“Man, where’ve you been,” Kumar asked me as I walked up to the bar. He was already cradling a pint, half gone, and he seemed to search the room for something else, not making eye contact.
“I’ve been busy,” I said.
“Well, time for a beer,” he replied and signaled the bartender to grab me a pint of Tremont Ale.
The Thirsty Scholar could easily be mistaken for the Shipyard pub due to the large sign hanging outside the place, but that had never deterred Kumar from hopping in here for a few drinks, a few short blocks from his apartment. We had decided on a Harvard Square mini-crawl, with this as our starting point. Entering, a snug was on the right, already full with a local group reading Ulysses from cover to cover, a Sisyphean task. I noted the red/black paint with worn wood motif immediately, and some soft rock piping through the internet jukebox. The bar proper spanned the back end of the room, seating about fifteen at tall stools facing large mirrors on the bar back. The rest of the place was composed of tables with loose chairs, tall and short, and padded benches along the outer walls. Some hipsters were seated at the tables near the large windows that opened up on the street, but the place was largely empty minus the book club. After the bartender delivered my ale, I noticed the chalkboard up on the left that listed twenty-three draughts composed of typical Boston-area Irish bar taps with Magic Hat Circus Boy, Sapporo, and Tremont as the only things of mild interest. There were also twenty-one bottles of mostly pap with Sapporo at $3 and Tremont and Murphy’s at $3.75 a pop.
“So, you talked to Jim recently,” I asked Kumar. He tugged at the label on the back of his t-shirt, a red welt having already formed where it was needling into the back of his neck at the hairline.
“Yeah,” he gave up on the label and flicked a piece of napkin off the bar. “A bunch of us went out last weekend, Jim, some of his co-workers, his sister,” he said quickly, “we would have called you, but, you know,” and before I could start busting his balls, he changed the subject, pointing at a picture up on the wall to the right of the bar.
“Jesus, that is insane. OSHA would have a field day with that today.” The framed black and white photo showed a bunch of iron workers taking a break on an I-beam tens of stories above a seething metropolis, with nothing tethering them to the beam.
“Hah,” I grunted, “you would never catch me on one of those things.” My fear of heights was legendary. I downed my ale in an attempt to stave off the willies and ordered two more for us. The bartender was just attentive enough, not hovering, and put menus in front of us without assuming necessarily that we wanted to eat; we’d have to give the nod if the mood struck us. I wasn’t hungry, and nothing beyond the usual pub grub jumped out at me from the menu. Apparently, Kumar was also satisfied with just a few pints before our next destination.
“Fucking yeah,” Jim, hollered as he entered the pub and walked past the snug, taking note of the group of men there with books, eyes widening when he saw some of them had water or soft drinks instead of alcohol. Kumar painstakingly kept watching the Sox game up on a flat screen.
“The hell are those fucking idiots doing over there? Having a quilting party,” Jim asked in exasperation. He noted our two full glasses and ordered a pint for himself, along with three shots of Surfers on Acid. “Time to get this day rolling,” he hollered as he slugged back the shot, egging us on. As he was draining his pint, he stopped suddenly and exclaimed, “I don’t like those things,” jamming his eyes in the direction of what looked like a camera up above the right end of the bar. There was a second one at the opposite end too, though they both could have been mics, or speakers, or something. “Nobody better be tracking my movements, god da…”
Just then David Ortiz cracked yet another walk-off hit to end the game. Kumar lunged up in excitement, nearly spilling our pints. Jim looked at the television with glee and said, “Big Papi is so clutch, car manufacturers are now referring to that third pedal in standard cars as the ‘Papi.’,” and downed his pint.
Kumar grinned and added, “I also heard he’s going to be a late-entry in to the Olympics. Papi will be the first one-man team in history, playing under the flag of Papistan, and he’ll win.”
And with that, the evening started off on a good note, miraculously, with Jim and Kumar actually agreeing with one another. As we headed off to Grendel’s, Jim continued the banter.
“Big Papi is so clutch that Mr. T. doesn’t pity him, but instead he pities all pitchers and hapless baseballs that have to cross paths with Big Papi.”