Full Transcript: Greg Kowalski on the Changing Bar Culture
Greg: Oh everybody drank, it was part of culture. I mean, this city had more bars per capita than any city in America, and there was a reason for that. Everybody drank. Drinking was a part of your culture, you know, as I pointed out in the book on Prohibition, one of the reasons it was rejected so thoroughly here by--these are all Catholics, I mean what’s the core of the Catholic Church? The communion. The blessing of the wine, drinking of wine. It’s at the very core of the religion. And for the government to suddenly say alcohol is bad when it’s that prominent in your life, is ridiculous. People rejected that. So there was a lot of people going to bars. It was both good and bad. A lot of people had great times in bars, you could have a lot of fun there. But there were a lot of times when the kids had to go and drag dad out of the bar and bring him back home because he was getting there or whatever. I’m not talking about my dad specifically but, you know, that was a thing that happened fairly often too. Drinking was a part of it. In the early days of course, people would drink going to work. You know, they would stop off at the bars. Because the work conditions were so bad in the factories. I talked to one bartender who had been a bartender for fifty years, ok. He started when he was 16 years old and that right way should tell you something, because you’re not even legally allowed to go into a bar at age 16 let alone be a bartender. But he told me the guys used to come, stop at the bar on the way to work, drink as much as they could, go to work, come back after work and drink at the bar again. There was a period when the Dodge Brothers actually would bring beer into the factories because they didn’t want the workers going out to the bars during the day. And so they figured that was the best way to get ahead of that particular game. As recently as the 1970s there was a bar that used to run a shuttle bus to one of the factories, one of the big factories, which was not appreciated by the factory at that point. So it was a long time presence here. And of course bars were also a place for music and entertainment and socializing and card playing and all kinds of stuff.
The bar ran a shuttle to go out to factory, pick him up, bring him to the bar. And usually they would have drink drink drink and what I’m doing is indicating one drink after another after another lining the bar and the people would come so they wouldn’t have to wait to order their drink because they had very limited time, it would be waiting for them right there. And they could pick it up and drink as quickly as they would could and then get back on the bus and go back to work. And the bus was only a couple blocks away from the factory so it was a very quick drive to get them there and back, so that was in the 1970s as a matter of fact.
That changed over the years as well too because here the bars evolved into music places. Really, really went into that. The factories faded away, the clientele changed. You still had the guys who would be there at 7 o’clock in the morning waiting to get a drink but you also started to get rock n’ roll bands coming in in the evenings and people coming in from the suburbs to hear the music and that was a major evolution with the bar scene. Now a lot of people, you know, drank at home. And the alcohol was a problem for a lot of people, you know, obviously even during prohibition. Because prohibition meant nothing here. And if you can read the old newspapers you’ll still see stories about it. See, in the old days the newspapers, if somebody committed suicide, if somebody got drunk and wandered on the railroad tracks. They would name the person, give the address where they lived, and just gave all the details on it. You know, they were just full wide open. So you could read these accounts of people who got drunk and stumbled on the railroad tracks. And that happened actually fairly often. There were, you know, there were a lot of auto accidents, a lot of kids getting run over often because of people getting uh, drinking and driving.
The bar ran a shuttle to go out to factory, pick him up, bring him to the bar. And usually they would have drink drink drink and what I’m doing is indicating one drink after another after another lining the bar and the people would come so they wouldn’t have to wait to order their drink because they had very limited time, it would be waiting for them right there. And they could pick it up and drink as quickly as they would could and then get back on the bus and go back to work. And the bus was only a couple blocks away from the factory so it was a very quick drive to get them there and back, so that was in the 1970s as a matter of fact.
That changed over the years as well too because here the bars evolved into music places. Really, really went into that. The factories faded away, the clientele changed. You still had the guys who would be there at 7 o’clock in the morning waiting to get a drink but you also started to get rock n’ roll bands coming in in the evenings and people coming in from the suburbs to hear the music and that was a major evolution with the bar scene. Now a lot of people, you know, drank at home. And the alcohol was a problem for a lot of people, you know, obviously even during prohibition. Because prohibition meant nothing here. And if you can read the old newspapers you’ll still see stories about it. See, in the old days the newspapers, if somebody committed suicide, if somebody got drunk and wandered on the railroad tracks. They would name the person, give the address where they lived, and just gave all the details on it. You know, they were just full wide open. So you could read these accounts of people who got drunk and stumbled on the railroad tracks. And that happened actually fairly often. There were, you know, there were a lot of auto accidents, a lot of kids getting run over often because of people getting uh, drinking and driving.