rear-view mirror I could see the red and blue lights of the Beaumont police cars, just arriving back at Fat Dawg’s.
This is the second installment of my open-ended and self-indulgent virtual (OK, mostly mental) tour of some of the bars, clubs, taverns and other disreputable points of interest my friends and I frequented back in our salad days, c. 1978-1985. In addition to the “featured” location, this time I thought I might start adding an honorable mention to the end of each entry – places that didn’t make the A-list but had one or (rarely) two redeeming aspects worth noting.
This week, we look at a place that wasn’t really one of my favorites at all; but I included it anyway because it was in some ways the exact antithesis of the Cactus Lounge , and because the overwhelmingly ominous feeling and sense of foreboding I got every time I walked into the place was so powerful it is still palpable to me today.
2. Fat Dawg’s. Fat Dawg’s was located on Railroad Ave. near Lamar University, across the street and tracks and down to the southwest a bit from the Cactus Lounge. It is hard to remember where exactly, but it was generally in the area of the Tex-Joy warehouse, the old 7-Up bottling plant, and/or the Sunbeam bakery (now SE Texas Food Bank.)
In contrast to the Cactus, which was cramped and crowded and sort of reminded one of being in a somebody’s backyard storage shed, Fat Dawg’s was like a large open barn. The was a bar all along the north wall, an open area/dance floor in the middle, and restrooms at the back. The décor was sparse, and women scarce (I don’t believe I ever saw anyone actually dance in there.) To tell the truth, it was kind of a biker bar.
The place was owned by Crit DeMent, who was a local entrepreneur, I guess you could say. He wasn’t much older than us, and over the years owned a few other bars and a couple of restaurants in the area, and ended up with a string of dry cleaners in Houston, I believe I heard. I never saw Crit in Fat Dawg’s, though.
I can say with some confidence I never set foot in the place myself with a blood-alcohol content of less than .15, or before about 12:30 A.M. We only used it sometimes, as a landing place after the Cactus closed up at midnight; because it was nearby, and because they served Foster Lager in those motor oil-sized cans for $1.25 as some sort of promotion, Foster’s having just begun to be distributed in the area.
So whenever we went in there, I was already three sheets to the wind and growing ever more bleary-eyed, as usually were most of the rest of us. Add in boredom and the Foster's, and that is a pretty good formula for trouble, especially when a group of college boys loudly stumble into a place that otherwise featured as patrons various ex-cons, a couple of drug dealers I knew, and most of the local chapter of the Bandidos motorcycle gang. Who all looked at us askance upon our entrance. Hence the frequent sense of foreboding.
Actually, the only real trouble I ever witnessed in the place was started by a friend of mine. A group of us were in there one night, including my friend and two of his brothers. We were all horribly drunk, and then at some point, for no reason I could discern, my buddy and his siblings decided it was imperative they remove the men’s room door from its hinges and toss it out to the middle of the dance floor. Even in my anesthetized state, I knew that wasn’t good.
The bartender called the cops, and then he and a few of his patrons/buddies decided to do a citizen’s arrest on the entirety of us, and hold us all until the law got there. None of the guys attempting to detain us went less than about 6’ 2” and 2 ½ bills, and I am pretty sure I remember at least two who had chains – big ones, like for towing a car – dangling at their sides. Nevertheless, it occurred to me that I was not prepared to let a few large-ish hardheads hold me against my wishes until the police could get there and haul us all away in patrol cars. I told my buddy we needed to make a break for it, and he agreed but wanted to clue in his brothers. I said, “Fuck them, they can take care of themselves.” They could, too; I’d seen both of them at one time or another in brawls, and they were pretty bad-ass.
Anyway, my friend and I were closest to the exit, so we took off, soon with two or three Bandido-types chasing us out into the parking lot. We made it to my Camaro, jumped in and romped on it, going careening out of the parking lot and onto Railroad Ave. As I hooked a left onto Park Street, in my rear-view mirror I could see the red and blue lights of the Beaumont police cars, just arriving back at Fat Dawg’s.
"See ya, dickheads," I was thinking, as we hung a right on Corley off of Park, and started back for the West End, heading slowly, carefully toward home.
**********
HONORABLE MENTION #1
Koto of Japan. Okay, I can imagine the initial response to this, but this long-time Japanese teppanyaki place on North 11th St. had a short-lived, well-kept secret: Back in the days before “happy hours” were outlawed, in their tiny, inadequate bar area, they featured 3-for-1 call drinks every Thursday and Friday from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. This was a terrific value – three drinks for the price of one, and you could specify what brand you wanted. So unlike most happy hours, when an order of a bourbon and coke would bring you something like Old Heaven Hill mixed in Big K cola, at Koto you got Jack Daniels and Coca-Cola, just like you ordered.
If one was disciplined, one could get 12-15 drinks in before 7:00 o’clock. The drawbacks to this were 1.) 12-15 drinks put most normal people out of commission for the rest of the evening before it even got started, and 2.) when one walked out of the place anytime between April and October, it was still daylight out. In addition to the weirdness of being terminally intoxicated before it had even got dark, there was the fact that one’s eyes were at maximum dilation by this point, from being inside and all the alcohol, and the late afternoon sunlight would be literally blinding.
Made for an interesting drive home, most times.
2 comments:
There are two places where it is acceptable, nay encouraged, to be terminally intoxicated before dark:
the beach
New Orleans
I asked some biker friends of mine if they remembered Fat Dawgs just yesterday..we were a little intoxicated so I was having trouble telling them where it was located. So glad I found this to show them.
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