SENSE OF THE CITY Absent Friends, Vanished Dives

Unless the governor calls with a reprieve, the semi-famous Knox Street Pub wilt be whacked into rubble sometime this winter. I hope the call comes, but the deal sounded pretty final as of early January. 1935-1993. One more for the dark.

The news that the Pub would soon belong to the ages brought me back with an old friend for one more absurdly cheap pitcher and a few jiggers of nostalgia. It was pouring outside and the roof was leaking near our table, but we were determined to let nothing spoil a good memory binge.

Except for the buckets catching the droplets, things looked pretty much the same as on my last visit a year before, meaning pretty much as always: same sagging booths, same exposed-concrete floor worn smooth by decades of shuffling feet, same two pool tables (ah, nights of triumph), same Third World men’s room. If you weren’t able to make last call at the Pub, rest assured thai almost nothing had changed except the jukebox, which had become a CD box. Sadly, Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo à la Turk” was missing. Yes, of course they had Garth Brooks. There’s no escape.

I asked the pretty Irish woman behind the bar a few questions about the Pub’s history and architecture, but deliberately avoided inquiring into recent profits, losses, rent per square mug, etc. Like lust, nostalgia has its own logic: its delicate chemistry can be overwhelmed by too many facts. So with the investigative reporting out of the way. my friend and I drank the good dark beer and tried to remember our first visits to the Pub back in the mid-’70s. (It’s been under its current name since 1967.) No luck, but the effort dredged up the names of a dozen mutual acquaintances who’d put in their time at Knox Street. The smartest guy I ever knew loved the place. We’d sit for hours while he talked about books I still haven’t read. In his mid-’30s, he suffered a mysterious embolism and died suddenly. Now there will be one less place to remember him.

For all its pleasures, nostalgia is a selfish, onanistic thing. On somebody’s ledger, balling down the Pub must look like a fine idea, It’s a business, not a repository of memories, says the Inner Adult. For all I know, the Pub’s vanishing is one sign that economic engines are beginning to thrum, and we do need thrumming. And if the old place was so wonderful, why was I dropping in once a year instead of once a week?

Mea culpa. The truth is I’m not a regular anywhere anymore. When a homeowner is born, a barfly dies. But I think of the Knox Street and a few other bars the way I think of the Catholic Church: Even if you don’t belong, it’s nice to know the place is always there, holding fast to tradition and burning candles for the dead.

When I got home that night, Ann started telling me about her own Knox Street days, long before we met. Just out of college, she and a roommate shared an apartment within walking distance of the Pub. She remembered the Christmas tree they put up near the door every year and the great beef stew. She vowed to go by and take a picture of the place for the ex-roomie, who has grown rich marketing computers in San Francisco.

So where are the bars of yesteryear? We’ve only been married five years, but already most of our dating places have disappeared. Panteli’s, Genaro’s, Tom Stephenson’s Lakewood Polo and Hunt Club and, of course, the dearly departed Greenville Avenue Country Club. Classic cuisine, chic decor-if you mentioned that stuff they’d throw you and your cheeseburger in the pool. And we loved Richard Chase’s Chaise Lounge on Henderson, a rogue’s gallery of dealmakers, ex-athletes, media lowlifes and the unforgettable Chase himself, whose foghorn insults cut through the loudest crowd. He told me one night that he couldn’t imagine a better life than a saloonkeeper’s.

All those places have their moments, but if they were resurrected I doubt we’d go back much. Places change, sure, but more than that we change, or pay an ever higher price for remaining the same. There comes a time to tab out and go home.

The night after that visit to Knox Street we had dinner with some friends. As we were leaving the restaurant I remembered that the San Francisco Rose, another old haunt, was celebrating its 15th anniversary that night. The 10th had been a blast. But it was late, and raining, and we needed clear heads the next morning. We hesitated before Ann hit on the solution.

“Let’s don’t go, and just say we did,” she suggested. It was the perfect compromise. Skip the drinking and go straight to the lies.

So we went and loved it. Danced till 2, felt great the next day. And just before last call, we drank a toast to absent friends and vanished dives.