Milwaukee Bartending License: Fill & Download for Free

Which Generation is the Most Interesting?First off, I think all generations are unique and have something to offer. There are some I lived though and like the best, but that begets my time, values and taste. What was important to me was having personal freedom, social and economic opportunity, to experience lots of different life styles, funkiness and things to do and living among geographic wonders and beauty which meant oceans, forests, lakes, rivers and mountains. Being 83 years old, my best times are ancient to most young people today, but they were the best for me.1960s - The Beat GenerationI grew up in 1940s Leave it to Beaver dynamic manufacturing capital; of the USA Milwaukee, then spent ten years in 1950s - 60s Norfolk with the Navy and IBM where ran into ugly Jim Crow racial segregation aberrations. The Bible belt south was very problematic, very judgmental, not Golden Rule oriented what with its Jim Crow racial segregation and extreme evangelical religiosity and ultra conservative regressive Republican politics.Southerners tend to have traditional conservative values, lots of religion, and pride in the Confederate heritage that all Southerners share. Southerners tend to dislike liberals and educated people. They like their guns; many carry and are better armed than northerners. There is only a hand full of different cultures in the Southern States, while in the Northern States there are hundreds of diverse cultures from around the world.After the Navy I took advantage of a great job opportunity and stayed in the south as an engineer for IBM Main Frames spending 3 1/2 years in Main Frame schools in Upstate NY. But I was constantly grieving the Jim Crow racial segregation and the backward southern Bible belt culture. I hated it! Nothing socially to do, full of bigoted and uneducated people, dry counties with no bars or dance clubs, you had to depend on Bootleggers for liquor and heaven forbid the races would mix, you could be hung for that. So churches and private clubs were used for social gatherings.But there is always a good side to the worst circumstances and that for me was my six years of adventurous hunting and fishing. All my red neck good ole boy friends had plenty of guns to protect themselves against Yankee invasions and them damned communist Civil Rights workers trying to integrate the south. Well, except for the racist part, I fit right into the red neck roughhouse tough man gun culture. Besides fishing and hunting with my tobacco chewing, spitting and white lighting drinking swamp rat friends, there were also those fabulous Big Top Tent traveling circuses and carnivals filled animals, clowns, and side shows - all segregated of course but the blacks had the best side shows.I became an active Civil Rights worker, worked for Jack Kennedy, and was active in local politics and community affairs. It's where it was the meanest, nastiest, most racist violent city and couldn't believe I was in the USA. The Civil Rights movement was just getting started and I witnessed the ugliest, violent and most hateful behaviors known to man by southern whites against blacks seeking their equal rights. But they were operating within their normal, didn't see anything immoral with segregation and second class citizenship being forced on black people. They felt righteous; the rest of the country was communist for trying to change their culture. Besides, segregation was supported in the Bible.And then there was Greenwich Village, which is oft considered the nation's leader in the Cultural Revolution being, inhabited with America's creative generation of performing artists - musicians, actors, artists, and playwrights - a bohemian enclave of hippies and intellectuals and the East Coast birthplace of the Beat movement. One block away from my office was Washington Square Park, which was one of NYC's most famous parks with its most distinguishing feature, being its decorative Arch de Triumph arch. Here great academic debaters from NYU, street performers of musicians and actors and protestors hung out.As an IBM Engineer I traveled the USA and was in Washington, Boston and Manhattan constantly over the years. That's where all the big computer applications were located so IBM had me there all the time in a Product Support capacity. I especially loved NYC. There were thousands of delights, with tens of thousands of people walking about, and no question about it, the best girl watching in the world was available in Midtown Manhattan - particularly along its many avenues and Fortune 500 headquarters, lined with skyscrapers, building ledges and street cafes to sit around and ogle the beautiful women. A particularly good area was in the fifties on Sixth Avenues where many water fountains abounded and granite veranda patios filled with tables, chairs and sitting ledges. Whatever your fancy, blond, brunette, redhead, Asian, White, or Black, the woman of you dreams would pass by every five minutes - or oftener! The beautiful people of the world came to Manhattan for fame, fortune, and excitement. Careers in show business and the business world topped the list as reasons so many bright and attractive people moved to Manhattan. And for some like me, it was for freedom! For lunch, every kind of food is available, with hundreds of Delis, street cafes, ethnic restaurants, Halal street carts, and fast food eateries every two blocks. Eat a New York pizza and you are doomed to never be satisfied for a slice anywhere else . . . well, maybe in Chicago for the thick slices!The 1970s - The Weird GenerationIt was a decade of seismic social and political change across the globe. Racism dominated life in the US in the 1960s well into the 1970s. Segregation wasn't just in the South, with black people being murdered when they fought for human rights. De facto segregation was rife in the North. From the burgeoning anti-Vietnam war and civil rights movements in the United States, protests and revolutions in Europe and the first comprehensive coverage of war and resultant famine in Africa. The world would never be the same again. The events of the 1960s inspired a generation and shaped struggles around the world for years to come. Occasionally one year can cast a spell over the decades that follow. 1968 was such a year.The nation is split! Like nearly everything else in the South, it has to do with slavery residuals. Southern society was never founded on the same egalitarian concepts as the North. Up north the 1970s was of course also the time of disco, bell bottoms, platforms, glam rock, side burns, lava lamps, high tech architecture, the paperback, the transformation of TV, the rise of the Gay Movement, the start of the science fiction phenomenon, the start of punk rock, hard rock and heavy metal, prominence of the Feminist Movement, movies such as Star Wars, The Godfather, Love Story, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Jaws, Annie Hall, Rocky, Saturday Night Fever, The Exorcist and many more. The rise of musicians such as David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Abba, Boney M, Bee Gees, Deep Purple, AC/DC, Queen, Pink Floyd, Uriah Heep, Aerosmith, Bob Marley, and many more.After work you could enjoy the social delights in NYC not found in the south. Manhattan is also the Happy Hour, music and dance capital of the world, and everyone loves to party heartily in one of those 6,000 some odd nightclubs, juke dance joints, dive bars or 12,000 Bars/restaurants in the Big Apple, the Irish joints being the best. So after work, Happy Hour is a must to relax and become acquainted with someone new while you search for your heart's desires of a soul mate. There is so much to choose from, every type and color hue that making up your mind is a problem, but choices are stimulating, and Manhattan has tens of thousands of personal prerogatives, and a never-ending supply of life styles are available. I found northerners in general tended to be far more educated, industrialized, high tech, socially advanced, lots being immigrants and very worldly. More students from Northern States go to Ivy League and highly academic Colleges and get better-rounded big worldview educations. Northerners tend to be more supportive of social egalitarianism: human rights, civil rights, workers' unions, and people stuff en all. We think as long as you work hard, everyone should be given a fair chance to succeed.1974 My Long Weekend at the Jersey ShoreI don't like to get drunk, it is embarrassing and I don't like the way I feel, especially if I am feeling nauseously sick and start throwing up. So, I usually take it easy when drinking and stick with beer, something I know and can handle. But there are exceptions. Like the last time I went to the Jersey Shore with some of my motley gang from the New York support group. We got rooms at a motel right on the beach, a dingy, old, smelly, dirty thing, but it was on the beach and close by was the broad walk and all those dance clubs and juke joint Dive Bars the Jersey Shore is famous for, the ones that cater to the New York City wild man types, you know, the crazy fun living and damn the torpedoes kind of weirdoes. Not that the Jersey Shore is all about drunks and audacious times. In fact, what I have always loved about the shore was how much it has to offer. If you want to just chill out all day at the beach and call it an early night, well, that's there for you. There are great food and fishing and rides for the kids and the young at heart. However, there is no denying that drinking plays a major part in the allure of Jersey Shore. Don't ask me to explain, it just is. There's not one person reading this right now who can't at the drop of a hat recite a blow-by-blow account of a night that started with three cases of Miller Late. "And how about stories your secretary, "Mary actually was wearing a can on her head and we all went out to Casino Pizza." And so it is when the DEC folks from Manhattan get together, it usually means mayhem on the beach.After a 60 to an 80-hour workweek, going to the shore is like taking a trip back in time. Down at the shore, it's OK to funnel Miller Light or shotgun a can of low-grade lager and listen all night to Bruce Springsteen on the Boardwalk. It's OK to hang with your buddies or business teammates and get dirty. We are deadly serious during the week on our high tech - high stress jobs, but young professionals can succumb to peer pressure, acting more like high school seniors than the leaders of tomorrow. Whether its LBI or Asbury Park, people come to the shore to forget about the working week and have fun. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" and for a bad summer and an even worse existence. It seems in order to get ahead today, you need to put in at least 60 hours a week and sometimes a trip to the shore can remind us who we were, who we are, and why we work so hard. There is so much going on at the shore, college kids, locals, Manhattanites, Long Islanders, Upstaters, tourists, conventioneers, and have you ever noticed how many young workers at the Jersey Shore speak with heavy accents? The pizza workers? The balloon game barkers? The boardwalk sales clerks?Well, there's a good reason why, they are foreign college students here on work visas for the summer. Think of it as studying abroad for a semester, but instead of studying, they sell Hermit Crab shells. It was a grinding week, and after work, four of us drove down from Manhattan and had just gotten into Sea Side Heights on a hot Friday night in July. We are going to meet more of the group later, it's only 7:00 p.m. or so. We were in Tommy's Volkswagen red convertible enjoying the weather and the warm breezes coming off the seashore. We went to a party in Dimsum's (he's Russian) Sea Isle condo that had already been broken up by the police for loud Vesuvius noises and disorderly conduct. Well, if you can call one of the girls running around in the parking lot in her panties disorderly - we thought it was funny since she weighed more than 300 pounds and gulped down booze from two peanut butter jars half full of vodka as she ran. We knew it was vodka because she had the White Gold Vodka, Black Edition, Russian labeled bottle tucked into the rear of her panties. And she wasn't even part of our group, probably one of those crazy college kids from Columbia U., but we were cheering her on when the police came and broke it up! So we turn the car around and head downtown when we got pulled over on Central. At this point we were completely sober, but in fairness to the police, I would have pulled us over too. We LOOKED like trouble. However, the police quickly realize that we are straight and are just about to let us all continue on our way, when one of the officers, looking at the license of Tommy, the driver and says, "And you're Thomas Briglow, right? And Tommy replies, "That's what the license says, doesn't it, genius?" Bang. Pow. The next thing you know all four of us are being locked up and you know what for? PARADING WITHOUT A PERMIT. That was all they could really get us on. We went to the judge quick and were on our way after paying a $35 fine each. And believe me, we were using credit cards and didn't have$35 cash between us. Tommy didn't learn his lesson and insulted the Mouse McCourt judge and ended up spending the night in jail. And he was driving and now we were walking!I called Dimsum who picked us up and took us to his condo in Seaside Heights where his buddies, Cardiff and D'Milz, were hanging out smashing a case of Red Bull. There was a crowd there, all from my New York Support Group waiting for us: there was me (Lutz), Vince Kaminski (Weed), Tom Wilder (Surfer), Ed Hubbard (Shooter), Ben Battle (Brownstown), his girlfriend Sinbad, Dave Shea (Eat Me) his girlfriend at the time Ram, Dan Lucky (Ukraine), John Fischer (Burpy) and the support group's two acquaintances, Robo and Roxy from the Seaside Heights Diner. Dimsum had a completely stocked bar and we got a few drinks before going to the 5 O'clock Somewhere Bar on the Broad Walk which offers signature boat drinks to Land shark Lager beer. The lively vibe of the bar features "flair bartenders" whose cocktail serving performances are only overshadowed by the cocktail creations they serve. Next-door is D'Jais, well known for its diverse atmosphere, which different kinds of music seven nights a week. From there it's a short jump to the Crescent Bar where the Bikers hang out for a taste of the real nightlife. It was right next to Braca's the movie theater where James Candy is playing now.The Crescent Bar welcomes motorcycle riders. A pool table hides in the back, while an open spot just the right size for a Country - the door leaves Western band. Christy, the bar tender, says the stereotype of the "wild biker bar," she said, just isn't true. "Everybody thinks that this is a rough place because bikers come here," she said. "But we've had so many people that will come in by themselves, or with their friends, and love it. "They say the men are the most respectful, they feel safe, and the women say that this is the only place they'll come to by themselves," she said. A bouncer is on hand on the weekends to help with crowd control, and no "colors" (a biker's vest, which is adorned by club patches that identify the group of club the biker rides with) are allowed in the bar to avoid possible confrontations. Because the colors identify what club a person belongs to, they can quickly lead to trouble if rival gangs show up at the same spot. Christy says that riders are allowed to leave their colors on their bikes, turn them inside out, or put them in the back room; many outlaw clubs' members, however, are not allowed to take their colors off, and so will go somewhere else.Last month when we were here we went to Braca's to see a Mel Brooks movie! We buy our tickets and, thanks to the 15 minutes of previews, haven't missed a frame. The air conditioning is barely working, but each of us has two bottles of Red Bull. What could be better?Well, I don't know if it's the heat or the fact that we have been drinking for hours at that point, but the next thing I know were being woken up by an usher. The movie is two thirds over. The usher appears to be 15 years old and he's ticked off. He sees the Red Bull bottles on the floor with his trusty flashlight and says to us with an all knowing smirk, like he really nabbed us, "Uh, you didn't buy that wine in here did ya? LIKE THIS THEATER SOLD POPCORN, GOOBERS, AND MD20/20! We got thrown out, but the story lives on. That usher today? I think he is working for the CIA.Tonight we are going to hang out all night at D'Jais - the bars are open until 5:00 A.M. - on the wooden dance floor right next to the beach. With sounds ranging from live classic rock & roll, reggae bands and the Tri State's best DJ's spinning the latest dance music. Few can resist the urge to jump up and boogie when Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" starts pumping through the big sound system's speakers. There's an indoor restaurant, a food court, outdoor raw bar, and an outdoor bar/restaurant overlooking the beach with live music during the day and almost every night in the summer. A cool stage is built on a pier out over the surf. The Jersey Shore is famous for its population of Guido's (Italian Americans). They are a strange lot, and I couldn't understand why guys would want to tan until they were orange and would wear their hair in spiky, absurd, Brylcreem product saturated styles, all while boasting about their Italian heritage and steroid use. Even more confusing is the fact that girls found these weird guys attractive. Granted, they weren't the types of girls I'd be particularly interested in - high heels, fake boobs, and, like their male counterparts, plenty of tanning and smoothed back cream hair products. If you've ever been to Long Island or, obviously, the Jersey Shore, then you know just the type of Guido or Guidoette I'm referring to. What kind of people makes themselves look like that? What kind of subculture is this? How can you take seriously anybody that struts around like this? But you see everything here.Sea Side Heights is a mixed bag of nationalities, but for the most part, the majority of its summer help hails from former Soviet countries. One of the guys at DEC operates a family owned boardwalk businesses and find themselves becoming friends with their workers, and hanging out with them all summer, so when our support group go down for a few days in the summer, we are bombarded with a new slew of Olgas, and Ludas, and Soushas, and Natashas, whose names and faces I have to try to remember. But never before have I witnessed something like I did tonight. And Oh My God was it "different." First of all, they were not lying . . . besides the bar tenders, my six friends and I, were the only Americans in the place. And trust me, you could tell, just little things like the clothes and the hairstyles were just . . . different. There was loud House and Techno pounding through the sound system, and a thin layer of fog machine smoke filled the air. Bodies threw themselves across the dance floor in odd and awkward movements there were no fist pumpers here and both guys and girls who attempted to entice the crowd with bizarre dance moves stood on the stage and speakers. When the Russians come to dance, they come to DANCE! They were spinning and jumping and skipping and sweating and they just never let up, it looked more like a slam dance pit in the late 70's than anything close to what we're used to.Ukraine was pissed because he didn't like Russians and was on one of his 'try anything shooter all night vibes and he was filling his mouth with anything ranging from vodka to some fairy stuff that tasted sweet, like a Singapore Sling. Well when Ukraine gets all liquored up on shots, he becomes the most generous person in the world and buys rounds for everyone and rounds were bought. I'm sure some lucky, unsuspecting bastards standing next to me got a few shots and a hug from me during the night. Basically I got drinking - I had three Long Islands, two Sex on the Beach, and after that I was totally drunk barely walk out of the bar. Anyway, at this point, I'm flying on a new previously undiscovered drunken cloud. Then came that unavoidable feeling. I walked to the bathroom and sat in front of the toilet. Two orange, chunky pukes later, I walked out back into the bar. We sober up a bit and head out on the beach with the sand crabs for a swim, to cool off sober up a little. Then soaking wet, it's to the nearest bar on the beach. There was this really hammered dwarf who would repeatedly stagger over to the bar, get a bartender to lean all the way over to hear him and then whisper, "I'm sorry I'm a little drunk" before exploding with laughter and then staggering back to the dance floor.A coworker and I were chatting about something on the news and I said, "Yeah, at least it's not Russia!" Suddenly from the end of the bar a massive woman with a thick accent yells, "VAHT YOU SAY ABOUT RRRUSSIA?" She then started regaling the entire bar with stories of the Soviet glory days, babbling on in a crazy Bond villain accent about how great everything used to be. She proceeded to finish her margarita, left a $10 on the bar, and walked out. We then noticed that she'd peed all over the stool. We ended up throwing away the stool. I can think of crazier stories that happened that night, but this one stands out as one of the funniest scenes. I'm leaning against the bar talking to Brownstown and Ukraine about something unimportant when some girls sitting down next to us start laughing. We turn to check out what was so funny when we see this goof ball dancing it up on the dance floor. This guy was wearing some weird pants, a sparkling silver shirt and a skull and crossbones bandana. Even as hammered as I was, I knew this guy looked ridiculous. So without much thought, I made my way over behind him and started dancing behind him in a mocking way. My dancing is a mockery in itself but the fact it was geared at this guy had my friends laughing hysterically by the bar. Pretty soon a few others took notice in this ugly scene and found it funny. Sure enough, my target eventually caught on and kept trying to catch me doing whatever was making these people laugh around him. Like the idiot I was, the second he'd turn to me I would stop moving completely and scratch my head as if I had some intense idea I was trying to wrap my brain around. Keep in mind we were in the middle of the dance floor so I just looked like I might have been retarded or maybe gay. The night wore on. Sometime between that last round of shots and dancing on the bar, I have become a stand-up comedian and a first-rate politician. Well at least in this bar I can go out side and pee on the beach sand. I come back inside and toss another Red Bull. I can't believe that I used to think that Red Bull was the most destructive invention of the past 50 years.Closing time was around the corner so we got out of the bar and went to a pizza place on the Broad Walk. I managed to order a slice of pepperoni and bumped into an old buddy from my days at the New School in Greenwich Village, shot the shit (maybe he understood some of it, who knows) while they heated up my slice, made my way up the six stairs to join my buddies on the deck over looking the street and tried to sit down on a flimsy plastic chair. Now, at this point, everything went into slow motion. I sat on the plastic chair, which could not handle my drunken way of sitting, propelling me backwards. My slice of pizza went airborne, and in the middle of my fall, a convertible filled with four smoking hot girls drove by. I landed on my backside next to my slice of pizza and the sound of four of the hottest women I had ever seen laughing their asses off at me as they drove off in green Mini Cooper car. This upset me. What the hell kind of chair is this? Unfortunately, most of my angry remarks were directed at a bunch of police officers about ten feet away. Someone managed to hail a cab before I really got us all into a bucket of shit and started us on our way back to motel. As it turns out, we didn't have enough for the full fare and this jerk off cabbie didn't trust us enough to let us off at a bank (I might have played a role in that). He dropped us off a good ten minutes from our motel. I got out of the cab and promptly passed out on someone's lawn.Now, this is the last I remember from the night. I blacked out the moment I stepped out of that cab. The rest has been told to me or I pieced it together. I woke up the next morning completely reclined in the passenger seat of a minivan parked in a random person's driveway. I had no idea whose van this was, I didn't recognize the house that was towering in front of me and I barely recognized the environment. What was even more alarming was that I was wearing nothing but my boxer-briefs and my socks. Where the hell is my clothes and it's nearly 7:00 A.M. On the front steps of the house are all my clothes, neatly folded. My shoes are placed together right in front of my clothes with my wallet and lighter sticking out of them. Everything seemed to be carefully placed and handled with the utter most care. I am perplexed, how did I neatly fold my clothes and check for unlocked minivans to fall asleep in? Imagine the horror on the owners face had he opened the driver's door to find a half-naked drunk passed out in their own vehicle? This was by far one of the weirdest places I had ever woken up in after the madness of a full-blown drink fest. That's why I hate drinking and don't do it. Except a little socially, but I never get drunk, well, except on my DEC canoe trips, but you are supposed too then! Brown Town is trying to be celibate and even Burpy gets no loving when the lady he picked up at Karma is found to be indisposed for that time of the month. Shooter gets one of the Princeton DEC secretaries to come down and they hook up. After few more nights in Seaside Heights there were no more drunken episodes or trips to the police station.Its Sunday morning, I rented a Jeep and I am heading home and it's pouring down rain, I'm lost out on the edge of the county proper (only Jersey marshland beyond) somewhere near Perth Amboy and I'm just trying to find the way back to the Garden State Parkway and I think I almost have. I make a slow right turn on a slick surface street and WHAMMO! Out of nowhere this other car comes right at me and I plow into the ditch and I start to see jail in my very near future. I stagger out of my rental car, my forehead bleeding from an open cut above my eye and I look like I've just gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson. This next part is a bit of an illustration into why alcohol in the system from the previous night, combined with a naturally outgoing personality can be a problem.So the cop (all I remember was one Highway Patrol officer) asks me if I've been drinking. I slur out my denial in obvious screwed-up tongue-tied fashion, the crash has taken its toll on my senses. He asks me a couple of more times. I admit to having drinks the night before, and he whips out the Breathalyzer, but remember, I haven't been drinking for at least eight hours, I've been driving around now for a while, I'm a fairly big guy at 180 lbs. so the Breathalyzer likely doesn't go off. They ambulance driver tries to "good cop bad cop" me into admitting any drugs I've taken because he's "just wants to know." They load me into the back of an ambulance and take me to the hospital where the dreaded blood test is done. Then I go to sleep for a few hours. When I wake up, I am alone in a hospital room. I am craving a Bettie Jean (my wife) toasted cheese sandwich with bacon and tomato and am still pleasantly buzzed from the percoset pain killer they gave me, I can see a long year of lawyer's fees, hassles with my license, and having to drive a cheap car that will make me look like a jerk, and having no farther CAREER prospects whatsoever.But there are no COPs here waiting to take me to jail. I walk out of the hospital about 3:00 P.M. and call Tommy at his motel; maybe he is out of jail now. I drive home to East Orange and feel into bed. Monday morning my hung-over head and dilapidated body was rudely awakened by Bettie who asked me "what the hell had I been up too?" I mumbled something about being with my "boys" at the Shore and we drank to much." Well, she knew I was there but to come home in this condition worried her. She told me that thieves had stolen a bunch of stuff from our garage last night. The kid's bikes, a cheap lawnmower, a foot scooter and some sound equipment someone had been storing there were taken. I ran downstairs in a panic to find my garage doors wide open; it looked like the thieves had done us in. Except for the kid's bikes, the stuff that was stolen was no real loss. That was a hell of a way to cap the weekend off. Must have happened after I came home? I was terribly dehydrated and still feeling queasy and drank lots of water and had a big breakfast with bacon, potatoes, whole wheat bread and eggs. I was still to mess up to drive to work so I took the buss into from East Orange to Penn Station. Vince was sitting in my One Penn Plaza office waiting for my appearance and he got some hot black coffee for me. I asked him about Roxy, the waitress from Sea Side Heights who got drunk with the rest of us. He said she did get drunk but didn't have a drunk driving story, she wouldn't do something like that. Vince grinned! Now, giving a blow job to the driver, driving while switching places behind the steering wheel with her boy friend while they were both are undressing while going 60 mph THAT she has done . . .Damn, why do I worry so much about people? It's my Irish heritage I think. Only 1/4 per cent but it can be dominant when I feel for people. I still feel wasted and know that exercise is good and plan on walking down to our Wall Street office this morning. I will stop off along the way and get something to eat at the favorite Greek Dinner on 14th street.P.S. I get the police report about two weeks later. The box he's supposed to check if you're drunk isn't. And the box your supposed to check if there are drugs in your system isn't. And the box that he's supposed to check if you had an open container isn't checked either. The box you check for racial ethnicity I wrote in Irish. Officer O'Herlihy winked when he handed me the ticket. I love those Jersey COPs. "Hath and begonia"

1970s in AmericaI grew up in 1940s Milwaukee, then spent ten years in 1950s - 60s Norfolk with the Navy and IBM, then 40 years in 1960/70s/80/90 New York where I traveled all around the USA recruiting people, managing large customer service organizations, consulting and teaching computer courses. I got to know the country well and really loved it. The Bible belt south was the most problematic, what with its Jim Crow racial segregation and extreme evangelical religiosity and ultra conservative Republican politics. I first ran into ugly Jim Crow racial segregation aberrations when I was assigned to a naval base in Norfolk, VA in the 1950s. I became an active Civil Rights worker, worked for Jack Kennedy, and was active in local politics and community affairs. It's where it was the meanest, nastiest, most racist violent city and couldn't believe I was in the USA. The Civil Rights movement was just getting started and I witnessed the ugliest, violent and most hateful behaviors known to man by southern whites against blacks seeking their equal rights. But they were operating within their normal, didn't see anything immoral with segregation and second class citizenship being forced on black people. They felt righteous; the rest of the country was communist for trying to change their culture. Besides, segregation was supported in the Bible.After the Navy I stayed in the south as an engineer for IBM Main Frames and was constantly grieving the Jim Crow racial segregation and the backward Bible belt culture. I hated it. Nothing socially to do, full of bigoted and uneducated people, dry states with no bars or dance clubs, you had to depend on Bootleggers for liquor and heaven forbid the races would mix, so private clubs were used for social gatherings. But there was good fishing and hunting and everyone had plenty of guns to protect themselves against Yankee invasions and them damned communist Civil Rights workers trying to integrate the south. Besides fishing and hunting with my good ole boy, tobacco chewing and spitting, friends, there were also those fabulous Big Top Tent traveling circuses and carnivals filled animals, clowns, and side shows - all segregated of course.The 1960sAs an IBM Engineer I traveled the USA and was in Washington, Boston and Manhattan constantly over the years. That's where all the big computer applications were located so IBM had me there all the time. I especially loved NYC. There were thousands of delights, with tens of thousands of people walking about, and no question about it, the best girl watching in the world was available in Midtown Manhattan - particularly along its many avenues and Fortune 500 headquarters, lined with skyscrapers, building ledges and street cafes to sit around and ogle the beautiful women. A particularly good area was in the fifties on Sixth Avenues where many water fountains abounded and granite veranda patios filled with tables, chairs and sitting ledges. Whatever your fancy, blond, brunette, redhead, Asian, White, or Black, the woman of you dreams would pass by every five minutes - or oftener! The beautiful people of the world came to Manhattan for fame, fortune, and excitement. Careers in show business and the business world topped the list as reasons so many bright and attractive people moved to Manhattan. And for some like me, it was for freedom! For lunch, every kind of food is available, with hundreds of Delis, street cafes, ethnic restaurants, Halal street carts, and fast food eateries every two blocks. Eat a New York pizza and you are doomed to never be satisfied for a slice anywhere else . . . well, maybe in Chicago for the thick slices!Southerners tend to have traditional conservative values, lots of religion, and pride in the Confederate heritage that all Southerners share. Southerners tend to dislike liberals and educated people. They like their guns; many carry and are better armed than northerners. There is only a hand full of different cultures in the Southern States, while in the Northern States there are hundreds of diverse cultures from around the world.The 1970sIt was a decade of seismic social and political change across the globe. Racism dominated life in the US in the 1960s well into the 1870s. Segregation wasn't just in the South, with black people being murdered when they fought for human rights. De facto segregation was rife in the North. From the burgeoning anti-Vietnam war and civil rights movements in the United States, protests and revolutions in Europe and the first comprehensive coverage of war and resultant famine in Africa. The world would never be the same again. The events of the 1960s inspired a generation and shaped struggles around the world for years to come. Occasionally one year can cast a spell over the decades that follow. 1968 was such a year.The nation is split! Like nearly everything else in the South, it has to do with slavery. Southern society was never founded on the same egalitarian concepts as the North. The South was established as slavery based system for two and a half centuries. Jefferson Davis and the southern governors all said slavery was the reason for succession and that with Lincoln as president the 'Slaveholding States' would no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government had become their enemy.Up north the 1970s was of course also the time of disco, bell bottoms, platforms, glam rock, side burns, lava lamps, high tech architecture, the paperback, the transformation of TV, the rise of the Gay Movement, the start of the science fiction phenomenon, the start of punk rock, hard rock and heavy metal, prominence of the Feminist Movement, movies such as Star Wars, The Godfather, Love Story, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Jaws, Annie Hall, Rocky, Saturday Night Fever, The Exorcist and many more. The rise of musicians such as David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Abba, Boney M, Bee Gees, Deep Purple, AC/DC, Queen, Pink Floyd, Uriah Heep, Aerosmith, Bob Marley, and many more.New York Cityhas always been described as a bustling metropolis where so many things are happening and so many new interesting personalities are waiting to be captured. I still come across new things to do each week in New York City. You could probably eat out every night for 10 years and still not claim to have tried every restaurant in New York because by the time you got close, new ones would be popping up left and right.After work you could enjoy the social delights in NYC not found in the south. Manhattan is also the Happy Hour, music and dance capital of the world, and everyone loves to party heartily in one of those 6,000 some odd night clubs, juke dance joints, dive bars or 12,000 Bars/restaurants in the Big Apple, the Irish joints being the best. So after work, Happy Hour is a must to relax and become acquainted with someone new while you search for your heart's desires of a soul mate. There is so much to choose from, every type and color hue that making up your mind is a problem, but choices are stimulating, and Manhattan has tens of thousands of personal prerogatives, and a never-ending supply of life styles are available. I found northerners in general tended to be far more educated, industrialized, high tech, socially advanced, lots being immigrants and very worldly. More students from Northern States go to Ivy League and highly academic Colleges and get better rounded big world view educations. Northerners tend to be more supportive of social egalitarianism: human rights, civil rights, workers' unions, and people stuff en all. We think as long as you work hard, everyone should be given a fair chance to succeed.And then there was Greenwich Village which is oft considered the nation's leader in the cultural revolution being inhabited with America's creative generation of performing artists - musicians, actors, artists, playwrights - a bohemian enclave of hippies and intellectuals and the East Coast birthplace of the Beat movement. One block away from my office was Washington Square Park which was one of NYC's most famous parks with its most distinguishing feature being its decorative Arch de Triumph arch. Here great academic debaters from NYU, street performers of musicians and actors and protestors hung out.1971 Memorial Day Digital Delaware River Canoe TripKissing my wife Bettie good bye, I left our home in East Orange for the long drive to Upstate New York and Narrowsburg. Dan Lucky and I drove north on picturesque Route 17 to Middletown, picked up RT. 84 to Port Jervis and onto Route 97, a narrow, windy, mountain cliff road, to Narrowsburg. Used in many television commercials for BMW automobiles, Route 97 provides views of precipitous cliffs falling hundreds of feet below to the Delaware River. Part of the road went through an area called Hawks Nest which is just a cliff hanging over the Delaware River one thousand feet below. When we arrived at the Narrowsburg campground, I quickly found out a Digital canoe trip was not a Boy Scout trip but an excursion into those crazy MASH days I enjoyed while in the Navy. I remember my first night, it was a below freezing evening with fierce winds blowing off the river, the cases of beer were stacked up five feet high, and we warmed ourselves around the bonfire made up from huge wood logs gleaned from driftwood. Large brown Army tents were set up around the roaring ten-foot fire and regardless of the fact the cold air was freezing our butts off, horse play started quickly, hard-boiled egg fights began, and we started bombing people from long distances and unless you got hit in the face, they didn't hurt at all. Between drinking and the bon fire, we stayed relatively warm. The War dance was scheduled for Midnight and we were going to need more wood for the fire.Fires were going out and we needed more fire wood, wow, lucky someone brought a chain saw, even more lucky were the plentiful eight foot long picnic tables! They burned nicely but soon expired, then there were those telephone poles for the campground lights, and because they were impregnated in creosote, and when properly cut up, made a good camp fire and burned for a few hours. But it was May and in the Delaware River basin that meant temperatures in the low thirties, and there were hundreds of us needing more warmth, only a gigantic bon fire would keep us warm and allow us to do our Seven Nation Indian War Dance. We started another bon fire made up from trees we cut down, which was huge and glorious and it roared all night long keeping us warm, except it needed to be fed large amounts of wood every hour. We spotted the 18th century Fort Delaware just up the hill near the highway and the chain saw gang and a wood chopping crew went off and the fort was stripped of all its fire wood and ten pine logs were chained sawed down from the fort's wall construction itself and hauled down to our campsite. The War Dance was spectacular! Anyone would have thought we were real Indians what with the whooping and screaming. With a few beers in us, we were all warrior Apache Indians for the weekend, and our sensational War Dance celebrated our superior mental abilities, you know, us being computer people of Digital Equipment Corporation, and our spectacular leadership in drunkenness and tom foolery being practiced in the finest art forms. We passed the peace pipe (can you guess what was in it?) and took solemn vows toasted by more beer.Later, around 2:00 A.M., Frank Purcell and some of the guys from Maynard were found passed out drunk and desecrating our campground with their obnoxious presence. The mess had to be cleaned up, so after putting life jackets on them, we loaded the drunks into canoes and cast them off into the river and laying there in a stupor, they quietly drifted off and headed down the stream to unknown destinations. We did not know how dangerous these acts were, but the rule had been established earlier, pass out and you were heading down the river in a canoe without a paddle. There were a few campground privies, but they were soon stopped up with excrements, so we relieved our selves quietly on the grass near parked cars, their darkened hulks being good for a modicum of privacy while squatting. It turned out many of these cars belonged to families who were not part of our group and they soon left when they discovered someone defecating or pissing on the wheels of their car.It was so cold a lot of the guys slept in those huge plastic garbage bags to stay warm and puked in them while sleeping making a nasty mess to get cleaned up the next morning, but the showers were not working (someone had busted the water pipes to trying to get the camp toilets working) and so they had to douse them selves in the cold river. Of course, when you woke up in a pile of your own vomit, it got very smelly too. Well, what do you expect when one drinks five cases of beer a day and makes a bed from a garbage bag? The first night was a hellish night of drinking, hooting, hollering and by 3:00 A.M., every tent was mashed into the ground and every bottle of liquor or can of beer was gone, all two hundred cases.When the Bob Landers trucks arrived the next morning to take us and the canoes to Calicoon, their drivers were in a state of shock, all the picnic tables and telephone poles were gone and so were most of their other campground guests. The toilets were over flowing and excrements were all over the campground. Muttering to themselves how the 'boss' would have something to say about our destructive behavior. The trucks took us twenty miles upstream in Calicoon where we loaded our beer cases and food coolers into our forty-five canoes and took off. Some of the still drunk boozers capsized right there before we got to the middle of the river and salvage rights went to the fastest sailors to pick up the beer now laying at the bottom of the river.That taught us a lesson, so we tied the beer coolers down with ropes so if we were capsized, the beer would stay with us. Most Digital men are ex navy, so the first thing we did in our canoes was to rope in a mizzen mast, tie on plastic garbage bags for sails, build a catapult from a sliced rubber inner tubes (a few cars in the parking lot were missing their spare tires) and start a fire amidships to keep warm. Going down the river, we used our catapults to bombard each other with mud balls and T-shirt soaked in gasoline. Then we got up to ram speed ready to plough into every Digital canoe we met. Very quickly we found that it was too easy to tip over when you were by your self, and even though tied down, the cases beer of beer went into the deep, so we tied many canoes together and formed unsinkable flotilla ram teams of three or more canoes tied together. If you crashed into a rock, the canoe would turn sideways and the water pressure from the rapid current would wrap the canoe around the rock, flattening the canoe like a tin can run over by a truck. And you had to get your canoe back to Narrowsburg or pay for it, so the crews would stomp the canoe into shape as best as they could and proceed down the river, with crooked and bent canoes, in zig zag formations. We were a motley crew as we canoed down the river, we discovered hundreds of cans of beer on the bottom and claiming salvage rights, dived in the cold water for them. One of the more dangerous stunts we pulled was to charge each other and joust with tree limbs. We found the empty cardboard beer cases didn't work to well as armor. Aside from arming our canoes with fire shooting catapults, the first couple of hours on the Delaware were quiet. You'll be gliding in your canoe quietly enough to see all that nature offers. If you watch closely while on the Delaware River and you may see eagles, deer, ducks and much more. It is about two hours leisurely paddling in a canoe - an easy way to enjoy your day on the water before the white water in that awaited us in Skinner Falls.We canoed about 13 miles to Skinner Falls, a class five rapids and spent the day there. As you near the rapids, actually a series of three separate raids, you can see the "V" pointing downriver, indication of your route. The "V" pointing upriver indicates submerged boulders; there are many of these. The canoeist in the bow will earn his keep. We kneel in the canoe to give you more stability. If you haven't done so already, don your life jacket and good luck. We uncoupled the canoes and went through one at a time but the upper Delaware's most ferocious white-water rapids were not easy to navigate and we discovered getting through without capsizing were next too impossible. Even though rocks were everywhere, no one got hurt as we portaged our canes back along the shore line and canoed through the fall many times that day. When you've passed through the third rapids you've completed the most exciting stretch of white water. Our campground at Narrowsburg finally came across the bow. At Narrowsburg the river reaches its deepest point (113 feet), and, edged with high cliffs, begins its most remote segment to Barryville. We arrived back at our Narrowsburg campground tired and very hungry. We had a great day and learned that our friends who were cast off drunk the night before were all okay, they were found a little down the river from Narrowsburg on the Pennsylvania shore begging food at a General Store who did feed them. And they say the South is hospitable!?Sunday, the next day we completed our canoe trip. The next 17 miles to Barryville are a roller coaster of rapids, which in spring can take less than five hours to traverse. It was here we ended our canoe trip, but not without more canoe tipping by some wild and crazy guys determined that everyone goes home wet. Bob Landers had a restaurant at Barryville, so after we crawled out of the water soaking wet thanks to the dunkers, we had a steaming cup of coffee and burgers and hot dogs waiting for us. It has been an adventurous and beautiful three day excursion, what with the campsite activities and each section of the river being different and has its own personality. And more significantly, you've experienced a canoe trip of exhilarating beauty and solitude.Because we burned all the picnic tables and telephone poles and damaged Fort Delaware, we were banned from the Narrowsburg Camp Ground forever. The carnage embarrassed Dick Paulson and he wouldn't organize any more canoe trips, so I organized them for the next twelve years, and often, I had more than 400 people in attendance. The next year I contract again with the Bob Landers people and they put us into the deep woods in the Narrowsburg area, but there were no privies (who needs them anyway), or water or picnic tables, but we made do, just be careful where you stepped. Bob Landers didn't object to our cutting down trees for the bon fire so we could have our War Dance ceremony. It was great!P.S. Because of past raunchy Digital behavior, our VP, was not going to organize them anymore and he felt that senior management should not be associated with the drunken shenanigans. So I started to organize the canoe trips for the next twelve years and I usually used the Bob Landers camp ground facilities on the Delaware River. I would send out flyers to all our East Coast Digital offices from Washington, D.C. to Boston. Normally, I would have around two hundred people attending plus Glen Foley's crew from Massachusetts. Glen Foley (he was Digital's Maynard cafeteria manager) would organize the Massachusetts crew and coordinate with me. His bunch would ride chartered Grey Hound buses down from the Boston area. This year, because of our destructive behavior last year, Digital was banned forever from using the Narrowsburg camp ground and we were put into deep woods away from all other campers. There were no water, privies, or picnic tables but we had plenty of privacy to conduct our drunken debaucheries in secret. Without privies, the woods were used, but you still had to be careful where you stepped. The canoe trips took place on the Memorial Day week end when it was still winter in the Catskill Mountains, so huge fires were needed. The chain saw crew cut us driftwood and a few trees which proved satisfactory for our traditional War Dance and staying warm. Some women came this year including Bettie who proved to be a regular trooper.1974 My Long Weekend at the Jersey ShoreI don't like to get drunk, it is embarrassing and I don't like the way I feel, especially if I am feeling nauseously sick and start throwing up. So, I usually take it easy when drinking and stick with beer, something I know and can handle. But there are exceptions. Like the last time I went to the Jersey Shore with some of my motley gang from the New York support group. We got rooms at a motel right on the beach, a dingy, old, smelly, dirty thing, but it was on the beach and close by was the broad walk and all those dance clubs and juke joint Dive Bars the Jersey Shore is famous for, the ones that cater to the New York City wild man types, you know, the crazy fun living and damn the torpedoes kind of weirdoes. Not that the Jersey Shore is all about drunks and audacious times. In fact, what I have always loved about the shore was how much it has to offer. If you want to just chill out all day at the beach and call it an early night, well, that's there for you. There are great food and fishing and rides for the kids and the young at heart. However, there is no denying that drinking plays a major part in the allure of Jersey Shore. Don't ask me to explain, it just is. There's not one person reading this right now who can't at the drop of a hat recite a blow-by-blow account of a night that started with three cases of Miller Late. "And how about stories your secretary, "Mary actually was wearing a can on her head and we all went out to Casino Pizza." And so it is when the DEC folks from Manhattan get together, it usually means mayhem on the beach.After a 60 to an 80-hour work week, going to the shore is like taking a trip back in time. Down at the shore, its OK to funnel Miller Light or shotgun a can of low grade lager and listen all night to Bruce Springsteen on the Boardwalk. It's OK to hang with your buddies or business teammates and get dirty. We are deadly serious during the week on our high tech - high stress jobs, but young professionals can succumb to peer pressure, acting more like high school seniors than the leaders of tomorrow. Whether its LBI or Asbury Park, people come to the shore to forget about the working week and have fun. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" and for a bad summer and an even worse existence. It seems in order to get ahead today, you need to put in at least 60 hours a week and sometimes a trip to the shore can remind us who we were, who we are, and why we work so hard. There is so much going on at the shore, college kids, locals, Manhattanites, Long Islanders, Upstaters, tourists, conventioneers, and have you ever noticed how many young workers at the Jersey Shore speak with heavy accents? The pizza workers? The balloon game barkers? The boardwalk sales clerks?Well, there's a good reason why, they are foreign college students here on work visas for the summer. Think of it as studying abroad for a semester, but instead of studying, they sell Hermit Crab shells. It was a grinding week, and after work, four of us drove down from Manhattan and had just gotten into Sea Side Heights on a hot Friday night in July. We are going to meet more of the group later, it's only 7:00 p.m. or so. We were in Tommy's Volkswagen red convertible enjoying the weather and the warm breezes coming off the sea shore. We went to a party in Dimsum's (he's Russian) Sea Isle condo that had already been broken up by the police for loud Vesuvius noises and disorderly conduct. Well, if you can call one of the girls running around in the parking lot in her panties disorderly - we thought it was funny since she weighed more than 300 pounds and gulped down booze from two peanut butter jars half full of vodka as she ran. We knew it was vodka because she had the White Gold Vodka, Black Edition, Russian labeled bottle tucked into the rear of her panties. And she wasn't even part of our group, probably one of those crazy college kids from Columbia U., but we were cheering her on when the police came and broke it up! So we turn the car around and head downtown when we got pulled over on Central. At this point we were completely sober, but in fairness to the police, I would have pulled us over too. We LOOKED like trouble. However, the police quickly realize that we are straight and are just about to let us all continue on our way, when one of the officers, looking at the license of Tommy, the driver and says, "And you're Thomas Briglow, right? And Tommy replies, "That's what the license says, doesn't it, genius?" Bang. Pow. The next thing you know all four of us are being locked up and you know what for? PARADING WITHOUT A PERMIT. That was all they could really get us on. We went to the judge quick and were on our way after paying a $35 fine each. And believe me, we were using credit cards and didn't have$35 cash between us. Tommy didn't learn his lesson and insulted the Mouse McCourt judge and ended up spending the night in jail. And he was driving and now we were walking!I called Dimsum who picked us up and took us to his condo in Seaside Heights where his buddies, Cardiff and D'Milz, were hanging out smashing a case of Red Bull. There was a crowd there, all from my New York Support Group waiting for us: there was me (Lutz), Vince Kaminski (Weed), Tom Wilder (Surfer), Ed Hubbard (Shooter), Ben Battle (Brownstown), his girlfriend Sinbad, Dave Shea (Eat Me) his girlfriend at the time Ram, Dan Lucky (Ukraine), John Fischer (Burpy) and the support group's two acquaintances, Robo and Roxy from the Seaside Heights Diner. Dimsum had a completely stocked bar and we got a few drinks before going to the 5 O'clock Somewhere Bar on the Broad Walk which offers signature boat drinks to Land shark Lager beer. The lively vibe of the bar features "flair bartenders" whose cocktail serving performances are only overshadowed by the cocktail creations they serve. Next door is D'Jais, well known for its diverse atmosphere, which different kinds of music seven nights a week. From there it's a short jump to the Crescent Bar where the Bikers hang out for a taste of the real nightlife. It was right next to Braca's the movie theater where James Candy is playing now.The Crescent Bar welcomes motorcycle riders. A pool table hides in the back, while an open spot just the right size for a Country - Western band is left by the door. Christy, the bar tender, says the stereotype of the "wild biker bar," she said, just isn't true. "Everybody thinks that this is a rough place because bikers come here," she said. "But we've had so many people that will come in by themselves, or with their friends, and love it. "They say the men are the most respectful, they feel safe, and the women say that this is the only place they'll come to by themselves," she said. A bouncer is on hand on the weekends to help with crowd control, and no "colors" (a biker's vest, which is adorned by club patches that identify the group of club the biker rides with) are allowed in the bar to avoid possible confrontations. Because the colors identify what club a person belongs to, they can quickly lead to trouble if rival gangs show up at the same spot. Christy says that riders are allowed to leave their colors on their bikes, turn them inside out, or put them in the back room; many outlaw clubs' members, however, are not allowed to take their colors off, and so will go somewhere else.Last month when we were here we went to Braca's to see a Mel Brooks movie! We buy our tickets and, thanks to the 15 minutes of previews, haven't missed a frame. The air conditioning is barely working, but each of us has two bottles of Red Bull. What could be better? Well, I don't know if it's the heat or the fact that we have been drinking for hours at that point, but the next thing I know were being woken up by an usher. The movie is two thirds over. The usher appears to be 15 years old and he's ticked off.He sees the Red Bull bottles on the floor with his trusty flashlight and says to us with an all knowing smirk, like he really nabbed us, "Uh, you didn't buy that wine in here did ya? LIKE THIS THEATER SOLD POPCORN, GOOBERS, AND MD20/20! We got thrown out, but the story lives on. That usher today? I think he is working for the CIA.Tonight we are going to hang out all night at D'Jais - the bars are open until 5:00 A.M. - on the wooden dance floor right next to the beach. With sounds ranging from live classic rock & roll, reggae bands and the Tri State's best DJ's spinning the latest dance music. Few can resist the urge to jump up and boogie when Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" starts pumping through the big sound system's speakers. There's an indoor restaurant, a food court, outdoor raw bar, and an outdoor bar/restaurant overlooking the beach with live music during the day and almost every night in the summer. A cool stage is built on a pier out over the surf. The Jersey Shore is famous for its population of Guido's (Italian Americans). They are a strange lot, and I couldn't understand why guys would want to tan until they were orange and would wear their hair in spiky, absurd, Brylcreem product saturated styles, all while boasting about their Italian heritage and steroid use. Even more confusing is the fact that girls found these weird guys attractive. Granted, they weren't the types of girls I'd be particularly interested in - high heels, fake boobs, and, like their male counterparts, plenty of tannings and smoothed back cream hair products. If you've ever been to Long Island or, obviously, the Jersey Shore, then you know just the type of Guido or Guidoette I'm referring to. What kind of people makes themselves look like that? What kind of subculture is this? How can you take seriously anybody that struts around like this. But you see everything here.SeaSide Heightsis a mixed bag of nationalities, but for the most part, the majority of its summer help hails from former Soviet countries. One of the guys at DEC operates a family owned boardwalk businesses and find themselves becoming friends with their workers, and hanging out with them all summer, so when our support group go down for a few days in the summer, we are bombarded with a new slew of Olgas, and Ludas, and Soushas, and Natashas, whose names and faces I have to try to remember. But never before have I witnessed something like I did tonight. And Oh My God was it "different." First of all, they were not lying . . . besides the bar tenders, my six friends and I, were the only Americans in the place. And trust me, you could tell, just little things like the clothes and the hair styles were just . . . different. There was loud House and Techno pounding through the sound system, and a thin layer of fog machine smoke filled the air. Bodies threw themselves across the dance floor in odd and awkward movements there were no fist pumpers here and the stage and speakers were stood on by both guys and girls who attempted to entice the crowd with bizarre dance moves. When the Russians come to dance, they come to DANCE! They were spinning and jumping and skipping and sweating and they just never let up, it looked more like a slam dance pit in the late 70's than anything close to what we're used to.Ukraine was pissed because he didn't like Russians and was on one of his 'try anything shooter all night vibes and he was filling his mouth with anything ranging from vodka to some fairy stuff that tasted sweet, like a Singapore Sling. Well when Ukraine gets all liquored up on shots, he becomes the most generous person in the world and buys rounds for everyone and rounds were bought. I'm sure some lucky, unsuspecting bastards standing next to me got a few shots and a hug from me during the night. Basically I got drinking - I had three Long Islands, two Sex on the Beach, and after that I was totally drunk barely walk out of the bar. Anyway, at this point, I'm flying on a new previously undiscovered drunken cloud. Then came that unavoidable feeling. I walked to the bathroom and sat in front of the toilet. Two orange, chunky pukes later, I walked out back into the bar.We sober up a bit and head out on the beach with the sand crabs for a swim, to cool off sober up a little. Then soaking wet, it's to the nearest bar on the beach. There was this really hammered dwarf who would repeatedly stagger over to the bar, get a bartender to lean all the way over to hear him and then whisper, "I'm sorry I'm a little drunk" before exploding with laughter and then staggering back to the dance floor. A coworker and I were chatting about something on the news and I said "Yeah, at least it's not Russia!" Suddenly from the end of the bar a massive woman with a thick accent yells, "VAHT YOU SAY ABOUT RRRUSSIA?"She then started regaling the entire bar with stories of the Soviet glory days, babbling on in a crazy Bond villain accent about how great everything used to be. She proceeded to finish her margarita, left a $10 on the bar, and walked out. We then noticed that she'd peed all over the stool. We ended up throwing away the stool. I can think of crazier stories that happened that night, but this one stands out as one of the funniest scenes. I'm leaning against the bar talking to Brownstown and Ukraine about something unimportant when some girls sitting down next to us start laughing. We turn to check out what was so funny when we see this goof ball dancing it up on the dance floor. This guy was wearing some weird pants, a sparkling silver shirt and a skull and crossbones bandana. Even as hammered as I was, I knew this guy looked ridiculous. So without much thought, I made my way over behind him and started dancing behind him in a mocking way. My dancing is a mockery in itself but the fact it was geared at this guy had my friends laughing hysterically by the bar. Pretty soon a few others took notice in this ugly scene and found it funny. Sure enough, my target eventually caught on and kept trying to catch me doing whatever was making these people laugh around him. Like the idiot I was, the second he'd turn to me I would stop moving completely and scratch my head as if I had some intense idea I was trying to wrap my brain around. Keep in mind we were in the middle of the dance floor so I just looked like I might have been retarded or maybe gay. The night wore on. Sometime between that last round of shots and dancing on the bar, I have become a stand-up comedian and a first-rate politician. Well at least in this bar I can go out side and pee on the beach sand. I come back inside and toss another Red Bull. I can't believe that I used to think that Red Bull was the most destructive invention of the past 50 years.Closing time was around the corner so we got out of the bar and went to a pizza place on the Broad Walk. I managed to order a slice of pepperoni and bumped into an old buddy from my days at the New School in Greenwich Village, shot the shit (maybe he understood some of it, who knows) while they heated up my slice, made my way up the six stairs to join my buddies on the deck over looking the street and tried to sit down on a flimsy plastic chair. Now, at this point, everything went into slow motion. I sat on the plastic chair, which could not handle my drunken way of sitting, propelling me backwards. My slice of pizza went airborne, and in the middle of my fall, a convertible filled with four smoking hot girls drove by. I landed on my backside next to my slice of pizza and the sound of four of the hottest women I had ever seen laughing their asses off at me as they drove off in green Mini Cooper car. This upset me. What the hell kind of chair is this? Unfortunately, most of my angry remarks were directed at a bunch of police officers about ten feet away. Someone managed to hail a cab before I really got us all into a bucket of shit and started us on our way back to motel. As it turns out, we didn't have enough for the full fare and this jerk off cabbie didn't trust us enough to let us off at a bank (I might have played a role in that). He dropped us off a good ten minutes from our motel. I got out of the cab and promptly passed out on someone's lawn.Now, this is the last I remember from the night. I blacked out the moment I stepped out of that cab. The rest has been told to me or I pieced it together. I woke up the next morning completely reclined in the passenger seat of a minivan parked in a random person's driveway. I had no idea whose van this was, I didn't recognize the house that was towering in front of me and I barely recognized the environment. What was even more alarming was that I was wearing nothing but my boxer-briefs and my socks. Where the hell are my clothes and it's nearly 7:00 A.M. On the front steps of the house are all my clothes, neatly folded. My shoes are placed together right in front of my clothes with my wallet and lighter sticking out of them. Everything seemed to be carefully placed and handled with the utter most care. I am perplexed, how did I neatly fold my clothes and check for unlocked minivans to fall asleep in? Imagine the horror on the owners face had he opened the driver's door to find a half-naked drunk passed out in their own vehicle? This was by far one of the weirdest places I had ever woken up in after the madness of a full-blown drink fest. That's why I hate drinking and don't do it. Except a little socially, but I never get drunk, well, except on my DEC canoe trips, but you are supposed too then! Brown Town is trying to be celibate and even Burpy gets no loving when the lady he picked up at Karma is found to be indisposed for that time of the month. Shooter gets one of the Princeton DEC secretaries to come down and they hook up. After few more nights in Seaside Heights there were no more drunken episodes or trips to the police station.Its Sunday morning, I rented a Jeep and I am heading home and it's pouring down rain, I'm lost out on the edge of the county proper (only Jersey marshland beyond) somewhere near Perth Amboy and I'm just trying to find the way back to the Garden State Parkway and I think I almost have. I make a slow right turn on a slick surface street and WHAMMO! Out of nowhere this other car comes right at me and I plow into the ditch and I start to see jail in my very near future. I stagger out of my rental car, my forehead bleeding from an open cut above my eye and I look like I've just gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson. This next part is a bit of an illustration into why alcohol in the system from the previous night, combined with a naturally outgoing personality can be a problem.So the cop (all I remember was one Highway Patrol officer) asks me if I've been drinking. I slur out my denial in obvious screwed-up tongue-tied fashion, the crash has taken its toll on my senses. He asks me a couple of more times. I admit to having drinks the night before, and he whips out the Breathalyzer, but remember, I haven't been drinking for at least eight hours, I've been driving around now for a while, I'm a fairly big guy at 180 lbs. so the Breathalyzer likely doesn't go off. They ambulance driver tries to "good cop bad cop" me into admitting any drugs I've taken because he's "just wants to know." They load me into the back of an ambulance and take me to the hospital where the dreaded blood test is done. Then I go to sleep for a few hours. When I wake up, I am alone in a hospital room. I am craving a Bettie Jean (my wife) toasted cheese sandwich with bacon and tomato and am still pleasantly buzzed from the percoset pain killer they gave me, I can see a long year of lawyer's fees, hassles with my license, and having to drive a cheap car that will make me look like a jerk, and having no farther CAREER prospects whatsoever. But there are no COPs here waiting to take me to jail. I walk out of the hospital about 3:00 P.M. and call Tommy at his motel, maybe he is out of jail now. I drive home to East Orange and feel into bed.Monday morning my hung-over head and dilapidated body was rudely awakened by Bettie who asked me "what the hell had I been up too?" I mumbled something about being with my "boys" at the Shore and we drank to much." Well, she knew I was there but to come home in this condition worried her. She told me that thieves had stolen a bunch of stuff from our garage last night. The kids bikes, a cheap lawnmower, a foot scooter and some sound equipment someone had been storing there were taken. I ran downstairs in a panic to find my garage doors wide open, it looked like the thieves had done us in. Except for the kids bikes, the stuff that was stolen was no real loss. That was a hell of a way to cap the weekend off. Must have happened after I came home? I was terribly dehydrated and still feeling queasy and drank lots of water and had a big breakfast with bacon, potatoes, whole wheat bread and eggs. I was still to messed up to drive to work so I took the buss into from East Orange to Penn Station. Vince was sitting in my One Penn Plaza office waiting for my appearance and he got some hot black coffee for me. I asked him about Roxy, the waitress from Sea Side Heights who got drunk with the rest of us. He said she did get drunk but didn't have a drunk driving story, she wouldn't do something like that. Vince grinned! Now, giving a blow job to the driver, driving while switching places behind the steering wheel with her boy friend while they were both are undressing while going 60 mph THAT she has done . . .Damn, why do I worry so much about people? It's my Irish heritage I think. Only 1/4 per cent but it can be dominant when I feel for people. I still feel wasted and know that exercise is good and plan on walking down to our Wall Street office this morning. I will stop off along the way and get something to eat at the favorite Greek Dinner on 14th street.P.S. I get the police report about two weeks later. The box he's supposed to check if you're drunk isn't. And the box your supposed to check if there are drugs in your system isn't. And the box that he's supposed to check if you had an open container isn't checked either. The box you check for racial ethnicity I wrote in Irish. Officer O'Herlihy winked when he handed me the ticket. I love those Jersey COPs. "Hath and begonia"Business TravelI had 60% travel working in the computer industry and went just about everywhere in the USA. As a History major and European traveler, I knew a lot about the world. The United States is still a very young country as far as most of the world is concerned. So our cultural heritage is often very different for a lot of groups. This differs in most countries in the world that have histories that go back thousands of years. Because of this, many families have histories that they can trace back to other places. This is why you see people still call themselves "Italian-American" or "Japanese-American." You can go to certain major cities and still see the impacts of these cultures. In the areas around New Orleans there are still some pockets that speak a variation of French.Our states are larger than most countries and if you hold that analogy, most Americans have traveled to more "countries" than people in the rest of the world. We just happen to take up most of an entire continent. Think about it. The word state and country are synonyms outside of the context of the USA. We could have been easily called the United countries of America when we were founded.I think "Self Reliance" is our biggest cultural attribute! That was developed to when the country was originally founded. The nation was vast and untamed, but there was an industrious and discovery spirit instilled in many, and those were the people that built the country. It's pretty obviously an idealized narrative, but a lot of the American folk hero's come from this ideology. If you want to know about the ideals of a nation, listen to the stories they tell. Being industrious and self reliant, is still how a lot of Americans look at themselves. It has a lot to do with why Gun laws and Universal Health Care are so opposed by many Americans. I don't always agree with how the rationale applies, but I do agree with the overall ideal. "I want to make my own way. I want to be my own boss. I want to rely on myself for protection." I think ideals like this create the individualistic need to innovate and overcome. It definitely has some negative aspects, but I still think it has a positive impact overall.There are definitely a lot of guns in this Country, but it seems that people outside of the states think people just walk down the streets with their pistols out. That might be an exaggeration, but questions about US gun culture come up all the time on this site. Most often when you see a gun, it's probably one that belongs to you. Interestingly enough, the people that own the most guns are in rural areas where are you are much less likely to see gun related homicides. Almost all of the gun violence comes from major Metropolitan areas where there are fewer gun owners per capita but lots of illegal guns. This is coming from some that is neither for nor against changes to gun control. The issue is much more complex than most people want to make it.I want to just mention something else I've observed, and this is only my personal experience so it shouldn't be taken as constant everywhere. I've known quite a few people that would fit the pro-gun American stereotype, even down to the Southern accent and the Ten-Gallon Hat. They are usually very conservative and often more aggressively nationalistic than I am, which is astounding. Most would say that they don't want to have to rely on anyone else to protect themselves. I also, unfortunately, have known two different people that have been convicted of murder. Neither one ever owned a gun legally. One thing I see mentioned quite a bit from people abroad is how big things are in this country. The roads are large. The potions are huge, etc. If that is jarring to you, never go to the State of Texas. Because, no matter where you go, everything is bigger in Texas. That is the State's unofficial motto, and it is generally accepted by every State not named Oklahoma. In Texas they wear belt buckles so large that their reflection interferes with local air traffic. If your truck hauls less than three quarters of a ton, or gets more than six miles to the gallon, you might as well be riding a bike. Speed limits are not enforced if you are driving a Cadillac or Suburban and have big cattle bull horns on your hood. The Dallas Cowboys, the most popular thing in the state, keep the roof of stadium they play in open, so God can watch. Their most famous monument is The Alamo, a place where a group 200 men fought 2,000 to the last man. If Texas raised a civilian militia, it would posses more fire power than some countries. There is stereotype around the world about loud gun-toting Americans, and there are few that embrace it better than a Texan. In fact most things people say to insult Americans are often taken as compliments outside of Dallas.Cleveland- Harbor Inn & Knuckle Saloon Motorcycle BarLocated on the southern shore of Lake Erie at the head of numerous canals and railroad lines, Cleveland is the most populous city in Ohio, but it has gone through serious downturns, what with the decline of heavy manufacturing and the riots during the Civil Rights years. Cleveland's businesses diversified into the service economy, but the city's historical low point happened when it defaulted on federal loans under Mayor Dennis Kucinich. Cleveland emerged from the 1982 recession with the dubious distinction of being a prime example of a dying Rust Belt city. Cleveland was the location of several of my Manhattan customers, Price Water House and Woolworth, and I made several trips there to set up customer service for computer installations I sold. I called the Cleveland office and Kelly set me up in a hotel near one of my customers, a manufacturing part of town near the Lake. I rented a car and found the place, the Harbor Inn, a rustic Hotel and settled in. Saddling up to the large, wooden bar at the Harbor Inn got me the sense I was sharing a drink with the ghosts of Cleveland's past. This neighborhood legend has been on the West Bank of the Flats since 1895 and sits on a street named for the bar's owner of 40 years, Wally Pisorn. It draws a diverse crowd (a representation of the U.N. at its worst, one patron joked) with gritty friendliness. The come one come all tradition started in the early 1900s, when ships from Poland, Spain and France landed at the former Cleveland Port (now Shooters on the Water). To keep thirsty sailors coming back, the owners began stocking their native liquors. The practice stuck, and the extensive collection of liquor proves it. I tried Kruskovac, Croatian pear liquor that is sweet enough to sip on its own. The beer selection, which numbers around 200, follows suit. And in case you're into big numbers (or music), the jukebox holds 10,000 songs. "We've got rich guys, poor guys; we've got everyone," says Pisorn. There was a motorcycle rally taking place down the street, so after a few drinks, I walked down the street to One Eyed Jacks that had more than fifty motorcycles parked in front. The One Eyed Jacks Saloon is one of the more popular biker bars and the largest in the Cleveland area. It's big too, the restaurant itself offers six outside bars to have ice cold drinks on the hot summer days. For a Biker Bar, the décor inside the One Eyed Jacks Saloon is upper class, hardwood floors and a polished wood bar offer elegance with an extremely laid back attitude. They advertise the menu at One Eyed Jacks Saloon will appeal to everyone, from their famous "Shotgun Chili," to their "Back at the Ranch" chicken wings on their appetizer menu. For a main course, Lake Erie walleye, chicken cordon bleu, and NY Strip are just samples of the favorable meals. I don't like fish and after a few beers walked next door to the Knuckle Saloon, truly an adult - down and dirty - biker bar, filled with as many bikers as there were skimpily dressed "biker babes." The Knuckle Saloon is full of rough characters that just "live to ride" and the beer and hamburgers flowed freely.At the Knuckle Salon Bar, fun contests for adults were also available, such as Celebrity Corn Holing, the Weenie Bite and Slow Races. I personally watched the Biker Babes have a 'Nipple Contest' and a big blond woman named the Bear Lady won. Sorry, but I do not have a photo of her or her boobs, but I assumed the earrings in her nipples made the guys start drooling or maybe the fact that her nipples got instantly hard when cold beer was dropped on them. Anyway, it was all in fun or was it the beer! Well more than one thousand dollars in gifts and cash prizes are awarded while I was there. During the festivities, I got a California Style hamburger and started in on beer drafts and having the time of my life talking with these folks, but around 1:00 A.M. the bar became smoke filled and elbow to elbow so it was time for me to go outside and get some air and get back to the Harbor Inn and get some sleep. As I left, I counted more than a hundred bikes outside, mostly Harley Hogs. There were some with side cars and every type of bike imaginable. I saw painted Indian Chiefs, Knuckleheads, and Panheads dating back to the 40s, 50s and 60s, and numerous Shovelheads. Back in my room as I drifted off to sleep while listening to the constant rumble of Harley's echoing between the buildings, all sounding louder than a jet airplane.The next morning, after a continental breakfast in the Harbor Inn, I drove to the office and met Kelly, a beautiful Black woman who was the Account Rep. for Woolworth and Price Waterhouse in Cleveland. She apologized profusely about the hotel I was in. She didn't know there was a motorcycle rally going on and thought I had a bad time. I told it was the best time of my life and THANK YOU! That seemed to make us immediate friends.Kelly organized the all day meetings for me to meet the Supervisors and Branch Managers and administrative staff to discuss the service requirements for the new Price Water House and Woolworth installations. She also organized a full breakfast buffet, coffee and sandwiches all day long. For dinner, I asked them if they wanted to come out with me to one of the clubs on my hotels street. There was the stately Harbor Inn with its variety of booze, the classy dinner restaurant One Eyed Jacks where part of the motorcycle crowd was gathered, or the rough and ready, beer and hamburger, Knuckle Saloon that might have another Nipple contest with the Biker gang Babes. Well - Later that night at the Knuckle Saloon, after beer and hamburgers, we watched the Biker Babes hold a 'Booty' contest. Wow, some of those girls had great bottoms which they displayed in all their glory. During the rally, musicians such as Coolio, Jackyl and Saliva played at the Full Throttle Saloon up the street. It was a great trip and I learned to love Cleveland!Flying W Ranch, Colorado SpringsDigital has a disk manufacturing plant and their Systems Support Center on Rock Minnon Blvd. in Colorado Springs, a city that is growing with people and industries, and all around are signs advertising cheap rents with months free rent to entice people to their development. Anywhere you drive, the Rocky Mountains can be seen casting an enticing shadow over Colorado Springs. I came to Colorado Springs often, between Pikes Peak and the Garden of the Gods, there were countless numbers of attractions and things to do. I brought customers there for technology reviews and DEC had endless meetings there. DECs Support Center was designed to help computers, it had the latest technology to diagnose and fix main frame computers over a telephone line. Steve Adrian holds regular meetings in Colorado Springs, bringing various presenters who talk about the computer industry, competition, and new products. One night Steve treats us to dinner at the world famous Flying W Ranch which was connected to the King Ranch in Texas. It is a real live working ranch that set aside horse corals, barns and a large restaurant for tourists. We walk through a 19th century western town and then go to dinner in a huge hall. We get treated to western style beans, potatoes and steak. Heavy with molasses and western herbs, the gaseous beans were especially delicious, so we all loaded up. The original Sons of the Pioneers sang all their famous songs, including 'Cool, Clear Water' - which was always one my favorites. No doubt about it, the Flying W Ranch was a unique and gratifying experience. The next day we are back in that small conference room with more than fifty people. Right away, before the meeting starts, a terrible ripping sound fills the room. It was obvious what had happened, and at first, we pretended not hearing it, after all, there are women here. Soon, blinding and suffocating putrid acid smells drifted over the room. It made your eyes water and it became difficult to breathe. It felt like liquid Japanese mustard was being thrown up your nose. I thought, "Whoever blew that fart should get an award from Ripley's Believe it or not." Lucky thing you couldn't smoke here, I believe with the methane in the room, if anyone lit a match, would blow the place up. Well, that wicked fart was just a warm-up. With repeating crescendos of prolonged ripping sounds, followed by snickering laughter, the room was soon completely filled with ugly and decomposing smells. It wasn't a secret any more who blew one, since everyone now was farting. It became a matter of pride that was the loudest and most foul. I hated thinking about the dirty underwear with the wet farts abounding through the room. Bringing fans in, throwing open windows and turning on the air conditioning did not help breathing either. The room was impregnated with a stifling rank and blinding rank odder of decaying meat. Suffocating and gasping for clean air, everyone rushed into the hall while air-conditioning fans tried valiantly to blow the smell out. But even in the hallway, the ripping sounds continued and pretty soon, the whole building was corrupted with a malodorous sewage smell. People from all over the building were evacuating their work stations and the premises. And the farts kept coming. By now, it had become a contest that could rip off the biggest and foulest fart, and - surprise, surprise - the women were winning. I never imagined they could be as foul as men. The bathrooms were full, so if anything Hershey slipped out along with the fart, or if you had to go really bad, you had to hold it until there was a vacancy. Not everyone could hold it so they pooped in their pants. Many times someone thought they were ripping a fart and instead they ripped moist turds. The smells were getting uglier and uglier and wisping farther into the building. Now people were going outside to breathe fresh Colorado mountain air while some went back to the Four Seasons Motel to change their underwear.La Point Resort in PhoenixPhoenix sits on the eastern edge of the Sonoran Desert and is the hub of a vast metropolitan region. Our Account Management Task Force meetings are being held at the La Point Resort located in the center of Phoenix. This was my first time in Arizona and I was mightily impressed. They said it was hot, but not to worry, it was dry heat. When I got off the plane, this hot dry air hit me like a blast furnace, it was 120 degrees of boiling desert hot air and was going up. I felt that my lungs were going to burst. Dry air they said, you could have fried an egg anywhere, including the top of my head, but inhaling 124 degree "Dry" heat was like sticking your head in a blast furnace. After our meetings, we headed for the pool, and in ground affair with swim up bars and patio chairs surrounding the pool where young lovies lay basking in the hot Sun. These beautiful bikini clad women were every where and we discovered they were airline stewardesses from various airlines. Maybe Phoenix is not so bad after all. I ran into several black TWA Stewardesses while in the pool lounging about in their string bikinis and while I was salivating, they asked me to take their pictures. Of course, I was pleased to accommodate these lovely young Nubians and within a few days had also became good friends with them. Most of them were from Chicago and we shared stories about my home town, Milwaukee and the Chicago area. We hung around with each other for the week and I had made some more good friends.I met a guy at the La Point who was a 'Survivalist.' That is a gun carrying person who sees the end of the world coming and is preparing for the war of the survivors. They are prepared to kill anyone threatening their enclaves or stored supplies hidden away in mountain caves. Most of these people are also white-supremacists who practice war maneuvers and have secret caches full of guns. I noticed him because he was always carrying a six-shooter holstered on his hip. In Arizona, anyone could legally carry a gun as long as it was exposed. I saw many men carry guns when we drove around downtown Phoenix.New York vs. TexasComparing - it's a challenge. The lifestyle is completely different, as is the climate. Texans look at a lot of things differently from their East Coast brethren. In addition, the food is a lot different. You learn to occasionally substitute burritos enchiladas for pizza, and to accept barbecue sauce on the side of your barbecued brisket. But the people are wonderful and very friendly and I met some of the most open-minded people in my life during my time there - and I'm talking about real open-mindedness, not open-mindedness as a way of value-signaling. Any and all political conversations I had where there was clear difference of opinion started with lively conversation and ended with a shrug. Life went on! Refreshing, right?New York city is like a mini-nation and is one of the most, if not the most, photographed, discussed, and filmed cities in the world. Living in NYC is like being a sardine in a can in a pressure cooker. It is an enormous city that is far more ethnically diverse than most other big cities. Guaranteed to see something weird daily on the subway. Expensive. Fun. Lots to do and see. Bad for allergies. Have small apartments. Great museums. Lots for kids to do. If you ever get used to it, that's a sign you're in real trouble. It's wonderfully convenient, has massive transportation options and you can live a car-free lifestyle. There is enormous ethnic diversity of foods and people, excellent live theatre, plenty of free public education & libraries and plenty of high tech and Fortune 500 / Banking jobs. The downside is high rents and taxes . . . and no guns! You have to really want to live in NYC and earn an enormous salary to offset the negatives. The most famous locations are mostly in Manhattan, but that is just one of five boroughs. Consequently, what probably surprises many people about New York City as a whole are the residential neighborhoods in the outer boroughs, many of which can look quite suburban rather than full of high-rises as in Manhattan.And just outside NYC across the Hudson River there is a range of small mountains, the Catskills just west of the Hudson and to the north a larger range, the Adirondacks. To the west is farmland, a wine growing region, and, eventually, the Great Lakes, with Niagara Falls at the northwestern edge. There are small rustbelt cities scattered around and a wine-growing region with some lovely glacial lakes in the western half. It's beautiful because then you would be in the country side area of New York. Many people think that New York is all sky scrapers, but it isn't. It is surrounded by the Hudson Valley, beautiful mountains, hills, lakes, farms and cows. See for yourself. Outside there are other boroughs you can visit like the Bronx, Staten Island, and Brooklyn which are all in the State of New York.Upstate New York, on the other hand, is gorgeous, green, open… just can't say enough good about it. Apple orchards and horse farms are everywhere. New York is surrounded by water, Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, St; Lawrence Seaway and the Atlantic ocean. The Hudson and Delaware Rivers run right through it. It's water -water everywhere . . . that and mountains. It's thousands of big lakes, The Appalachia and Adirondack Mountains, rivers and hundreds of deep valleys where small towns and villages are located in. The pace is slow, people are warm and friendly. It seems like a different world really. There are. In the fall it is spectacular, apple picking is so much fun and the autumn leaves are beautiful.TexasTexas is a state of mind, and values self-reliance and freedom to be left alone. Texans have guns. Texans breathe glory and drink victory from a skull chalice. Texans have giant elephant balls of Titanium. Texans are why Texas is Texas. Texas alone would win a non-nuclear defensive ground war against anyone except a Texas from an alternate dimension. If Operation Barbarossa launched at the Rio Grande, the only Axis soldiers who would ever drink from the Red River would be the ones sewn into a bag with a wolverine and dropped in the river. Texas is real. Texas is legendary. Texas is beyond hyperbole, but that requires exaggeration, and Texans can't exaggerate about their Texanness. Texas is America's Sparta. You may have an army, we have Texas.Gilley's Bar - Pasadena, TexasWhenever we were in Houston, we found time to visit Gilley's, a honky tonk bar founded in 1971 by country singer Mickey Gilley in Pasadena, Texas, a broke down small town made up from warehouses, double wides, and malls which has become the new sagebrush, bunkhouses, and trading posts of Texas. The gargantuan nightclub was located at ground zero of a devastating early-Eighties oil bust, something Pasadena - a blue-collar patchwork of strip malls, subdivisions, refineries, and pipeline immediately southeast of the Greater Houston sprawls. Whether it was the air conditioning or hot house Bayou City Beats band with a repertoire spanning fiery, piano-pounding rockabilly and shimmering pop standards, it was where all the girls went and all the guys came looking for love. The club began filling up like the drunk holding tank at the local jail on Saturday night. It was the central location in the 1980 movie Urban Cowboy and it was a huge building with a corrugated steel roof that housed multiple bars and mechanical bulls. It was the wildest, most fun place that you could go to, and you could do just about whatever you wanted to. There was a sign behind the bar that said, "Check your guns, your knives, and your knucks." Which let me know that It cold get really rough. The crowd was all about Red Necks, trailer-park days and honky-tonk nights. Festivities included bull riding, worm eating, and make believe cowboys looking cool, all dressed up in calico shirts, with string ties, levis and snake skin boots. Worm eating was all about the intricacies of worm swallowing. "Mess-kins say eatin' the worm'll give you visions," said the bartender and ex-con rodeo rider. They call it "livin' la vida luna' - the crazy life."Once in the Guinness Book of World Records under "World's Largest Night Club, Gilley's had a reputation as the mother of all Texas honky-tonks. At one point, more people visited Gilley's than the Astrodome, but then the Astros and Oilers weren't burning up their respective sports in those years either. The Gilley's logo adorned everything from cans of beer and belt buckles to women's silk panties. Texans and tourists alike would cram in by the thousands to see top country music stars like Charley Daniels, Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, and George Jones, while a hardy, colorful crew of regulars (known locally as "Gilley rats") showed up every night to drink, dance, fight, flirt, make out, bullshit, shoot pool, act like they were real cowboys and see who got their nuts cracked on El Toro, the club's famed mechanical bull.Other famous artist played there, including, Mel Tillis, Ernest Tubbs, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Paycheck, the Bellamy Brothers, and Bobby Bare followed with performances from Mickey Gilley and Johnny Lee. Whether it was Merle Haggard, Lee Greenwood, or Roy Orbison doing their thing, chances are even better that a lot of paying customers missed the music altogether, watching instead some young pipe fitter getting his meat tenderized on the club's mechanical bull. The mechanical-bull riding contest went on every night. Fake cowboy comes to town looking to ride the El Toro mechanical bulls and win prizes. Some even thought they are going to marry the sweet young thang he meets on the dance floor, and lives happily ever after a few fights and a climactic, manhood-affirming test of cowboy skill riding the Bull. P.S. I rode the Bull a few times, always fell off, just about broke my neck . . . and it was just on half speed. Back in Manhattan, hipsters who previously would have rather eaten glass than come within a mile of anything "country" decked themselves out in fleece-lined denim jackets, Wranglers, and shit kicker boots; Manhattan's Lone Star Cafe was a place to see and be seen, and Yankees were rumored to be dropping "youse guys" in favor of "y'all." And the Lone Star had mechanical bulls riding and Two Step dancing contests very night.Dallas, TexasWe had lots of meetings here and we usually stayed downtown at various hotels and often at the 'The Joule' a hotel exactly 'Like Nowhere Else.' The interior reminded me of a ranch and had cow girl waitresses. Nightlife at clubs like Lizard Lounge, Ghost Bar, Club Dada; Bars like The Ginger Man, Idle Rich, Cock and Bull; guess where hung out. One of our best tours was Horse back riding, a Texas thing to do, and one of my favorite things to do as a kid. I had a horse named Sonny then and had lots of fun riding him (a gelding). I was so happy when I discovered the Double D Ranch where we could all do horse back riding in Dallas Texas. There is much more than only horseback riding to do though.Texas vs. New York - I can't think of two states more culturally different. New York is The Big Apple, The Melting Pot, The City that Never Sleeps, The Naked City, An international 24 X 7 Metropolis, Gotham, Fun City. Texas is a state of mind, and values self-reliance and freedom to be left alone. Texans are proud of their state and pro-business status. Texas, it's a challenge. The lifestyle is completely different, as is the climate. Texans look at a lot of things differently from their East Coast brethren. In addition, the food is a lot different. You learn to occasionally substitute burritos enchiladas for pizza, and to accept barbecue sauce on the side of your barbecued brisket. But the people are wonderful and very friendly. If you like western history, then you will love Dallas. It's cowboy and long horn cattle country. n the middle of Downtown, iron longhorn statues are running and the landscape of this model looks realistic. It's really cool looking. While some might think of Texas as still stuck in the 1800s cowboy culture (it is a western town with a great history), Dallas is actually a modern, thriving metropolis. Dallas is, overall, a nice city full of friendly and easy-going people.One thing you will notice right away is how Texans dress up every day. A lot of business people all dressed up in suits and dresses. It gives Dallas that look like the economy here is booming. Native Texans great you with a big smile, and immediately make visitors feel welcome. My hotel choice has always been the Magnolia which is located just a block away from Nieman Marcus, and it maintains the elegance of Dallas at a very reasonable price. My favorite place in Dallas is the custom boot shop where they have every kind of boot material you can think of. Eating is a Dallas experience that no one forgets. It's beef and pork BBQ country and they have a lot of subs shops, it seems like on every corner. I was stuck here for ten days while performing duties for DEC Corporate. I pretty much allowed my work to consume me and drove out of my apartment compound to grab dinner. The weekend was the tough part. When you are a New Yorker accustomed to lots of stuff going on close by and come here and the place is throttled back a bit, it is an adjustment. I was just about getting a teeny, tiny bit homesick when on no less than several occasions, drivers on toll roads and freeways, soccer moms on cell phones in SUV's, truckers and luxury sedans were cutting me off, changing lanes without turn signals, looking in wrong directions and pretty much just driving wacky. But I did not miss touring the Dallas Cowboys Football Stadium which is the largest covered professional football stadium in the world.We took a tour to the site where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. The shots were fired from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository building. Today, the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza is located in this building. I think a visit to the museum is worthwhile since the death of Pres. Kennedy had such a profound effect on our country. We toured various famous sites in Dallas including the Southfork Ranch where the TV soap opera "Dallas" was filmed for 13 years showing the lifestyle made famous by the Ewing's. Being a fan of "Dallas," and knowing that the interior scenes from the series were filmed on a sound stage in California, it was still enjoyable to walk the grounds where all of the exterior scenes were shot. Next to the ranch house was an oil rig available for inspection, including climbing all over the steel rig. Following an afternoon of exploring the ranch and oil rig, we had a chuck wagon dinner at Southfork.The brightest spot during our Dallas visit was at the local office where our meetings were held. It was a large office with hundreds of employees all dressed in the latest and most expensive fashions. You might expect that in Manhattan, but actually there people dressed down, clothes were not important to determining personality, but here in Dallas, clothes seemed to be everything. The women were all beautiful. I guess managers didn't hire anyone unless they were good looking, or maybe that was what all women here looked like. We looked around and wondered how office secretaries could afford $500 outfits to wear to the office. The men in the office personnel wore expensive pin-striped suits, something you only see in executive sales or Wall street brokers in Manhattan. Does Dallas have pretentious values?ChicagoPerhaps the winters aside, living in Chicago is life-changing. The weather, the people, the energy, the culture, the food and drink, the festivals, concerts, comedy clubs, the architecture, the cleanliness of the city, Lake Michigan, a seemingly-endless amount of park area to walk and bike in and through, public transportation/ease-of-access, the coffee shops, Michigan Avenue . . . I could go on. Chicago is also truly beautiful. It may be the most beautiful city in the country. The water and the architecture combine to make a place that almost overwhelms me whenever I walk around. The getting of things in Chicago -- it's easy. It's such a remarkably beautiful city that there are times I would look at the skyline as I drive up Lake Shore Drive and feel real awe -- awe is an overused word, but that's the only one I can use here. Writers have often described being struck by the beauty of Manhattan. Manhattan has never struck me as beautiful, not any part of it. It has struck me as big, and grandiose, and intimidating. But I've never turned a corner or looked down a street and been struck by beauty. In Chicago, everything is beautiful.Chicago is great if your earn more $50-85k per year. You can enjoy the restaurants, the theaters and the nightlife. You can afford to shop in many of the nicer departments stores. You can afford to get away for the weekends if you choose to; or you can stay in town and make the best of the festivals and functions that happen locally. The quality of life is extraordinary high for everybody who has a full-time, stable job. $30,000 will get you a considerable amount if you're single and without dependents. I have a friend who lived in Chicago for several years and just moved to New York. He said, "I'll put it this way: in order to live the exact equivalent life in Manhattan that I had in Chicago (an apartment of the same square footage in the same quality of neighborhood, owning a car, all the dog-related activities, cost of eating and socializing, rate of saving, etc), I'd need to make close to $500,000 per year if not more."From a purely pragmatic standpoint, Chicago can be an easy place to live - easy to navigate, easy to get things that you need in most neighborhoods, easy to find interesting things to do. Chicago is like NYC off steroids. NYC might be the best "place" in the world, but Chicago is a better "people" city, in that the people are generally friendlier, and because it's affordable to actually have kids in the city, you get much less of the transient effect that's common in LA, NYC and SF. Also, compared to all three of those places, you simply get so much more city for your money. That is, the city is so much cheaper than NYC and LA/SF, but you get enough "city" (culture, arts, energy, architecture, food, bars, parks, water/beach, bikes, public transportation) to fill every waking hour (just like NYC), but you pay so much less.You don't get that kind of city anywhere in CA (too laid back, too spread out), and you certainly get it in NYC but for more than double the price. Public transportation is about on-par for the best you'll get in the states, and while it could be better it's good enough that you can pretty easily get by without a car. Most of Chicago is Balkanized. By that I mean that if you are Black, then the majority of your neighbors are as well. The same is also true if you are Latino or White. East and South Asians live throughout the city; but their numbers are relatively low when compared to Whites, Blacks and Latinos. You can certainly live where you choose to in the city; but you neighbors may make you feel distinctly unwelcome. Unfortunately, this Balkanization extends over into the nightlife and social events in Chicago. Very few bars and clubs in the city have mixed crowds and most venues are distinctly "monochromatic" in the composition of their patrons. Again, you are free to go where you chose to, it's just that you will likely feel unwelcome when you do go there. This nothing like New York City where everyone goes wherever they want and the clubs are totally integrated with all races, ethnicities and social economic levels. Clubs in New York tend to be habited by people who like the same music and dance . . . all that goes all over the city.What's missing in Chicago that is prevalent in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles is a sense of struggle. Nobody struggles. Because you don't have to. Hispanics, some blacks and other immigrants do plenty of hustling, but not Chicagoans themselves. It's so easy to have a decent life in Chicago that its citizens are angst-free in a way their urban counterparts on either coast are not. This angst-free quality is something I loved and hated about Chicago. If you're at a point in your life where you're focused on stability rather than breakneck personal and professional growth, Chicago is a good option. But if you want to feel like you're participating in an international culture, if you want to feel like you're doing something relevant on a greater scale than just yourself or your family or your region, then you're better off in SF or LA or NY, especially NY. There is an intense insularity to Chicago that can be blamed in part on its culture as much as its geography. Chicago is very much concerned with itself which is a good thing, since nearly everybody else considers it fly-over land. Every New Yorker I worked with who moved to Chicago found it boring, and once they had no professional reason to stay, they moved away. Chicago is a city where everybody has roots. Chicago is also all about family. And pretty much everybody I knew in Chicago had a really, really perfect family in Michigan. If I stayed there a minute longer, I probably would've had a baby because that's just how it's supposed to go there. Personally, this homogeny gets old. I want to meet people who are a little fucked up, a little too intense, and a little too reckless for their own good. New York is peopled heavily with characters like that. Chicago is in fact the city that's consequence-free if you choose to stay there. You can make one bad career move after another and still end up with a measurably high quality of life. The only real downside, in my opinion, is the winters. They can really suck. You need a good coat, and you need gloves, and you need something to cover your face and ears. If you find the cold exceptionally intolerable, I would live somewhere else.Chicago - The Loop, Michigan Avenue, Rush StreetYou've heard of 5th Avenue, Rodeo Drive, the Champs Elysees; well Chicago's "must shop" street is North Michigan Avenue. Perfect for the self-proclaimed professional shopper or someone who wants to take a stroll and experience a true Chicago institution? Did you know that once Michigan Ave was the beach on Lake Michigan? Hence its name. Since the cities founding, the shore line has been pushed eastward into the Lake, creating parks and more space. Michigan Avenue is one big luxe shopping area and sky scrapper complex for Corporate Row. The Magnificent Mile contains a mixture of upscale department stores, restaurants, luxury retailers, residential and commercial buildings, financial services companies and hotels, and caters primarily to tourists and the affluent.The city's elevated subway system makes a loop in downtown Chicago which defines the city's official downtown area. The 'Loop' is the second largest downtown business district in the United States and is known for its famous skyscrapers and historic buildings. The Sears Tower held the title of "World's Tallest Building" for many years and still holds the title for height of the highest occupied floor and height to the top of the roof. The building is 110 stories tall and rises 1,454 feet above the ground.I took the tour to the top of the Sears Tower. The Sky Deck is filled with interactive kiosks that provide "virtual" tours of some of Chicago's most popular landmarks. But, make no mistake; the magnificent views are what draw people in. Looking out at Lake Michigan and the expansive architecture that stretches for miles always makes me feel so insignificant. From the vantage point Sears Tower offers, I found myself re-evaluating my perception on life.Rush Street, the street was named after Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the men that signed the Declaration of Independence. The neighborhood is packed with gorgeous architecture, outstanding restaurants and five-star hotels. Rush Street was the city's historic heart of hedonism, and is famous for being the place to go for bar-hopping, its string of upscale restaurants, night clubs and outdoor cafés. Rush Street is full of restaurants and bars and I decided to get a few drinks there. I walked down the street and checked out the Whiskey Bar & Grill, Richard's Bar, Zebra Lounge, The Long Room, Pippin's Tavern, Weeds, and The Corner and found them to be versions of a Manhattan midtown commuter bar and not all like funky and weird Greenwich Village.The next day I met with my friend and for lunch he took me to the Sidebar, a trendy and packed bar for a lunch and happy hour. I'd highly recommend Sidebar for a trivia night or just somewhere to chill out after work with your co workers. We walked over to Price Water House on Michigan Avenue and met with the customer and had a good meeting. I had one more night in Chicago before I went to Milwaukee so I walked around the Loop and went to Rush Street again. After exploring Rush Street thoroughly, I didn't find it anything like Midtown Manhattan or Greenwich Village. There wasn't as much there, prices were high, and it wasn't funky, or dirty enough for a New Yorker. It had that air of the catering to the wealthy and not of the tired commuter looking for a little fun before getting on the train for along ride home. The next day I rented a car at the Palmer House and drove north to Milwaukee for another Price Waterhouse meeting.Milwaukee - Summerfest & the Lake FrontI drove north to Milwaukee and got a room at the Hilton Hotel on Wisconsin Avenue in downtown Milwaukee. I was born and raised in Milwaukee and this would be the first time I visited since 1977 when Bettie and I went to a Luenzmann Family reunion at my brother's house in Sheboygan.Milwaukee was the "Great American City" for years but has changed with the decrease of jobs associated with its loss of heavy manufacturing industries. These days, as host to Summerfest, the world's largest music festival, and home to the Harley Davidson Company, Milwaukee is no stranger to good times and a rich and colorful past. But as many of the city's breweries and manufacturing plants have either moved or shut down and the city has looked for new ways to reinvent itself, it has steadily amassed a number of family friendly businesses, arts and culture, and many nightlife attractions that appeal to business and casual travelers alike. Milwaukee has many highways running through town that wasn’t there in the 1950s and it appears to be a city that has changed dramatically. I drove around checking out my old neighborhood on North, Lloyd and Lisbon Avenues and found the area looking like an inner city ghetto now, appearing very poor and a disheveled area full of run down properties with young Black men hanging out on the street corners. It felt dangerous and I thought my old neighborhood is now the "hood." "What a shame" and left to go back downtown which was still upbeat and looking safe and prosperous.It was a busy downtown in June and Summerfest was being held on the near by Lake Michigan lake front. With more than 700 bands on eleven stages, Summerfest is the World's Largest Music Festival and I wanted to check it out and walked down to take a look. Tens of thousands of people were sitting around the Lake Front listening to the speakers set up for all to hear the music. The people said that rotating headliners guarantee a unique experience every day and make this the perfect multi day getaway for music and summer festival buffs. As an added bonus, local restaurants operate the food concessions, creating a "taste of Milwaukee" with cheese and sausage treats. And for those who aren't into music, Summerfest offers rides, games, and fun for all ages and families.Like Chicago, its big Midwest brother to the south, Milwaukee's nightlife has many faces, from gentrified hipster mania to a post industrial smorgasbord of warehouse clubs housed in unmarked, brick faced music venues. Milwaukee's early status as a beer making town has left the city filled with brews of every sort; no matter which local haunts you wind up in, whether it's a brew pub, a tavern, or a lounge, you're almost guaranteed a fine selection. From swanky joints where Frank Sinatra croons from a jukebox to rowdy neighborhood haunts with gourmet menus, local bars in Milwaukee leave little room for disappointment.My meetings in Milwaukee were productive and I caught the plane back to New York. But I was disappointed in the condition of my old neighborhood where I grew up and had such great times.Hilton Head IslandI am the Team Leader for Steve Adrian's corporate account management group and he has a lot of meetings, at least once per month. We were designing a program to accommodate Digital's largest dollar customer base, national accounts. We meet monthly in Maynard with quarterly meetings rotating to each member's region. Our annual meeting is being held in Hilton Head, a resort and tropical paradise in South Carolina. We did not have meetings in Manhattan because of the huge expense, and frankly, Steve was afraid of having a meeting in the City and losing everyone to the fabulous night clubs filled with women, booze and all night entertainment, so I organized our New York meetings down at the New Jersey shore or Annapolis in Chesapeake Bay.In Hilton Head. We stayed at Ocean Dunes which was right on the beach with a great view and short walk to the beach or pool. The area was also close enough to ride bikes to local shops and restaurants. We spent many pleasurable hours on the beach and biked many miles on the numerous trails on Hilton Head Island. My favorite part of the day is having coffee on the balcony, which has a fantastic ocean front view, and watching the sun come up. The property was within walking distance to shopping and restaurants at Coligny Plaza and had great walking/biking paths all around. This resort island was a favorite place for Digital meetings and I would be here many times. I had just written the job descriptions for the Account Management Program and was honored by Dick Paulson, the Vice President of Field Service. He called me the father of the Account Management program. I met Jim Eastham at the meeting. He had taken my place as the Corporate Customer Relations Manager after I left the job because I could not sell my house and move to Maynard. Jim was having a great time with the job and I regretted I had not been able to keep it as it had grown to be a very prominent position in Digital.San FranciscoWe set up our account managers meeting at the Union Square Hotel in the Heart of San Francisco's downtown Union Square …just beyond the front door of the hotel where the city's convenient sights, attractions, theaters, art galleries, business and shopping centers, restaurants and sophisticated nightlife beckon. It went Beatnik in the fifties and crazy in the sixties -- but it remains elegant throughout. Everyone has heard about San Francisco, the City of Lights a great city, culturally diverse with loads to do, all built on steep hills. There is the beach, downtown, the bay and then you can drive for 20 minutes you’re in the wilderness. Next door to other great cities like Oakland and San Jose. San Francisco famously boasts some of the steepest streets in the country. Whether you're walking or driving, the varying gradient of the road is sure to catch your attention and give your heart rate a healthy boost. Lombard Street is one of the most unique of the vertically endowed roads and is a great stop to add to any itinerary. Lombard Street in San Francisco is one of America's crooked streets and found on many tours and seen often on national TV as signature San Francisco...DetroitMy friend Bill Vowler had left New Jersey and became a Branch Manager in Tucson and from there he went on to Detroit as a District Manager working for 'Mac' McPherson. Bill had the General Motors Account Managers job available and asked me if I wanted it. This was the most important and largest national account Digital had. The National Account Manager's job for General Motors was attractive. I was interviewed by the Detroit Sales Manager. It was really a courtesy interview since Bill had already made up his mind, but I got into it with the sales manager. He asked what I would do if I ran across a Field Manager that wouldn't cooperate with the service goals of the account. I told if he couldn't be convinced, I would get rid of him. I told him that hardly ever happened since I was always able to convince line managers to do what was necessary to keep the account happy. That shocked the sales manager "Get rid of a Service Manager" he said, what makes you think you have the power to do that? I told him it wouldn't be the first time. If I am to be measured on the accounts revenue and customer satisfaction performance, and some manager stands in the way of that, I will change either his attitude or he will go to another job. All I have to do is go to his boss, and if not successful there, go to his boss, and keep going to the top of the command chain until I get satisfaction. And I will tell you, at the top, they want the account happy and will not put up with anything else. The sales manager felt that was much too strong an attitude for the Midwest. "Welcome to New York and see what happens" I thought! . . .I stayed at a hotel on the out skirts of Detroit and drove around at night to learn what the area looked like and discovered the city of Detroit was totally wrecked, it was nothing but a big slum, even though the riots occurred in 1967, the damage was evident everywhere. It looked worse than Berlin after the entire World War II allied bombing! Buildings were destroyed or if still standing, their windows were boarded on the main thorough fares where graffiti and garbage lay in piles. Detroit has descended into the abyss of crime, debauchery, gun play, drugs, school truancy, car-jacking, gangs and human depravity. Entire city blocks burned out. Graffiti was everywhere, even in wealthy neighborhoods, it had exploded all over on buildings, cars, trucks, buses and school yards. Trash was everywhere and Detroiters' walked through it all unfazed, even tossed more into it, and ignored it. The criminals were in control and it was ugly! It was a shame to drive through once very nice neighborhoods and see various forms of property destruction reminiscent of Berlin after a thousand plane bombing raid. Downtown was a complete shambles and criminal elements were on every street corner. I would not want to be cast adrift in this terrible place and I got out fast! The next day, Bill's Personnel Manager [a young Black woman] drove me around for house hunting in the lily white suburbs. I did not like Detroit or the metro area, the area was racially devastated, was cloaked with never-ending property destruction and graffiti, and the bar crowds were low intellect big-bellied union types talking only sports. Nothing here reminded me of my wonderfully sophisticated New York City. Detroit represented the failing US auto industry and a city in the agony of final collapse. I declined Bill's offer and reminded myself not to look outside New York for interesting jobs.AtlantaI am a 40-year New Yorker used to Manhattan's walk around exotic creature filled streets, riding the A train from the Bronx into Brooklyn through every ethnic barrio known to man, a city with ten thousand things to do and the best being eating at Rosie O'Gradies 11th avenue Diner where the waitresses sing Broadway songs and dance in the aisles. NYC is exotic what with entertainment laden story book night clubs and Irish bars begging more life experiences, hanging out with the NYPD at McSorelys and with the NYU academic types in Washington Square, having a beer at the Chelsea Place music and dance club riffing with the high achieving business and technology types along with the IBM, FBI, Secrete Serve, Network TV and Hollywood celebes. Or dancing the Two Step at the Texas Cafe in Tribeca and most of all enjoying the diversity world problem solving ideas found in Greenwich Village espresso cafes where very creative people - writers and producers assemble and writ large the acting and singing ganja scene.Then I found myself moving to warm and inexpensive Atlanta for retirement where my perception was that of a progressive city surrounded by a very conservative Tea Party confederate oriented Georgia. I quickly learned after I moved here, "the war ain't over, the confederacy ain't dead and the south would rise again." Between their Confederate flags, white Christian Right churches, hating all us Yankees and our demented values of personal freedom and appreciation for 'Live and Let Live' diversity, it could be a nice place. Atlanta, compared to most cities in the South, is way ahead philosophically, but way behind major cities like NYC, Chicago and Boston. It will never have the clubs, mass transit, restaurants, diversity and sophisticated civilization of the north. It's still a southern city with lots of confederate baggage and I don't think that will ever change. There is a lot of corruption, bad neighborhoods, Aids, crime, drugs, gun violence, and lousy education.Living in Atlanta is a mixed bag. It's all about how loads of homeless people, a bar, gun / pawn shop is on every corner, along with pay by the month motels and used car lots with questionable titles is typically what you find within the I-285 perimeter which is also filled with modern skyscrapers, corporate headquarters, world class hotels and convention centers. I wonder, is it a southern thing that so many people seem to be very materialistic and attracted to appearances (how you look, what you drive, how big your house is, etc.). Atlantic traffic is fast, heavy and loaded with trucks, and I'd like to be able to let my kids outside to play without being constantly scared they will get squished by a car.I think Atlanta tingles with Bling, crime and unnecessary racial sensitivity. At 60 percent, Atlanta is predominately a black city, the south side being black while the north side being white with Buckhead where the Governor and many celebrities live alongside Decatur my favorite section of town, which is the closest thing to Mayberry you'll ever find. In fact, articles have been written describing Decatur as "Mayberry Meets Berkeley." No particular area is completely wonderful or completely safe. But in general, there are a lot of great places to live, both inside and outside the I-285 perimeter. Atlanta is, after all, a teeming 5 million population metropolis the same as New York City or Los Angeles. You gotta have a car. There is no way to walk to where you got to be and even though the MARTA rail and bus serves small parts of the city well, everything is spread out.So, how does Atlanta stack up overall? There are ten things about Atlanta that stand out. Horrible traffic and crime and schools got to be number one, two and three. Building a new world class Braves stadium with no parking is number four with "What the Hell was they thinking." Atlanta being an amazingly diverse place for being in the 'Deep Bible Belt' very judgmental South' is number five. The greasy spoon Varsity is number six, and is not only the world's largest drive-in restaurant, but it's also arguably Atlanta's most famous "Greasiest" burger restaurant too. It's a bit divey, a bit touristy, and a definite fixture of Atlanta history. The Varsity is the real deal . . . a drive-in with car-side service in the old style. They also have indoor counter service and lots of seating.Most days, the restaurant claims to go through an estimated two miles of hot dogs, 2,500 pounds of potatoes and 300 gallons of chili. In ONE DAY. Those figures are still relatively slow compared to Georgia Tech game days, when The Varsity is visited by an estimated 30,000 people. Another fun fact? The Varsity's been around longer than the famous Atlanta novel, "Gone with the Wind." It's got to be on your 'Bucket List.' Actually, I love this place! A trip to Atlanta wouldn't be complete without a stop at The Varsity for chili dogs, onion rings and an orange frosty. So, whenever I am in Atlanta, whatever time of day it happens to be, we will stop at the Varsity and have something, like hamburgers or chili slaw dogs. I like them with their crunchy and somewhat greasy onion rings. This is stick-to your ribs (and roof of your mouth) comfort food. Ironically they have a sign that states they use a healthy oil . . . I suppose that's what lends the lite flavor to their very-good fries. Yes, you can find better food, better service, better location ... however it wouldn't be THE VARSITY, and as such just wouldn't be what this place is. As I said: this is the real deal. You will get hooked . . . I have been back a dozen times.Tonight the crew and I are hanging at the Lazy Lounge in Five Points. They have Mexican food so hot you could remove dried paint from your driveway. I tried some of their chili and it took me four beers to put the flames out. My ears are ringing, sweat is pouring off my forehead and I can no longer focus my eyes. I farted a wicked Hershey mist and four people behind me said "Oh my God." The server seemed offended when I told her that her chili had given me brain damage. It was then that we happened upon a black strip club called Foxy Lady. It was rough, it was like one of those rough motorcycle clubs found in NYC and I fell in love with the place right then. It was the first time I ever experienced a strip club down here in the South. I didn't know you could get naked like that. They don't just get naked here, they get asshole-naked. You could tell me to get naked standing in this room and I might do it. Then you'd tell me to bend over? Nope. Like I said, the girls were rough in there and I wondered: What if you had some real pretty girls in the club? What the hell could happen then?As long as we are talking down and dirty, the Clermont Lounge has to be number seven. This was a "thing' everyone in Atlanta has to do and is really worth writing long about. Located at the end of the dingy Clermont hotel with its rusty and deplorable look, there is the Clermont Lounge with the most eclectic crowd you can find in Atlanta. Big belly red necks mix with worn out COPs and shifty business types, black street hustlers and decrepit cowboy truck drivers. It's Atlanta's claim to fame for outrageous characters. There is a $10 cover that opens the door for experiences you will never forget. My first time there I walked down some seedy stairs behind an old hotel. Then you pass shifty retired prison guards security and walk into one of the lost circles of hell. The place was packed and smelled like an ashtray, the "club" is tiny and dirty, the broken down "bar" is a conglomeration of duck tape on top of the torn vinyl tiles. To the left there's a big stage where everyone is dancing and then in the back there are tables where the dancers that work there are mingling with guests. To the right when you walk in there's a (the one) big circular bar - and in the middle of that bar one dancer is on stage (rotating every few minutes) all night. It ranges - some young some old - all different shapes and sizes. All great people watching!There was a bandanna covered white haired Dixieland band playing while skinny wrinkled strippers were onstage dancing to the drums and wailing saxophone. We watched one dominatrix stripper spank the hands of tippers with a crop, the lady must have been in her 60's wearing a weird costumery boo peep peak tits and pussy getup. Definitely no place for prudes, so if you're expecting to find a fine wine no cussing smoke-free environment and you don't enjoy a raunchy grab ass good time, then this isn't for you. The qualities of this establishment are not the aging dancers, but how the uptight folks deal with each other. You watch them squirm. People-watching is key when visiting the Clermont, so keep your eyes open, and keep your narrow minds in the car. Laughter and conversation is good. Be entertained. Grab some wrinkled ass. The dancers will love you for it! This was the start of a fantastic evening of drinks / shots / naked ugly dancing women / more shots and breathing second hand smoke and finally getting drunk. I got to motorboat some breasts and spank them, so I'm not complaining.So let me tell you, if you are looking for a ritzy, classy night on the town, this is not the place for you. If you're looking to let loose, down some cheap drinks, and sing along to country classics, then head on down! The club is jammed packed, extremely hot, nasty, jammed pack, did I mention hot?! Yes sir, this is not your typical strip joint. This is an Atlanta institution where people rarely go for anything except to say they have been to the Clermont and make new friends with the deplorables. The crowd consists of people who would probably never hang out together in their daytime everyday lives, but somehow this rowdy atmosphere is the perfect catalyst for coming out in rare form. You'll find all walks of life visiting this establishment - people you would never expect. So you shouldn't feel out of place. It's loud music and trashy white 'Adult Fun,' where aged strippers go to get the last strip in before death becomes them.The ladies are very unique looking, not your typical sweet young thing sexy dancers with big boobs with hot hooches. These old dancers are fun and sweet as pie . . . maybe not as sweet as your grandma, but nice! There's the old lady who uses a handheld light-up rainbow ball thingy to flash you her 'camel toe.' Then there's the lady who attaches sparklers to her nipples.There's also the young chick that dances to 90s pop rock, causing me to get all weirdly nostalgic. My favorite dancer had glow-in-the-dark panties that were slowly being eaten by her giant ass as she moved back and forth on the top of the bar. And, of course, there's the infamous Blonde'. She is the icon, the crPme de le crPme of Claremont Lounge, has been working here since they opened. I think she may have been one of the construction workers or maybe formed out of the rubble. She is a hustler but I can't resist, getting her to crush a beer can between her boobs for $5.00. That kind of entertainment pays for itself!I ended up sitting on the side of the bar where the dancers enter the "stage" and I really got to know them pretty well over the course of the evening. Here's the thing: everyone goes to this place because of the quirkiness of it, but sitting there while nursing my drink (s) it's pretty obvious that these women take their craft seriously. The girls are, to their credit, incredible - I suppose it is not easy to get up there and display to the world your wrinkled goodies - and they do show you all the goodies - roast beef and all . . . frankly they were great.The crowd is very mixed and this humid, seedy, smoke filled dive bar, fat bottom girl strip club can definitely be an "attraction" for bachelor parties and anyone who just likes to people watch for a good show. Apparently this is also a Celebrity attraction place. You are likely to run into someone famous here. The whole place was packed out with T-shirted big-bellied red necks, leather jacketed motorcycle gangs (no colors allowed) and business people in suits. Oh and I forgot the name of the dancer I met right away. She was from upstate New York Ithaca and her silicon filled tits were amazing. Most of the dancers are WAY past their prime. These are women you don't dream to have sex with but rather have a great time with kidding around. There was one who had the tits of a 20 year old and the saggy ass of the 60-whatever years she was. The "strippers" do their gig on top of the main bar. To say it's a freak show is an understatement. These are ladies who look pretty rough around the edges and some are easily in their 70's. There is one blonde lady who looks exactly like Baby Jane and dresses like a German Beer hag. So she lifts her skirt if you give her money, and it's hilarious if you are Steven Spielberg looking for an intercellular creature, but disturbing if you have a soul. Not a place for the faint of heart. I did see lots of breasts and pussy and meet cool weird people - all my type. I also questioned the legality of what was going on around me more than once.I will tell you, as an ex Navy man, the Clermont is much like a one night stand in Bangkok or Karachi. A night at the Clermont Lounge will change your life. For a prude it can become painful. As for me, I was trying to put it out of my mind and concentrate on other topics: Pulled teeth. Prostate exams. But nothing was going to change the reality: I was on a collusion course with destiny. Destiny was a fat woman who was funny as hell who sat squirming and squealing on your lap and I liked her. Then there was Ruby and Porsha and the woman who sets her nipples on fire. The Clermont is not so much a strip club as a super divey basement bar with crazy people having fun with body-positive dancing women. This place is the real deal. There a side show performance featuring hooks, snails, and a performer who would only accept tips if they were taped to her body. I was also impressed by the strippers being so nice. They walk around and say hi. This is literally the least intimidating strip club ever. Between the nice older strippers not working hard for tips, to the super nice bartender, and the cheap drinks, it's really a great hang out for people that love being out of the ordinary. It was fun and very odd and hot. This is a place you visit to cut loose and make memories. Just remember Ginger is my true love so if you see her tell her Jerry L recommended a lap dance from her. I sipped some Purple Thunders (which I'm sure is a mixture of purple Kool-Aid powder and Ever clear), and we danced ourselves silly after we spent all our cash on the dancers and jukebox. The second hand smoke was awful and so was the bathroom, but the hilarious conversations with strangers and watching Blondie's infamous beer can trick made up for that. This place is the best dive bar and strip club imaginable. The women are from all ages of life and looks and they know it but don't be a jerk about it. No one likes people like that. This is a business, and they mean business so treat the ladies nicely, pay your cover charge, and enjoy the show. The best time to show up is around nine in order to get a spot at the bar.And going to Clermont Lounge for the first time is like losing your virginity all over again. It's awkward. It's dirty. It's sort of life-changing. But no matter how bad or how good your experience is, you want to do it again to see what's in store for your second rodeo.I can also see Clermont as an excellent venue for sales team building or acquiring a new blood brother or sister. Or contracting Hepatitis. Holy $hit, I need to go to church next Sunday but I am going back to the Clermont ASAP! . . . P.S. BTW ask for Barbie, the really hot big ass blonde with great tattoos! Tell her Jerry L sent you!The excellent reviews from native Atlantans that sparkle with love and friendliness is number nine. Couple that with "Hollywood mentality" of "rappers" and folks hanging around trying to "get discovered," mega church wannabe superstars, and those nasty liberal New York attitudes disparaging native faith based Christian values. All real Georgians wish that the folks from California, New Orleans and New York would go home so we could have their beautiful city back to the nice right wing conservative white place it was, but alas it was not to be. ALL of Georgia is backward now, and Atlanta is rightfully known as a "diamond in a pig's ass." Now it's just a bunch of over-bloated Ugly New Yorkian liberal messiness.Atlanta gets less 2 inches of snow per year, not per hour. There is still genuine southern hospitality. One can buy a nice house in the burbs for $150k, the public schools outside the city are fair to very, very good and suburban neighborhoods, by and large, are safe from violent crime. One thing that you just cannot ever get over is how green and lush this city of 5,000,000 people is. It is truly beautiful. Traffic is only a real problem if you choose to live in the suburbs and your work is downtown or on the other side of the city in a different suburb. Come on down and become an honorary southerner and prepare for road warrior driving tactics on the interstates.Downside: the politicians are hopelessly corrupt and inept and crime close in is very real. The city also has numerous events, activities, nightlife etc. Opinions about Atlanta will depend on a person’s age and where you choose to live. Some areas are VERY southern, but much of the Metro area is a blend of transferees from around the USA. And finally number ten is the directions one gets when driving around. There are more than 40 Peachtree streets, they call them lanes, circles, west east, south or northern streets all having the name.This is just a small sampling of my travels. Bottom line, The USA was a blast in the 1970s, the south being the exception. It was still segregated then; some parts of it were committed to the confederacy and some parts were trying to moved forward. As for me, the best part of the USA was and still is New York. Also, Texas gets much acclaim too; it’s part confederate, part western, part Mexican, part NYC and a lot crazy. California is weird just like Florida; the Midwest being very safe and traditional.

Which Generation is the Most Interesting?First off, I think all generations are unique and have something to offer. There are some I lived though and like the best, but that begets my time, values and taste. What was important to me was having personal freedom, social and economic opportunity, to experience lots of different life styles, funkiness and things to do and living among geographic wonders and beauty which meant oceans, forests, lakes, rivers and mountains. Being 83 years old, my best times are ancient to most young people today, but they were the best for me.1960s - The Beat GenerationI grew up in 1940s Leave it to Beaver dynamic manufacturing capital; of the USA Milwaukee, then spent ten years in 1950s - 60s Norfolk with the Navy and IBM where ran into ugly Jim Crow racial segregation aberrations. The Bible belt south was very problematic, very judgmental, not Golden Rule oriented what with its Jim Crow racial segregation and extreme evangelical religiosity and ultra conservative regressive Republican politics.Southerners tend to have traditional conservative values, lots of religion, and pride in the Confederate heritage that all Southerners share. Southerners tend to dislike liberals and educated people. They like their guns; many carry and are better armed than northerners. There is only a hand full of different cultures in the Southern States, while in the Northern States there are hundreds of diverse cultures from around the world.After the Navy I took advantage of a great job opportunity and stayed in the south as an engineer for IBM Main Frames spending 3 1/2 years in Main Frame schools in Upstate NY. But I was constantly grieving the Jim Crow racial segregation and the backward southern Bible belt culture. I hated it! Nothing socially to do, full of bigoted and uneducated people, dry counties with no bars or dance clubs, you had to depend on Bootleggers for liquor and heaven forbid the races would mix, you could be hung for that. So churches and private clubs were used for social gatherings.But there is always a good side to the worst circumstances and that for me was my six years of adventurous hunting and fishing. All my red neck good ole boy friends had plenty of guns to protect themselves against Yankee invasions and them damned communist Civil Rights workers trying to integrate the south. Well, except for the racist part, I fit right into the red neck roughhouse tough man gun culture. Besides fishing and hunting with my tobacco chewing, spitting and white lighting drinking swamp rat friends, there were also those fabulous Big Top Tent traveling circuses and carnivals filled animals, clowns, and side shows - all segregated of course but the blacks had the best side shows.I became an active Civil Rights worker, worked for Jack Kennedy, and was active in local politics and community affairs. It's where it was the meanest, nastiest, most racist violent city and couldn't believe I was in the USA. The Civil Rights movement was just getting started and I witnessed the ugliest, violent and most hateful behaviors known to man by southern whites against blacks seeking their equal rights. But they were operating within their normal, didn't see anything immoral with segregation and second class citizenship being forced on black people. They felt righteous; the rest of the country was communist for trying to change their culture. Besides, segregation was supported in the Bible.And then there was Greenwich Village, which is oft considered the nation's leader in the Cultural Revolution being, inhabited with America's creative generation of performing artists - musicians, actors, artists, and playwrights - a bohemian enclave of hippies and intellectuals and the East Coast birthplace of the Beat movement. One block away from my office was Washington Square Park, which was one of NYC's most famous parks with its most distinguishing feature, being its decorative Arch de Triumph arch. Here great academic debaters from NYU, street performers of musicians and actors and protestors hung out.As an IBM Engineer I traveled the USA and was in Washington, Boston and Manhattan constantly over the years. That's where all the big computer applications were located so IBM had me there all the time in a Product Support capacity. I especially loved NYC. There were thousands of delights, with tens of thousands of people walking about, and no question about it, the best girl watching in the world was available in Midtown Manhattan - particularly along its many avenues and Fortune 500 headquarters, lined with skyscrapers, building ledges and street cafes to sit around and ogle the beautiful women. A particularly good area was in the fifties on Sixth Avenues where many water fountains abounded and granite veranda patios filled with tables, chairs and sitting ledges. Whatever your fancy, blond, brunette, redhead, Asian, White, or Black, the woman of you dreams would pass by every five minutes - or oftener! The beautiful people of the world came to Manhattan for fame, fortune, and excitement. Careers in show business and the business world topped the list as reasons so many bright and attractive people moved to Manhattan. And for some like me, it was for freedom! For lunch, every kind of food is available, with hundreds of Delis, street cafes, ethnic restaurants, Halal street carts, and fast food eateries every two blocks. Eat a New York pizza and you are doomed to never be satisfied for a slice anywhere else . . . well, maybe in Chicago for the thick slices!The 1970s - The Weird GenerationIt was a decade of seismic social and political change across the globe. Racism dominated life in the US in the 1960s well into the 1870s. Segregation wasn't just in the South, with black people being murdered when they fought for human rights. De facto segregation was rife in the North. From the burgeoning anti-Vietnam war and civil rights movements in the United States, protests and revolutions in Europe and the first comprehensive coverage of war and resultant famine in Africa. The world would never be the same again. The events of the 1960s inspired a generation and shaped struggles around the world for years to come. Occasionally one year can cast a spell over the decades that follow. 1968 was such a year.The nation is split! Like nearly everything else in the South, it has to do with slavery residuals. Southern society was never founded on the same egalitarian concepts as the North. Up north the 1970s was of course also the time of disco, bell bottoms, platforms, glam rock, side burns, lava lamps, high tech architecture, the paperback, the transformation of TV, the rise of the Gay Movement, the start of the science fiction phenomenon, the start of punk rock, hard rock and heavy metal, prominence of the Feminist Movement, movies such as Star Wars, The Godfather, Love Story, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Jaws, Annie Hall, Rocky, Saturday Night Fever, The Exorcist and many more. The rise of musicians such as David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Abba, Boney M, Bee Gees, Deep Purple, AC/DC, Queen, Pink Floyd, Uriah Heep, Aerosmith, Bob Marley, and many more.After work you could enjoy the social delights in NYC not found in the south. Manhattan is also the Happy Hour, music and dance capital of the world, and everyone loves to party heartily in one of those 6,000 some odd nightclubs, juke dance joints, dive bars or 12,000 Bars/restaurants in the Big Apple, the Irish joints being the best. So after work, Happy Hour is a must to relax and become acquainted with someone new while you search for your heart's desires of a soul mate. There is so much to choose from, every type and color hue that making up your mind is a problem, but choices are stimulating, and Manhattan has tens of thousands of personal prerogatives, and a never-ending supply of life styles are available. I found northerners in general tended to be far more educated, industrialized, high tech, socially advanced, lots being immigrants and very worldly. More students from Northern States go to Ivy League and highly academic Colleges and get better-rounded big worldview educations. Northerners tend to be more supportive of social egalitarianism: human rights, civil rights, workers' unions, and people stuff en all. We think as long as you work hard, everyone should be given a fair chance to succeed.1974 My Long Weekend at the Jersey ShoreI don't like to get drunk, it is embarrassing and I don't like the way I feel, especially if I am feeling nauseously sick and start throwing up. So, I usually take it easy when drinking and stick with beer, something I know and can handle. But there are exceptions. Like the last time I went to the Jersey Shore with some of my motley gang from the New York support group. We got rooms at a motel right on the beach, a dingy, old, smelly, dirty thing, but it was on the beach and close by was the broad walk and all those dance clubs and juke joint Dive Bars the Jersey Shore is famous for, the ones that cater to the New York City wild man types, you know, the crazy fun living and damn the torpedoes kind of weirdoes. Not that the Jersey Shore is all about drunks and audacious times. In fact, what I have always loved about the shore was how much it has to offer. If you want to just chill out all day at the beach and call it an early night, well, that's there for you. There are great food and fishing and rides for the kids and the young at heart. However, there is no denying that drinking plays a major part in the allure of Jersey Shore. Don't ask me to explain, it just is. There's not one person reading this right now who can't at the drop of a hat recite a blow-by-blow account of a night that started with three cases of Miller Late. "And how about stories your secretary, "Mary actually was wearing a can on her head and we all went out to Casino Pizza." And so it is when the DEC folks from Manhattan get together, it usually means mayhem on the beach.After a 60 to an 80-hour workweek, going to the shore is like taking a trip back in time. Down at the shore, it's OK to funnel Miller Light or shotgun a can of low-grade lager and listen all night to Bruce Springsteen on the Boardwalk. It's OK to hang with your buddies or business teammates and get dirty. We are deadly serious during the week on our high tech - high stress jobs, but young professionals can succumb to peer pressure, acting more like high school seniors than the leaders of tomorrow. Whether its LBI or Asbury Park, people come to the shore to forget about the working week and have fun. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" and for a bad summer and an even worse existence. It seems in order to get ahead today, you need to put in at least 60 hours a week and sometimes a trip to the shore can remind us who we were, who we are, and why we work so hard. There is so much going on at the shore, college kids, locals, Manhattanites, Long Islanders, Upstaters, tourists, conventioneers, and have you ever noticed how many young workers at the Jersey Shore speak with heavy accents? The pizza workers? The balloon game barkers? The boardwalk sales clerks?Well, there's a good reason why, they are foreign college students here on work visas for the summer. Think of it as studying abroad for a semester, but instead of studying, they sell Hermit Crab shells. It was a grinding week, and after work, four of us drove down from Manhattan and had just gotten into Sea Side Heights on a hot Friday night in July. We are going to meet more of the group later, it's only 7:00 p.m. or so. We were in Tommy's Volkswagen red convertible enjoying the weather and the warm breezes coming off the seashore. We went to a party in Dimsum's (he's Russian) Sea Isle condo that had already been broken up by the police for loud Vesuvius noises and disorderly conduct. Well, if you can call one of the girls running around in the parking lot in her panties disorderly - we thought it was funny since she weighed more than 300 pounds and gulped down booze from two peanut butter jars half full of vodka as she ran. We knew it was vodka because she had the White Gold Vodka, Black Edition, Russian labeled bottle tucked into the rear of her panties. And she wasn't even part of our group, probably one of those crazy college kids from Columbia U., but we were cheering her on when the police came and broke it up! So we turn the car around and head downtown when we got pulled over on Central. At this point we were completely sober, but in fairness to the police, I would have pulled us over too. We LOOKED like trouble. However, the police quickly realize that we are straight and are just about to let us all continue on our way, when one of the officers, looking at the license of Tommy, the driver and says, "And you're Thomas Briglow, right? And Tommy replies, "That's what the license says, doesn't it, genius?" Bang. Pow. The next thing you know all four of us are being locked up and you know what for? PARADING WITHOUT A PERMIT. That was all they could really get us on. We went to the judge quick and were on our way after paying a $35 fine each. And believe me, we were using credit cards and didn't have$35 cash between us. Tommy didn't learn his lesson and insulted the Mouse McCourt judge and ended up spending the night in jail. And he was driving and now we were walking!The Crescent Bar welcomes motorcycle riders. A pool table hides in the back, while an open spot just the right size for a Country - the door leaves Western band. Christy, the bar tender, says the stereotype of the "wild biker bar," she said, just isn't true. "Everybody thinks that this is a rough place because bikers come here," she said. "But we've had so many people that will come in by themselves, or with their friends, and love it. "They say the men are the most respectful, they feel safe, and the women say that this is the only place they'll come to by themselves," she said. A bouncer is on hand on the weekends to help with crowd control, and no "colors" (a biker's vest, which is adorned by club patches that identify the group of club the biker rides with) are allowed in the bar to avoid possible confrontations. Because the colors identify what club a person belongs to, they can quickly lead to trouble if rival gangs show up at the same spot. Christy says that riders are allowed to leave their colors on their bikes, turn them inside out, or put them in the back room; many outlaw clubs' members, however, are not allowed to take their colors off, and so will go somewhere else.Last month when we were here we went to Braca's to see a Mel Brooks movie! We buy our tickets and, thanks to the 15 minutes of previews, haven't missed a frame. The air conditioning is barely working, but each of us has two bottles of Red Bull. What could be better?Well, I don't know if it's the heat or the fact that we have been drinking for hours at that point, but the next thing I know were being woken up by an usher. The movie is two thirds over. The usher appears to be 15 years old and he's ticked off. He sees the Red Bull bottles on the floor with his trusty flashlight and says to us with an all knowing smirk, like he really nabbed us, "Uh, you didn't buy that wine in here did ya? LIKE THIS THEATER SOLD POPCORN, GOOBERS, AND MD20/20! We got thrown out, but the story lives on. That usher today? I think he is working for the CIA.Tonight we are going to hang out all night at D'Jais - the bars are open until 5:00 A.M. - on the wooden dance floor right next to the beach. With sounds ranging from live classic rock & roll, reggae bands and the Tri State's best DJ's spinning the latest dance music. Few can resist the urge to jump up and boogie when Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" starts pumping through the big sound system's speakers. There's an indoor restaurant, a food court, outdoor raw bar, and an outdoor bar/restaurant overlooking the beach with live music during the day and almost every night in the summer. A cool stage is built on a pier out over the surf. The Jersey Shore is famous for its population of Guido's (Italian Americans). They are a strange lot, and I couldn't understand why guys would want to tan until they were orange and would wear their hair in spiky, absurd, Brylcreem product saturated styles, all while boasting about their Italian heritage and steroid use. Even more confusing is the fact that girls found these weird guys attractive. Granted, they weren't the types of girls I'd be particularly interested in - high heels, fake boobs, and, like their male counterparts, plenty of tanning and smoothed back cream hair products. If you've ever been to Long Island or, obviously, the Jersey Shore, then you know just the type of Guido or Guidoette I'm referring to. What kind of people makes themselves look like that? What kind of subculture is this? How can you take seriously anybody that struts around like this? But you see everything here.Sea Side Heights is a mixed bag of nationalities, but for the most part, the majority of its summer help hails from former Soviet countries. One of the guys at DEC operates a family owned boardwalk businesses and find themselves becoming friends with their workers, and hanging out with them all summer, so when our support group go down for a few days in the summer, we are bombarded with a new slew of Olgas, and Ludas, and Soushas, and Natashas, whose names and faces I have to try to remember. But never before have I witnessed something like I did tonight. And Oh My God was it "different." First of all, they were not lying . . . besides the bar tenders, my six friends and I, were the only Americans in the place. And trust me, you could tell, just little things like the clothes and the hairstyles were just . . . different. There was loud House and Techno pounding through the sound system, and a thin layer of fog machine smoke filled the air. Bodies threw themselves across the dance floor in odd and awkward movements there were no fist pumpers here and both guys and girls who attempted to entice the crowd with bizarre dance moves stood on the stage and speakers. When the Russians come to dance, they come to DANCE! They were spinning and jumping and skipping and sweating and they just never let up, it looked more like a slam dance pit in the late 70's than anything close to what we're used to.Ukraine was pissed because he didn't like Russians and was on one of his 'try anything shooter all night vibes and he was filling his mouth with anything ranging from vodka to some fairy stuff that tasted sweet, like a Singapore Sling. Well when Ukraine gets all liquored up on shots, he becomes the most generous person in the world and buys rounds for everyone and rounds were bought. I'm sure some lucky, unsuspecting bastards standing next to me got a few shots and a hug from me during the night. Basically I got drinking - I had three Long Islands, two Sex on the Beach, and after that I was totally drunk barely walk out of the bar. Anyway, at this point, I'm flying on a new previously undiscovered drunken cloud. Then came that unavoidable feeling. I walked to the bathroom and sat in front of the toilet. Two orange, chunky pukes later, I walked out back into the bar. We sober up a bit and head out on the beach with the sand crabs for a swim, to cool off sober up a little. Then soaking wet, it's to the nearest bar on the beach. There was this really hammered dwarf who would repeatedly stagger over to the bar, get a bartender to lean all the way over to hear him and then whisper, "I'm sorry I'm a little drunk" before exploding with laughter and then staggering back to the dance floor.A coworker and I were chatting about something on the news and I said, "Yeah, at least it's not Russia!" Suddenly from the end of the bar a massive woman with a thick accent yells, "VAHT YOU SAY ABOUT RRRUSSIA?" She then started regaling the entire bar with stories of the Soviet glory days, babbling on in a crazy Bond villain accent about how great everything used to be. She proceeded to finish her margarita, left a $10 on the bar, and walked out. We then noticed that she'd peed all over the stool. We ended up throwing away the stool. I can think of crazier stories that happened that night, but this one stands out as one of the funniest scenes. I'm leaning against the bar talking to Brownstown and Ukraine about something unimportant when some girls sitting down next to us start laughing. We turn to check out what was so funny when we see this goof ball dancing it up on the dance floor. This guy was wearing some weird pants, a sparkling silver shirt and a skull and crossbones bandana. Even as hammered as I was, I knew this guy looked ridiculous. So without much thought, I made my way over behind him and started dancing behind him in a mocking way. My dancing is a mockery in itself but the fact it was geared at this guy had my friends laughing hysterically by the bar. Pretty soon a few others took notice in this ugly scene and found it funny. Sure enough, my target eventually caught on and kept trying to catch me doing whatever was making these people laugh around him. Like the idiot I was, the second he'd turn to me I would stop moving completely and scratch my head as if I had some intense idea I was trying to wrap my brain around. Keep in mind we were in the middle of the dance floor so I just looked like I might have been retarded or maybe gay. The night wore on. Sometime between that last round of shots and dancing on the bar, I have become a stand-up comedian and a first-rate politician. Well at least in this bar I can go out side and pee on the beach sand. I come back inside and toss another Red Bull. I can't believe that I used to think that Red Bull was the most destructive invention of the past 50 years.Closing time was around the corner so we got out of the bar and went to a pizza place on the Broad Walk. I managed to order a slice of pepperoni and bumped into an old buddy from my days at the New School in Greenwich Village, shot the shit (maybe he understood some of it, who knows) while they heated up my slice, made my way up the six stairs to join my buddies on the deck over looking the street and tried to sit down on a flimsy plastic chair. Now, at this point, everything went into slow motion. I sat on the plastic chair, which could not handle my drunken way of sitting, propelling me backwards. My slice of pizza went airborne, and in the middle of my fall, a convertible filled with four smoking hot girls drove by. I landed on my backside next to my slice of pizza and the sound of four of the hottest women I had ever seen laughing their asses off at me as they drove off in green Mini Cooper car. This upset me. What the hell kind of chair is this? Unfortunately, most of my angry remarks were directed at a bunch of police officers about ten feet away. Someone managed to hail a cab before I really got us all into a bucket of shit and started us on our way back to motel. As it turns out, we didn't have enough for the full fare and this jerk off cabbie didn't trust us enough to let us off at a bank (I might have played a role in that). He dropped us off a good ten minutes from our motel. I got out of the cab and promptly passed out on someone's lawn.Now, this is the last I remember from the night. I blacked out the moment I stepped out of that cab. The rest has been told to me or I pieced it together. I woke up the next morning completely reclined in the passenger seat of a minivan parked in a random person's driveway. I had no idea whose van this was, I didn't recognize the house that was towering in front of me and I barely recognized the environment. What was even more alarming was that I was wearing nothing but my boxer-briefs and my socks. Where the hell is my clothes and it's nearly 7:00 A.M. On the front steps of the house are all my clothes, neatly folded. My shoes are placed together right in front of my clothes with my wallet and lighter sticking out of them. Everything seemed to be carefully placed and handled with the utter most care. I am perplexed, how did I neatly fold my clothes and check for unlocked minivans to fall asleep in? Imagine the horror on the owners face had he opened the driver's door to find a half-naked drunk passed out in their own vehicle? This was by far one of the weirdest places I had ever woken up in after the madness of a full-blown drink fest. That's why I hate drinking and don't do it. Except a little socially, but I never get drunk, well, except on my DEC canoe trips, but you are supposed too then! Brown Town is trying to be celibate and even Burpy gets no loving when the lady he picked up at Karma is found to be indisposed for that time of the month. Shooter gets one of the Princeton DEC secretaries to come down and they hook up. After few more nights in Seaside Heights there were no more drunken episodes or trips to the police station.Its Sunday morning, I rented a Jeep and I am heading home and it's pouring down rain, I'm lost out on the edge of the county proper (only Jersey marshland beyond) somewhere near Perth Amboy and I'm just trying to find the way back to the Garden State Parkway and I think I almost have. I make a slow right turn on a slick surface street and WHAMMO! Out of nowhere this other car comes right at me and I plow into the ditch and I start to see jail in my very near future. I stagger out of my rental car, my forehead bleeding from an open cut above my eye and I look like I've just gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson. This next part is a bit of an illustration into why alcohol in the system from the previous night, combined with a naturally outgoing personality can be a problem.So the cop (all I remember was one Highway Patrol officer) asks me if I've been drinking. I slur out my denial in obvious screwed-up tongue-tied fashion, the crash has taken its toll on my senses. He asks me a couple of more times. I admit to having drinks the night before, and he whips out the Breathalyzer, but remember, I haven't been drinking for at least eight hours, I've been driving around now for a while, I'm a fairly big guy at 180 lbs. so the Breathalyzer likely doesn't go off. They ambulance driver tries to "good cop bad cop" me into admitting any drugs I've taken because he's "just wants to know." They load me into the back of an ambulance and take me to the hospital where the dreaded blood test is done. Then I go to sleep for a few hours. When I wake up, I am alone in a hospital room. I am craving a Bettie Jean (my wife) toasted cheese sandwich with bacon and tomato and am still pleasantly buzzed from the percoset pain killer they gave me, I can see a long year of lawyer's fees, hassles with my license, and having to drive a cheap car that will make me look like a jerk, and having no farther CAREER prospects whatsoever.But there are no COPs here waiting to take me to jail. I walk out of the hospital about 3:00 P.M. and call Tommy at his motel; maybe he is out of jail now. I drive home to East Orange and feel into bed. Monday morning my hung-over head and dilapidated body was rudely awakened by Bettie who asked me "what the hell had I been up too?" I mumbled something about being with my "boys" at the Shore and we drank to much." Well, she knew I was there but to come home in this condition worried her. She told me that thieves had stolen a bunch of stuff from our garage last night. The kid's bikes, a cheap lawnmower, a foot scooter and some sound equipment someone had been storing there were taken. I ran downstairs in a panic to find my garage doors wide open; it looked like the thieves had done us in. Except for the kid's bikes, the stuff that was stolen was no real loss. That was a hell of a way to cap the weekend off. Must have happened after I came home? I was terribly dehydrated and still feeling queasy and drank lots of water and had a big breakfast with bacon, potatoes, whole wheat bread and eggs. I was still to mess up to drive to work so I took the buss into from East Orange to Penn Station. Vince was sitting in my One Penn Plaza office waiting for my appearance and he got some hot black coffee for me. I asked him about Roxy, the waitress from Sea Side Heights who got drunk with the rest of us. He said she did get drunk but didn't have a drunk driving story, she wouldn't do something like that. Vince grinned! Now, giving a blow job to the driver, driving while switching places behind the steering wheel with her boy friend while they were both are undressing while going 60 mph THAT she has done . . .Damn, why do I worry so much about people? It's my Irish heritage I think. Only 1/4 per cent but it can be dominant when I feel for people. I still feel wasted and know that exercise is good and plan on walking down to our Wall Street office this morning. I will stop off along the way and get something to eat at the favorite Greek Dinner on 14th street.P.S. I get the police report about two weeks later. The box he's supposed to check if you're drunk isn't. And the box your supposed to check if there are drugs in your system isn't. And the box that he's supposed to check if you had an open container isn't checked either. The box you check for racial ethnicity I wrote in Irish. Officer O'Herlihy winked when he handed me the ticket. I love those Jersey COPs. "Hath and begonia"The 80s - Getting Back to NormalCleveland - Harbor Inn & Knuckle Saloon Motorcycle BarLocated on the southern shore of Lake Erie at the head of numerous canals and railroad lines, Cleveland is the most populous city in Ohio, but it has gone through serious downturns, what with the decline of heavy manufacturing and the riots during the Civil Rights years. Cleveland's businesses diversified into the service economy, but the city's historical low point happened when it defaulted on federal loans under Mayor Dennis Kucinich. Cleveland emerged from the 1982 recession with the dubious distinction of being a prime example of a dying Rust Belt city. Cleveland was the location of several of my Manhattan customers, Price Water House and Woolworth, and I made several trips there to set up customer service for computer installations I sold. I called the Cleveland office and Kelly set me up in a hotel near one of my customers, a manufacturing part of town near the Lake. I rented a car and found the place, the Harbor Inn, a rustic Hotel and settled in. Saddling up to the large, wooden bar at the Harbor Inn got me the sense I was sharing a drink with the ghosts of Cleveland's past. This neighborhood legend has been on the West Bank of the Flats since 1895 and sits on a street named for the bar's owner of 40 years, Wally Pisorn. It draws a diverse crowd (a representation of the U.N. at its worst, one patron joked) with gritty friendliness. The come one come all tradition started in the early 1900s, when ships from Poland, Spain and France landed at the former Cleveland Port (now Shooters on the Water). To keep thirsty sailors coming back, the owners began stocking their native liquors. The practice stuck, and the extensive collection of liquor proves it. I tried Kruskovac, Croatian pear liquor that is sweet enough to sip on its own. The beer selection, which numbers around 200, follows suit? And in case you're into big numbers (or music), the jukebox holds 10,000 songs. "We've got rich guys, poor guys; we've got everyone," says Pisorn. There was a motorcycle rally taking place down the street, so after a few drinks, I walked down the street to One Eyed Jacks that had more than fifty motorcycles parked in front. The One Eyed Jacks Saloon is one of the more popular biker bars and the largest in the Cleveland area. It's big too; the restaurant itself offers six outside bars to have ice cold drinks on the hot summer days. For a Biker Bar, the décor inside the One Eyed Jacks Saloon is upper class, hardwood floors and a polished wood bar offer elegance with an extremely laid back attitude. They advertise the menu at One Eyed Jacks Saloon will appeal to everyone, from their famous "Shotgun Chili," to their "Back at the Ranch" chicken wings on their appetizer menu. For a main course, Lake Erie walleye, chicken cordon bleu, and NY Strip are just samples of the favorable meals. I don't like fish and after a few beers walked next door to the Knuckle Saloon, truly an adult - down and dirty - biker bar, filled with as many bikers as there were skimpily dressed "biker babes." The Knuckle Saloon is full of rough characters that just "live to ride" and the beer and hamburgers flowed freely.At the Knuckle Salon Bar, fun contests for adults were also available, such as Celebrity Corn Holing, the Weenie Bite and Slow Races. I personally watched the Biker Babes have a 'Nipple Contest' and a big blond woman named the Bear Lady won. Sorry, but I do not have a photo of her or her boobs, but I assumed the earrings in her nipples made the guys start drooling or maybe the fact that her nipples got instantly hard when cold beer was dropped on them. Anyway, it was all in fun or was it the beer! Well more than one thousand dollars in gifts and cash prizes are awarded while I was there. During the festivities, I got a California Style hamburger and started in on beer drafts and having the time of my life talking with these folks, but around 1:00 A.M. the bar became smoke filled and elbow to elbow so it was time for me to go outside and get some air and get back to the Harbor Inn and get some sleep. As I left, I counted more than a hundred bikes outside, mostly Harley Hogs. There were some with sidecars and every type of bike imaginable. I saw painted Indian Chiefs, Knuckleheads, and Panheads dating back to the 40s, 50s and 60s, and numerous Shovelheads. Back in my room as I drifted off to sleep while listening to the constant rumble of Harley's echoing between the buildings, all sounding louder than a jet airplane.The next morning, after a continental breakfast in the Harbor Inn, I drove to the office and met Kelly, a beautiful Black woman who was the Account Rep. for Woolworth and Price Waterhouse in Cleveland. She apologized profusely about the hotel I was in. She didn't know there was a motorcycle rally going on and thought I had a bad time. I told it was the best time of my life and THANK YOU! That seemed to make us immediate friends.Kelly organized the all day meetings for me to meet the Supervisors and Branch Managers and administrative staff to discuss the service requirements for the new Price Water House and Woolworth installations. She also organized a full breakfast buffet, coffee and sandwiches all day long. For dinner, I asked them if they wanted to come out with me to one of the clubs on my hotels street. There was the stately Harbor Inn with its variety of booze, the classy dinner restaurant One Eyed Jacks where part of the motorcycle crowd was gathered, or the rough and ready, beer and hamburger, Knuckle Saloon that might have another Nipple contest with the Biker gang Babes. Well - Later that night at the Knuckle Saloon, after beer and hamburgers, we watched the Biker Babes hold a 'Booty' contest. Wow, some of those girls had great bottoms, which they displayed in all their glory. During the rally, musicians such as Coolio, Jackyl and Saliva played at the Full Throttle Saloon up the street. It was a great trip and I learned to love Cleveland!Flying W Ranch, Colorado SpringsDigital has a disk manufacturing plant and their Systems Support Center on Rock Minnon Blvd. in Colorado Springs, a city that is growing with people and industries, and all around are signs advertising cheap rents with months free rent to entice people to their development. Anywhere you drive, the Rocky Mountains can be seen casting an enticing shadow over Colorado Springs. I came to Colorado Springs often, between Pikes Peak and the Garden of the Gods; there were countless numbers of attractions and things to do. I brought customers there for technology reviews and DEC had endless meetings there. DECs Support Center was designed to help computers, it had the latest technology to diagnose and fix mainframe computers over a telephone line. Steve Adrian holds regular meetings in Colorado Springs, bringing various presenters who talk about the computer industry, competition, and new products. One night Steve treats us to dinner at the world famous flying W Ranch, which was connected, to the King Ranch in Texas. It is a real live working ranch that set aside horse corals, barns and a large restaurant for tourists. We walk through a 19th century western town and then go to dinner in a huge hall. We get treated to western style beans, potatoes and steak. Heavy with molasses and western herbs, the gaseous beans were especially delicious, so we all loaded up. The original Sons of the Pioneers sang all their famous songs, including 'Cool, Clear Water' - which was always one my favorites. No doubt about it, the Flying W Ranch was a unique and gratifying experience. The next day we are back in that small conference room with more than fifty people. Right away, before the meeting starts, a terrible ripping sound fills the room.It was obvious what had happened, and at first, we pretended not hearing it, after all, there are women here. Soon, blinding and suffocating putrid acid smells drifted over the room. It made your eyes water and it became difficult to breathe. It felt like liquid Japanese mustard was being thrown up your nose. I thought, "Whoever blew that fart should get an award from Ripley's Believe it or not." Lucky thing you couldn't smoke here, I believe with the methane in the room, if anyone lit a match, would blow the place up. Well, that wicked fart was just a warm-up. With repeating crescendos of prolonged ripping sounds, followed by snickering laughter, the room was soon completely filled with ugly and decomposing smells. It wasn't a secret any more who blew one, since everyone now was farting. It became a matter of pride that was the loudest and foulest. I hated thinking about the dirty underwear with the wet farts abounding through the room. Bringing fans in, throwing open windows and turning on the air conditioning did not help breathing either. The room was impregnated with a stifling rank and blinding rank odder of decaying meat. Suffocating and gasping for clean air, everyone rushed into the hall while air-conditioning fans tried valiantly to blow the smell out. But even in the hallway, the ripping sounds continued and pretty soon, the whole building was corrupted with a malodorous sewage smell.People from all over the building were evacuating their workstations and the premises. And the farts kept coming. By now, it had become a contest that could rip off the biggest and foulest fart, and - surprise, surprise - the women were winning. I never imagined they could be as foul as men. The bathrooms were full, so if anything Hershey slipped out along with the fart, or if you had to go really bad, you had to hold it until there was a vacancy. Not everyone could hold it so they pooped in their pants. Many times someone thought they were ripping a fart and instead they ripped moist turds. The smells were getting uglier and uglier and wisping farther into the building. Now people were going outside to breathe fresh Colorado mountain air while some went back to the Four Seasons Motel to change their underwear.La Point Resort in PhoenixPhoenix sits on the eastern edge of the Sonoran Desert and is the hub of a vast metropolitan region. Our Account Management Task Force meetings are being held at the La Point Resort located in the center of Phoenix. This was my first time in Arizona and I was mightily impressed. They said it was hot, but not to worry, it was dry heat. When I got off the plane, this hot dry air hit me like a blast furnace, it was 120 degrees of boiling desert hot air and was going up. I felt that my lungs were going to burst. Dry air they said, you could have fried an egg anywhere, including the top of my head, but inhaling 124-degree "Dry" heat was like sticking your head in a blast furnace. After our meetings, we headed for the pool, and in ground affair with swim up bars and patio chairs surrounding the pool where young lovies lay basking in the hot Sun. These beautiful bikini clad women were everywhere and we discovered they were airline stewardesses from various airlines. Maybe Phoenix is not so bad after all. I ran into several black TWA Stewardesses while in the pool lounging about in their string bikinis and while I was salivating, they asked me to take their pictures. Of course, I was pleased to accommodate these lovely young Nubians and within a few days had also become good friends with them. Most of them were from Chicago and we shared stories about my hometown, Milwaukee and the Chicago area. We hung around with each other for the week and I had made some more good friends.I met a guy at the La Point who was a 'Survivalist.' That is a gun carrying person who sees the end of the world coming and is preparing for the war of the survivors. They are prepared to kill anyone threatening their enclaves or stored supplies hidden away in mountain caves. Most of these people are also white supremacists who practice war maneuvers and have secret caches full of guns. I noticed him because he was always carrying a six-shooter holstered on his hip. In Arizona, anyone could legally carry a gun as long as it was exposed. I saw many men carry guns when we drove around downtown Phoenix.New York vs. TexasTexas vs. New York - I can't think of two states more culturally different. New York is The Big Apple, The Melting Pot, The City that Never Sleeps, The Naked City, An international 24 X 7 Metropolis, Gotham, Fun City. Texas is a state of mind, and values self-reliance and freedom to be left alone. Texans are proud of their state and pro-business status. Texas, it's a challenge. The lifestyle is completely different, as is the climate. Texans look at a lot of things differently from their East Coast brethren. In addition, the food is a lot different.Comparing - it's a challenge. The lifestyle is completely different, as is the climate. Texans look at a lot of things differently from their East Coast brethren. In addition, the food is a lot different. You learn to occasionally substitute burritos enchiladas for pizza, and to accept barbecue sauce on the side of your barbecued brisket. But the people are wonderful and very friendly and I met some of the most open-minded people in my life during my time there - and I'm talking about real open-mindedness, not open-mindedness as a way of value signaling. Any and all political conversations I had where there was clear difference of opinion started with lively conversation and ended with a shrug. Life went on! Refreshing, right?Texas is a state of mind, and values self-reliance and freedom to be left alone. Texans have guns. Texans breathe glory and drink victory from a skull chalice. Texans have giant elephant balls of Titanium. Texans are why Texas is Texas. Texas alone would win a non-nuclear defensive ground war against anyone except a Texas from an alternate dimension. Texas is beyond hyperbole, but that requires exaggeration, and Texans can't exaggerate about their Texanness. Texas is America's Sparta. You may have an army we have Texas.Once in the Guinness Book of World Records under "World's Largest Night Club, Gilley's had a reputation as the mother of all Texas honky-tonks. At one point, more people visited Gilley's than the Astrodome, but then the Astros and Oilers weren't burning up their respective sports in those years either. The Gilley's logo adorned everything from cans of beer and belt buckles to women's silk panties. Texans and tourists alike would cram in by the thousands to see top country music stars like Charley Daniels, Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, and George Jones, while a hardy, colorful crew of regulars (known locally as "Gilley rats") showed up every night to drink, dance, fight, flirt, make out, bullshit, shoot pool, act like they were real cowboys and see who got their nuts cracked on El Toro, the club's famed mechanical bull.Famous artist played here, including, Mel Tillis, Ernest Tubbs, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Paycheck, the Bellamy Brothers, and Bobby Bare followed with performances from Mickey Gilley and Johnny Lee. Whether it was Merle Haggard, Lee Greenwood, or Roy Orbison doing their thing, chances are even better that a lot of paying customers missed the music altogether, watching instead some young pipe fitter getting his meat tenderized on the club's mechanical bull. The mechanical-bull riding contest went on every night. Fake cowboy comes to town looking to ride the El Toro mechanical bulls and win prizes. Some even thought they are going to marry the sweet young thang he meets on the dance floor, and lives happily ever after a few fights and a climactic, manhood-affirming test of cowboy skill riding the Bull. P.S. I rode the Bull a few times, always fell off, just about broke my neck . . . and it was just on half speed. Back in Manhattan, hipsters who previously would have rather eaten glass than come within a mile of anything "country" decked themselves out in fleece-lined denim jackets, Wranglers, and shit kicker boots; Manhattan's Lone Star Cafe was a place to see and be seen, and Yankees were rumored to be dropping "youse guys" in favor of "y'all." And the Lone Star had mechanical bulls riding and Two Step dancing contests very night.One thing you will notice right away is how Texans dress up every day. A lot of business people all dressed up in suits and dresses. It gives Dallas that look like the economy here is booming. Native Texans great you with a big smile, and immediately make visitors feel welcome.The brightest spot during our Dallas visit was at the local office where our meetings were held. It was a large office with hundreds of employees all dressed in the latest and most expensive fashions. You might expect that in Manhattan, but actually there people dressed down, clothes were not important to determining personality, but here in Dallas, clothes seemed to be everything. The women were all beautiful. I guess managers didn't hire anyone unless they were good looking, or maybe that was what all women here looked like. We looked around and wondered how office secretaries could afford $500 outfits to wear to the office. The men in the office personnel wore expensive pinstriped suits, something you only see in executive sales or Wall Street brokers in Manhattan. Does Dallas have pretentious values?AtlantaI am a 40-year New Yorker used to Manhattan's walk around exotic creature filled streets, riding the A train from the Bronx into Brooklyn through every ethnic barrio known to man, a city with ten thousand things to do and the best being eating at Rosie O'Gradies 11th avenue Diner where the waitresses sing Broadway songs and dance in the aisles. NYC is exotic what with entertainment laden story book night clubs and Irish bars begging more life experiences, hanging out with the NYPD at McSorelys and with the NYU academic types in Washington Square, having a beer at the Chelsea Place music and dance club riffing with the high achieving business and technology types along with the IBM, FBI, Secrete Serve, Network TV and Hollywood celebes. Or dancing the Two Step at the Texas Cafe in Tribeca and most of all enjoying the diversity world problem solving ideas found in Greenwich Village espresso cafes where very creative people - writers and producers assemble and writ large the acting and singing ganja scene.Then I found myself moving to warm and inexpensive Atlanta for retirement where my perception was that of a progressive city surrounded by a very conservative Tea Party confederate oriented Georgia. I quickly learned after I moved here, "the war ain't over, the confederacy ain't dead and the south would rise again." Between their Confederate flags, white Christian Right churches, hating all us Yankees and our demented values of personal freedom and appreciation for 'Live and Let Live' diversity, it could be a nice place. Atlanta, compared to most cities in the South, is way ahead philosophically, but way behind major cities like NYC, Chicago and Boston. It will never have the clubs, mass transit, restaurants, diversity and sophisticated civilization of the north. It's still a southern city with lots of confederate baggage and I don't think that will ever change. There is a lot of corruption, bad neighborhoods, Aids, crime, drugs, gun violence, and lousy education.Living in Atlanta is a mixed bag. It's all about how loads of homeless people, a bar, gun / pawn shop is on every corner, along with pay by the month motels and used car lots with questionable titles is typically what you find within the I-285 perimeter which is also filled with modern skyscrapers, corporate headquarters, world class hotels and convention centers. I wonder is it a southern thing that so many people seem to be very materialistic and attracted to appearances (how you look, what you drive, how big your house is, etc.). Atlantic traffic is fast, heavy and loaded with trucks, and I'd like to be able to let my kids outside to play without being constantly scared a car will squish them.I think Atlanta tingles with Bling, crime and unnecessary racial sensitivity. At 60 percent, Atlanta is predominately a black city, the south side being black while the north side being white with Buckhead where the Governor and many celebrities live alongside Decatur my favorite section of town, which is the closest thing to Mayberry you'll ever find. In fact, articles have been written describing Decatur as "Mayberry Meets Berkeley." No particular area is completely wonderful or completely safe. But in general, there are a lot of great places to live, both inside and outside the I-285 perimeter. Atlanta is, after all, a teeming 5 million-population metropolis the same as New York City or Los Angeles. You must have a car. There is no way to walk to where you got to be and even though the MARTA rail and bus serves small parts of the city well, everything is spread out.So, how does Atlanta stack up overall? There are ten things about Atlanta that stand out. Horrible traffic and crime and schools got to be number one, two and three. Building a new world class Braves stadium with no parking is number four with "What the Hell was they thinking." Atlanta being an amazingly diverse place for being in the 'Deep Bible Belt' very judgmental South' is number five. The greasy spoon Varsity is number six, and is not only the world's largest drive-in restaurant, but it's also arguably Atlanta's most famous "Greasiest" burger restaurant too. It's a bit divey, a bit touristy, and a definite fixture of Atlanta history. The Varsity is the real deal . . . a drive-in with car-side service in the old style. They also have indoor counter service and lots of seating.Most days, the restaurant claims to go through an estimated two miles of hot dogs, 2,500 pounds of potatoes and 300 gallons of chili. In ONE DAY. Those figures are still relatively slow compared to Georgia Tech game days, when The Varsity is visited by an estimated 30,000 people. Another fun fact? The Varsity's been around longer than the famous Atlanta novel, "Gone with the Wind." It's got to be on your 'Bucket List.' Actually, I love this place! A trip to Atlanta wouldn't be complete without a stop at The Varsity for chilidogs, onion rings and an orange frosty. So, whenever I am in Atlanta, whatever time of day it happens to be, we will stop at the Varsity and have something, like hamburgers or chili slaw dogs. I like them with their crunchy and somewhat greasy onion rings. This is stick-to your ribs (and roof of your mouth) comfort food. Ironically they have a sign that states they use a healthy oil . . . I suppose that's what lends the lite flavor to their very-good fries. Yes, you can find better food, better service, better location ... however it wouldn't be THE VARSITY, and as such just wouldn't be what this place is. As I said: this is the real deal. You will get hooked . . . I have been back a dozen times.Tonight the crew and I are hanging at the Lazy Lounge in Five Points. They have Mexican food so hot you could remove dried paint from your driveway. I tried some of their chili and it took me four beers to put the flames out. My ears are ringing, sweat is pouring off my forehead and I can no longer focus my eyes. I farted a wicked Hershey mist and four people behind me said "Oh my God." The server seemed offended when I told her that her chili had given me brain damage. It was then that we happened upon a black strip club called Foxy Lady. It was rough, it was like one of those rough motorcycle clubs found in NYC and I fell in love with the place right then. It was the first time I ever experienced a strip club down here in the South. I didn't know you could get naked like that. They don't just get naked here they get asshole-naked. You could tell me to get naked standing in this room and I might do it. Then you'd tell me to bend over? Nope. Like I said, the girls were rough in there and I wondered: What if you had some real pretty girls in the club? What the hell could happen then?As long as we are talking down and dirty, the Clermont Lounge has to be number seven. This was a "thing' everyone in Atlanta has to do and is really worth writing long about. Located at the end of the dingy Clermont hotel with its rusty and deplorable look, there is the Clermont Lounge with the most eclectic crowd you can find in Atlanta. Big belly red necks mix with worn out COPs and shifty business types, black street hustlers and decrepit cowboy truck drivers. It's Atlanta's claim to fame for outrageous characters. There is a $10 cover that opens the door for experiences you will never forget. My first time there I walked down some seedy stairs behind an old hotel. Then you pass shifty retired prison guards security and walk into one of the lost circles of hell. The place was packed and smelled like an ashtray, the "club" is tiny and dirty; the broken down "bar" is a conglomeration of duck tape on top of the torn vinyl tiles. To the left there's a big stage where everyone is dancing and then in the back there are tables where the dancers that work there are mingling with guests. To the right when you walk in there's a (the one) big circular bar - and in the middle of that bar one dancer is on stage (rotating every few minutes) all night. It ranges - some young some old - all-different shapes and sizes. All great people watching!There was a bandanna covered white haired Dixieland band playing while skinny wrinkled strippers were onstage dancing to the drums and wailing saxophone. We watched one dominatrix stripper spank the hands of tippers with a crop, the lady must have been in her 60's wearing a weird costumery boo peep peak tits and pussy getup. Definitely no place for prudes, so if you're expecting to find a fine wine no cussing smoke-free environment and you don't enjoy a raunchy grab ass good time, then this isn't for you. The qualities of this establishment are not the aging dancers, but how the uptight folks deal with each other. You watch them squirm. People watching are key when visiting the Clermont, so keep your eyes open, and keep your narrow minds in the car. Laughter and conversation is good. Be entertained. Grab some wrinkled ass. The dancers will love you for it! This was the start of a fantastic evening of drinks / shots / naked ugly dancing women / more shots and breathing second hand smoke and finally getting drunk. I got to motorboat some breasts and spank them, so I'm not complaining.So let me tell you, if you are looking for a ritzy, classy night on the town, this is not the place for you. If you're looking to let loose, down some cheap drinks, and sing along to country classics, then head on down! The club is jammed packed, extremely hot, nasty, jammed pack, did I mention hot? Yes sir, this is not your typical strip joint. This is an Atlanta institution where people rarely go for anything except to say they have been to the Clermont and make new friends with the deplorables. The crowd consists of people who would probably never hang out together in their daytime everyday lives, but somehow this rowdy atmosphere is the perfect catalyst for coming out in rare form. You'll find all walks of life visiting this establishment - people you would never expect. So you shouldn't feel out of place. It's loud music and trashy white 'Adult Fun,' where aged strippers go to get the last strip in before death becomes them.The ladies are very unique looking, not your typical sweet young thing sexy dancers with big boobs with hot hooches. These old dancers are fun and sweet as pie . . . maybe not as sweet as your grandma, but nice! There's the old lady who uses a handheld light-up rainbow ball thingy to flash you her 'camel toe.' Then there's the lady who attaches sparklers to her nipples.There's also the young chick that dances to 90s pop rock, causing me to get all weirdly nostalgic. My favorite dancer had glow-in-the-dark panties that were slowly being eaten by her giant ass as she moved back and forth on the top of the bar. And, of course, there's the infamous Blonde'. She is the icon, the crème de le crème of Claremont Lounge, has been working here since they opened. I think she may have been one of the construction workers or maybe formed out of the rubble. She is a hustler but I can't resist, getting her to crush a beer can between her boobs for $5.00. That kind of entertainment pays for itself!I ended up sitting on the side of the bar where the dancers enter the "stage" and I really got to know them pretty well over the course of the evening. Here's the thing: everyone goes to this place because of the quirkiness of it, but sitting there while nursing my drink (s) it's pretty obvious that these women take their craft seriously. The girls are, to their credit, incredible - I suppose it is not easy to get up there and display to the world your wrinkled goodies - and they do show you all the goodies - roast beef and all . . . frankly they were great.The crowd is very mixed and this humid, seedy, smoke filled dive bar, fat bottom girl strip club can definitely be an "attraction" for bachelor parties and anyone who just likes to people watch for a good show. Apparently this is also a Celebrity attraction place. You are likely to run into someone famous here. The whole place was packed out with T-shirted big-bellied red necks, leather jacketed motorcycle gangs (no colors allowed) and business people in suits. Oh and I forgot the name of the dancer I met right away. She was from upstate New York Ithaca and her silicon filled tits were amazing. Most of the dancers are WAY past their prime. These are women you don't dream to have sex with but rather have a great time with kidding around. There was one who had the tits of a 20 year old and the saggy ass of the 60-whatever years she was. The "strippers" do their gig on top of the main bar. To say it's a freak show is an understatement. These are ladies who look pretty rough around the edges and some are easily in there 70's. There is one blonde lady who looks exactly like Baby Jane and dresses like a German Beer hag. So she lifts her skirt if you give her money, and it's hilarious if you are Steven Spielberg looking for an intercellular creature, but disturbing if you have a soul. Not a place for the faint of heart. I did see lots of breasts and pussy and meet cool weird people - all my type. I also questioned the legality of what was going on around me more than once.I will tell you, as an ex Navy man, the Clermont is much like a one night stand in Bangkok or Karachi. A night at the Clermont Lounge will change your life. For a prude it can become painful. As for me, I was trying to put it out of my mind and concentrate on other topics: Pulled teeth. Prostate exams. But nothing was going to change the reality: I was on a collusion course with destiny. Destiny was a fat woman who was funny as hell who sat squirming and squealing on your lap and I liked her. Then there was Ruby and Porsha and the woman who sets her nipples on fire. The Clermont is not so much a strip club as a super divey basement bar with crazy people having fun with body-positive dancing women. This place is the real deal. There a side show performance featuring hooks, snails, and a performer who would only accept tips if they were taped to her body. The strippers being so nice also impressed me. They walk around and say hi. This is literally the least intimidating strip club ever. Between the nice older strippers not working hard for tips, to the super nice bartender, and the cheap drinks, it's really a great hang out for people that love being out of the ordinary. It was fun and very odd and hot. This is a place you visit to cut loose and make memories. Just remember Ginger is my true love so if you see her tell her Jerry L recommended a lap dance from her. I sipped some Purple Thunders (which I'm sure is a mixture of purple Kool-Aid powder and Ever clear), and we danced ourselves silly after we spent all our cash on the dancers and jukebox. The second hand smoke was awful and so was the bathroom, but the hilarious conversations with strangers and watching Blondie's infamous beer can trick made up for that. This place is the best dive bar and strip club imaginable. The women are from all ages of life and looks and they know it but don't be a jerk about it. No one likes people like that. This is a business, and they mean business so treat the ladies nicely, pay your cover charge, and enjoy the show. The best time to show up is around nine in order to get a spot at the bar.And going to Clermont Lounge for the first time is like losing your virginity all over again. It's awkward. It's dirty. It's sort of life changing. But no matter how bad or how good your experience is you want to do it again to see what's in store for your second rodeo.I can also see Clermont as an excellent venue for sales team building or acquiring a new blood brother or sister. Or contracting Hepatitis. Holy $hit, I need to go to church next Sunday but I am going back to the Clermont ASAP! . . . P.S. BTW ask for Barbie, the really hot big ass blonde with great tattoos! Tell her Jerry L sent you!Atlanta gets less 2 inches of snow per year, not per hour. There is still genuine southern hospitality. One can buy a nice house in the burbs for $150k, the public schools outside the city are fair to very, very good and suburban neighborhoods, by and large, are safe from violent crime. One thing that you just cannot ever get over is how green and lush this city of 5,000,000 people are. It is truly beautiful. Traffic is only a real problem if you choose to live in the suburbs and your work is downtown or on the other side of the city in a different suburb. Come on down and become an honorary southerner and prepare for road warrior driving tactics on the interstates.Downside: the politicians are hopelessly corrupt and inept and crime close in is very real. The city also has numerous events, activities, nightlife etc. Opinions about Atlanta will depend on a person’s age and where you choose to live. Some areas are VERY southern, but much of the Metro area is a blend of transferees from around the USA. And finally number ten is the direction one gets when driving around. There are more than 40 Peachtree streets; they call them lanes, circles, west east, south or northern streets all having the name.This is just a small sampling of my travels. Bottom line, The USA was a blast in the 1980s, the south being the exception. It was still somewhat segregated then; some parts of it were committed to the confederacy while some parts were trying to move forward.1990s - Retirement - Upstate New YorkI retired in Upstate New York. Living in upstate New York was all about getting close to my family, working in a series of route sales jobs, getting involved in community volunteer work and politics, the School Board, world travel and became the best time of my life.As for me, the best part of the USA was and still is New York. Also, Boston and Texas gets much acclaim too; its part confederate, part western, part Mexican, part NYC and a lot crazy. California is weird just like Florida; the Midwest being very safe and traditional