Never fall in love with a bar.
This is what Bryan told me when I called him today to bitch about the discovery (that he revealed over an IM on Words With Friends) that one of my favorite bars in Manhattan, The Lakeside Lounge, has closed.
I lived in Manhattan for 12 years, so I understand the turnaround a city undergoes day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year, but some places you expect to always survive. Like cockroaches. Lakeside was one of them. I started going there back in college, around 1998, underage.
If you never went to Lakeside, all you need to know is it had gritty, concrete floors, a photo booth (the real kind that uses emulsion and film) and one of the last (CD) jukeboxes in the city with an amazing inventory of rock ‘n roll and blues. It was raw and real, never trying to prove how cool it was, it was just cool.
We’ve had some great times over the years and I’m going to miss her.