Holland Bar
HOLLAND BAR
MY BENCHMARK FOR a good bartender is pretty basic: Pour a cool, foam-free pint or a gin and tonic that makes you wince. A great bartender, however, is less about booze and more about intangibles. Like air-guitaring to Air Supply. And I find that in Panama.
To reach Panama, I break out my MetroCard and scoot to Hell's Kitchen. Though Giuliani shut many sex shops and drove away derelicts, a soupçon of sleaze remains on 9th Ave.
While the upper reaches of the gay 40s are crammed with Kitchen-a twinkling restaurant glut-the blocks around Port Authority evoke Hell. Needles, knives and the needy still abound. They compose a perilous trifecta that, like a diving rod, often leads to an exemplary dive bar. Like the Holland.
Holland Bar lives in the shadow of Port Authority's bus ramps, closer to the Lincoln than the Holland Tunnel. A geographical misnomer? Hardly. Holland's name is derived from its 42nd St. origins at the Holland Welfare Hotel.
This relocated Holland is less hotel than alleyway to alcoholism. The Lara Flynn Boyle-thin bar-bedecked in bare brick, yellowing newspaper clippings, sports pennants and Christmas lights-is barely wide enough for two necking teenagers. Times Square tourists are absent. In their stead sit the dog-collar crowd, slumming yuppies and liver-transplant candidates.
On a recent chilly fall evening, end-of-the-day drinkers are bopping along to a doo-wopping oldies jukebox, trying to order non-name-brand liquor from one very distracted bartender named Panama.
"Should I throw something at him?" asks Steve, whose fingers have begun to atrophy around his $10 bill.
We examine Panama, an African-American man on middle age's downhill ride. He has a slightly misshapen afro and a cop-like moustache. He's drinking whiskey with a pink-haired punk rockette.
"What are we, Cro-Magnons?" I say. "Just wait."
Minutes later, Panama ambles over.
"Hey, Panama, good to see you again. Remember me?" I ask.
Last month, my friend Aaron and I stopped in Holland for a post-work pick-me-up. We met Panama, ordered a $2.50 Budweiser pint and entertained a conversation on baseball and alien abduction.
"Oh, yeah, I didn't recognize you without your glasses," he says, grabbing my hand.
"Yeah?it's hard," I say, perplexed.
Steve leans over. "You weren't in here without your glasses, were you?"
"Unh, no."
We order beers. Panama dips a couple pint glasses in cold, murky dishwater, then inserts them in the freezer. He retrieves several ice-covered glasses and fills our order.
"I'll pretend I didn't see that," my girlfriend, Adrianne, says.
A few minutes later, the phone lets loose: brrrrring. Panama, oblivious to our warbling along to "My Guy," mutes the volume. He picks up the ancient phone, twirls the cord around his finger and settles into chit-chat.
"What am I doing? Just gettin' drunk with my new friends." He looks at us and winks, then returns to conversation.
"Nope. Un-unh. Uh-huh." Monosyllabics stack up like firewood, then Panama hangs up.
"What was all that about?" asks Aaron.
"Some lady wanted to know if we had two-dollar beers. I told her they're $2.50."
"So why'd you stay on the phone so long?" I ask.
"Oh, her voice was so sweet. I just wanted her to keep on talking and talking."
He lets loose with a dreamy smile, as if touched by an angel.
"So?is she coming here?" I ask.
"Oh, her voice was so sweet. If only our beers were two dollars. But they're $2.50. And I can't do anything about that."
But he could. As the night chugged along, Panama's mathematical skills declined in direct proportion to his whiskey consumption.
At one point, two Bud drafts cost four dollars. Another time, four dollars bought one. Three cost seven dollars. Another order was on the house. "Drink up, my friends."
In fact, Panama's numerical skill deteriorated to the point that he started shouting random digits.
"Play 45-15! Play 45-15!" he pleads to a fu manchu'd man plugging songs into the juke.
The man responds. Soon the sounds of 80s soft-rock balladeers stream out, triggering an instant sea change in Panama's mood. He lays into air guitar, wailing away at an imaginary wa-wa peddle. "This is my theme!" he shouts.
"What is this?" I ask Fu Manchu.
"Air Supply-what else did you think it was?"
For the life of me, I had no answer. o