TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

Back in days of yore when I was in college, we had something called the Twenty Dollar Supernight on Fridays. Back before New York State decided that residents needed protection from ourselves and banned all-you-can-drink Happy Hours, we had something called “Drinkin with Lincoln”. Bars would have a $5 cover charge followed by penny pitchers (both Lincoln… get it?) for a set amount of time. The cab from Siena to the Bar X (name with held to protect under-age drinking) would cost $2/head. Bar X charged $5 for free beer from 4-7 pm. At 7pm, we would then hike the six blocks from Bar X to the Lamp Post. On the way to the Post, we’d buy a slice of pizza ($1) and eventually get to the post for $5 all you could drink from 8pm - 11pm. After that, slice of pizza number 2 would be purchased ($1) and a $2/head cab ride home. A few bucks here and there for tipping to encourage the bartenders to fill your pitcher first and you came in just around $20 for all the Natty Light, Red Dog, and High Life you’d ever care to drink…….. weekly.

Anyway, the Post was split up into two bars. The upstairs was generally a pretty crappy bar with picnic tables and free popcorn and a jukebox full of drinking songs. The downstairs was called “The Oasis” and was widely known as the I-was-jail-bait-as-recently-as-last-week meat market. You got yourself a bar full of free beer, a bunch of Albany kids with nothing to do for the 11 months a year it’s cold, and… well… you have The Post/Oasis.

I stopped going there in about 1999. The time I went there after I legitimately turned 21, I went to the Post like every other Friday. The bouncer looked at my ID and started to give me crap about the ID not being mine. Mind you, I had been going to the Post approximately every Friday night for three years and giving the guys IDs that ranged from “bad chalk job” to “not mine” to “dated February 30th”. This night, I actually handed him my ID, I was really 21, and I was getting shit. It was a few weeks after that I determined that I had officially become “too old for the Post” but stuck it out until I wasn’t the only person who was 21.

About five years ago, I saw the bar’s name had changed. Someone must have eventually stopped paying bribe money to the cops and it got shut down. A few years after that, it became “Professor M Barley’s” which is what it is today. During the football playoffs, a few of my friends went there to watch the Giant games. After a bit of resistance (it is the Post, after all) they went and discovered that the inside had been completely overhauled, repainted, and made into a decently nice sports bar.

So, when we were trying to decide on somewhere to watch the Siena game, we figured it would be wholly appropriate to watch the game at The Post. After the game (we’d been talking a bit to either the manager or the owner… could go either way) my old Siena roommate and I went into the small lobby that the Post/Oasis used to share and discovered that the Oasis was still open… now named The Coliseum… and is, in fact, still the underage meat market of Quail and Madison. This made me feel, for a moment, that all was right in the world again.

Since there wasn’t anyone there yet (what self-respecting kid is drinking at only 8pm) they let us walk downstairs and look around. Disturbingly enough, 10 years later and the downstairs has not changed a bit. It still has the crappy mirrored walls, the weird little DJ booth, and the hanging stench of stale beer, sweat, and desperation. The two bars down there are still in exactly the same spot. Random couches (used for polite conversation) are lined along the side. Your feet still somehow stick to the floor even though it’s carpeted. There is still a random phone booth that does not have a phone… but says “Phone Booth” in neon lights. It was a trip.

The owner let us walk around a bit and overheard us discussing the random shot-girl shots that we used to buy there for a dollar (culminating with me actually seeing one of the shot girls in a mall one day and hitting on her… which still rates in my top two random pick-ups: “Are you a shot girl at the Post?” “Yes.” “I love your work and wish I could see more.”) and poured one for us for old time sake. My roommate and I did the shot and laughed. I was happy to see the place still there and even though it actually kinda caused physical pain when the guy asked us when the last time we were down there was… and I actually had to say, out loud, about 10 years… I was glad to see it again.

Upstairs, everything is nice, sterile, and overhauled. The crappy old bar is gone with a brand new wooden one placed on the entire opposite side. The green felt pool table, covered with stains of puke and beer has been replaced with a nice red one. Where the old bar was is elevated and they put in tables and a big-screen TV. You wouldn’t even recognize it as the same place. But when you go in the bathroom, something’s a little bit out of place. There’s a little machine on the wall. For a quarter, it’ll give you a spray of Drakkar, Armani, or Polo cologne. Back in the day, there used to be a condom dispenser right next to it. It isn’t something you’d normally see in a sports bar, but it is something you’d see in the kind of place it used to be. It’s still there now, and it’s a little wink-and-nudge reminder of the shenanigans that used to go on. If you’d never spent a day in the Post before it changed over, you’d probably never even notice it.

And that made me smile.