Where everybody knows your name...
Exploration would probably have defined my first forty years of my life. What is new? Have you tried this? Did you hear that there's a new ice cream shop opening at blah blah?
Then one day you just get to that age where if they serve you well, if the crowd is interesting enough, if the drinks are well put together, if the food is tasty - I just can't be bothered lining up somewhere, I cannot be bothered jostling at the bar for the bartender's attention and I don't want to have to wait for one table to leave so I might squeeze onto a corner table.
Charlie Parker's became my favourite bar about 7 years ago now. I can't believe it's that long and to write that seems ridiculous. I can tell you who was at the table with me on one of those first occasions. I can still see her dress. Provocative to say the least. In fact, I had probably been there many times before but it's the first night I feel really stands out.
By the time I found Charlie's I was on the cusp of turning into a middle aged dad. I still have a certain sense of flair about myself and I don't want to put myself down but my bald spot was smaller back then, in fact, a fraction of what it is now, my hair was blacker, so too my beard.
The only thing that hasn't changed is my love for good tailoring and negronis, which now extends to martinis too. And I love the fact that my Italian bartenders notice when I put my good clothes on. I wear them for myself of course, but I also where them in an attempt to lift the bar. I am just so over and disgusted by Australian men wearing shorts and revealing tattoos to bars - it honestly makes me sick. The shorts is bad enough to begin with. Add the tattoos and you honestly ask yourself what is happening with society?
So what is it that I love about Charlies? Firstly, you can't see it from the street so the punters don't know it's there. Which deters most of the Stadium crowd for AFL and rock concerts to start with. They might otherwise swarm the bar on a big night. Then there the decor, it is an old garage that has been turned into a bar, so the ceiling is old bearers and joists, the room filled with deep coloured red velvets and timber tables, rugs on the floor and on the wall towards the end of the room, exposed brickwork and a bar top and bar itself which gives off the soft light of a timeless bar that might otherwise have stood for a hundred years.
As for the staff, the team, currently lead by Giacomo Franchesi, is congenial, hard-working, attentive, gentle and professional in every way. If I walk and if I had booked a table ahead, upon seeing me one of the bar staff will say "start with your martini Nick?"
It reminds me of a man who once told me a similar story about his experience of Harry's Bar in Venice. That all he had to do was to walk in and his cocktail would be delivered before he had a chance to seat himself.
I was never one for having a bar that you would call your own. I see the same men standing outside the Lord Dudley in Paddington of a Friday evening and they consume the same schooners of beer in the same position endlessly and I often think to myself as I pass them - who does that? But lately, I have been starting to come closer to understanding them - you find your watering hole, you stick to it.
And it reminded me of one of my favourite lyrics to any tv show which you can listen to here.
Takes everything you've got
Taking a break from all your worries
Sure would help a lot
Wouldn't you like to get away?
The cheque is in the mail
And your little angel
Hung the cat up by its tail
And your third fiancé didn't show
Where everybody knows your name
And they're always glad you came
You want to be where you can see
Our troubles are all the same
You want to be where everybody knows your name
The morning's looking bright (the morning's looking bright)
And your shrink ran off to Europe
And didn't even write
And your husband wants to be a girl
Where everybody knows your name
And they're always glad you came
You want to go where people know
People are all the same
You want to go where everybody knows your name
And they're always glad you came
Where everybody knows your name (every gosray mind knows your name)
And they're always glad you came
Where everybody knows your name (everybody knows your name)
And they're always glad you came
Where everybody knows your name (everybody knows your name)