Getting ready to head over to the Hub for the 60th Anniversary Party, I can't help but think of the last time I worked at a Hub party (the 50th - back in '99) and my 15 year history with this little smelly yet darling slice of the Big Dirty....

So, in July of 99, I was working for a cigarette company (yes, I was a merchant of death, but all of those free cigarettes came in pretty damn handy when I was broke, let me tell you), and said cigarette company was a sponsor of the Hub's anniversary party. I was going through some really rough personal shite (involving some dumb ass dude who cheated on me and a bed that almost got set on fire and pushed into a pool, and maybe some lesbians too), I had just finished Jobsite's Spring Awakening, and I think we were in rehearsal for Y2K. It was a Saturday afternoon around 2, it was hot as balls, and my '84 Honda Accord still smelled like dogshit from when my stripper friend's Chihuahua had pooped in it a few months ago. I'm pretty sure I was still mildly hungover from the night before. When I get there, the place was already a clusterfuck - Joe Popp was trying to set his gear up on top of the bar, climbing over liquor bottles, the drunks were already 3 deep at the bar, and the air was on the fritz in this building that had stood for over 50 years. I was asked to drag a barstool to the Zack side door and start carding people and not letting them in if need be. The fire marshal was there and was bitching up a storm because it was already almost to capacity and the party hadn't even started yet. By 3:30, there was a line snaking down Zack Street and I was sitting on a ratty black pleather bar stool, in the blazing Tampa-n-July sun, on my second Long Island and having the time of my life. The fire marshal tells me I can't let anyone else in, we're over capacity. So these shitloads of high spirited alcoholics who are hot, thirsty, and ready to party are eyeballing me like a fat kid looking at a box of Little Debbies. By 6 pm, I was on my 4th Long Island and a girlfriend of mine had come up with a way to distract the fire marshal (use your imagination) so we could sneak additional people in the side door. I had about $60 in my pocket from bribes of desperate people ready to get in and start drinking heavily. By midnight, still hot as balls, still a huge fucking line of howling, gibbering maniacs, I had been sitting in the heat drinking Long Islands for ten hours. Eventually one of the bartenders (I think it was Brian) who had come out to bring me my hourly Long Island took mercy on me, scraped me off my barstool prison, and helped me inside. The drunks waiting in line went apeshit and starting storming the door, but I think someone was balling the fire marshal in the alley by that time because we never heard a peep out him. I have vague memories of someone telling me it was 4 in the morning, and I remember saying how that couldn't possibly be true, I couldn't possibly have been at the Hub for 14 hours, drinking, dancing, cavorting, my ass having been stuck to a ratty ass black vinyl barstool for several hours, my legs fell asleep... maybe I was asleep. Someone gave my stupid ass a ride home that night, and I remember waking up the next day craving a cheeseburger and thinking it was all a dream.

When I was 19, I remember being over at someone's house, and my friend Rebecca comes over and says she has discovered "this new bar," this crazy ass dive joint that we simply HAD to check out. Rebecca was a little bit older than me, but I don't think 21 yet. I asked her about the place - "downtown," she said. She said it smelled funny in there, looked a little dodgy, but there were a lot of boys and the drinks were really cheap. "well, let's fucking go!" So we climbed in my friend's VW Bug, with a couple of other random weirdos and hippies that were lurking about, and off we went. I don't recall who was working that night, but they did not card me - I was just starting my bartending career at the time, slinging drinks at a place called Big Al's Liquor Lounge, so I'm sure I thought I was a total bad ass. I don't remember what I ordered, but whatever it was, it was probably the most sweet illicit candy drink that I had ever had. Shortly after my 21st birthday, after a night of drinking somewheres else, the Trolley Stop, maybe?, we popped into the Hub for last call, and I remember telling Scooter, "Yay!! I'm 21 now!!!" Scooter just looked at me like I had told him I had maggots in my panties, and then he banned me for a month for drinking underage in his bar. I was very contrite. But happy as a pig in shit a month later!! 

I've popped in many, many times since then - once after taking a sick friend home after a rehearsal, I pulled up to the curb on Florida for a shot of whiskey and to study my lines, and ran into someone I hadn't seen in years... and ended up having  very strange evening discussing movies, exes, and paths not taken. I used to study for my theater history exams in the Hub - I got an A in the class. I spent one memorable afternoon in there getting my palm read and my fortune told, accompanied by someone who should have known better. I once wrote a story for the Weekly Planet, about a time I saw someone given a gift of fish in the Hub - she didn't appreciate it, so she sent this parcel of fish sailing over the heads of the resident boozers, landing it in the corner behind an ice chest, where it probably still sits rotting to this day.

The Hub supports local theater - Scooter gave me the budget for the very first show I directed at TBPAC. Jobsite, local bands, local artists - we all owe the Hub our affection and loyalty. I am now a proud employee there, in a couple of different capacities - and bartending at the Hub definitely gives my comedy routine an edge. The place is the inspiration for the setting of my new play - if only the Hub also had a massage parlor next door... Sure, the place smells a little funny. It might be a little hot in there. It's smoky and bums might try to leech a dollar or a cigarette off you. But it's just like a tiny slice of Tampa - the Big Dirty - weird, humid, home to a host of bizarro characters, and uniquely ours.