The Days of Pabst and Hoses (Part 1)

The Market Street Area 2001: A churning enclave of high-end restaurants, bars and clubs, some featuring bands and dance floors, even a couple of comedy rooms, all teeming with hordes of tourists, yuppies and college students swept along by a roiling rover of booze.

The Market Street Area 1961: Dimly lit blocks of typical waterfront bars, strip bars, seedy grills redolent of stale Pabst Blue ribbon and Lucky Strikes, and several borderline rundown but excellent restaurants, enlivened with noisy but sparse clumps of sailors and local hedonists, the latter group composed of college students and Charleston street characters. Not a tourist in sight, except for the aforementioned, involuntary, uninformed kind. The eternal river of booze being the only time-defying constant.

Charleston has come a long way in 40 years. We’re not only nationally but world famous now, with an important art festival, trendy rock bands, and scores of great restaurants, many with chefs trained in New York or Paris. The Market Area is bustling with expensive boutiques and frenetic flea marketers, selling everything from 13 bean soup and Charleston t-shirts to jewelry to money laden tourists making purchase-passes like schools of blood-frenzied sharks. A perpetual flotilla of carriages pulled by sagging horses, wistfully dreaming of a sylvan pasture or even a glue factory as a merciful end to their drudgery, are driven by yammering tour guides, who obviously have daily competitions to see who can carry the most people weighing in at over 300 lbs. (I’ve seen the scales.)

I walk down Market Street, deftly weaving my way like a knifeless OJ through herds of flip-flop-shod strangers, whose apparent rallying cry is: “It’s spring time in Charleston, let the Cellulite and Body Hair Festival officially begin!” As a psychological defense mechanism, my mind flashes back to the good old days of the 60s and, in the midst of my refreshing reverie, I had an epiphany: Had it not been for some of the hardy, hard drinking pioneers of the 60s, myself immodestly included, all these people would not be reveling in this Mecca of Mirth and prosperity. Had we not dedicated our precious nights to the relentless pursuit of pleasure, at times sacrificing our health, even our lives in some cases, for the glory of Bacchus, the Market Street Area, as we know it today, would not exist. Had we not persevered and allowed the spirit of hedonism to be snuffed out, this part of town today would probably be nothing but condos and office complexes, with the only entertainment related edifice being a joggling board factory.

What a shame, I thought, that these brave but bibulous champions and their immeasurable contributions have been forgotten. Then, suddenly, I had an idea: I will start my own personalized tour of the Market Street Area and point out the sites where some of these profligate pacesetters made their marks.

Me, addressing a group of about 15 tourists on the corner of Pinckney and East Bay streets. I’m dressed in my 1960s uniform, which since I dress somewhat traditionally, is the same way I dress now. Currently, it’s called “preppy.” Then it was “Ivy League.” Please refrain from drawing any socio-economic conclusions. They would be wrong.

“I would like to tell you about this tour, ‘Charleston in the 60s – The Days of Pabst and Hoses.’ Pabst refers to the most popular beer at that time, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and hoses refers to the practice of one of the local taverns of bringing out hoses, as a last desperate measure, to force out the final diehard group of unruly inebriates. You will not that I have a large cooler sitting in a small wagon, which I will be pulling along. It’s filled with Pabst, which, for purposes of getting you into the mood of that era, you will be required to drink as we walk along. If a cop comes by, stick the can in your pants, shirt of pocketbook, an act which will also immerse you more into the 60s zeitgeist. Please also be aware that you should try to maintain a two-beers-per-block average.”

“We are starting on this particular corner because of its proximity to the most fabled night spot of that time, Big John’s Tavern, which is coincidentally where all the hosing incidents took place, the most memorable of which happened on May 24, 1961, when A.O.H., R.H., H.A., none of whom weighed over 130 lbs., were sent careening and sliding out onto Pinckney Street, each of whom through some sort of alcohol induced gyroscopic skill, was able to hold onto his beer without even spilling it.”
“You will note that since I have not yet received permission to use individual’s names, I am only giving initials. Once I convince them, their families, or, in some cases, their estates, that the purpose of this tour is to honor, not disparage, plaques will be erected at the various sites.”

“Now, if you will follow me, we’ll step inside John’s for a moment. There at the far left of the bar is where Big John Canady, the establishment’s proprietor, would sit on his stool, flipping his cans, as he finished them, into a large metal garbage can at the opposite end of the bar—a distance of about 25 feet. On August 15, 1963, he nonchalantly tossed in a record 58 without a miss over a 9 hour span.”

“And over here, if you will just step into the men’s room, is the Harold Rhea Memorial Urinal. Harold was one of John’s most popular bartenders. For reasons beyond my comprehension, John always kept an enormous block of ice in the urinal, but the unofficial purpose for the ice eventually became a very many game, to s who could be the first one to empty his beer-distended bladder with such velocity that the block would break in half. And in order to improve one’s chances, you would try to wait till the last, most dangerous minute before you would fire away. Perhaps I should also clarify that the ice could only be broken at the center, where the reigning champion would ceremoniously make his indentation when the ice was set in place. In actuality, of course, the winner was determined by simply being in the right place at the right time and the initial blasts were always inconsequential with secondary effects of splattery and embarrassing trouser stainage. The winner would always emerge with his fist raised, shouting, “Ice break! Ice break!” It was rare that more than two blocks were ever broken in one night, and only once did the same individual do it more than once, that being myself on July 12, 1962, when I accomplished an actual trifecta. Unfortunately, there is an asterisk attached to this feat, since I arrived at John’s around 10 a.m. that day and didn’t leave till 4 p.m. the next. Incidentally, if you’re wondering if anyone was ever tempted to cheat, the answer is yes, once, on January 3, 1961, when W.A. was discovered kicking the block with his foot. He was summarily banished from John’s for life.”

“Just as an interesting sidebar, you might be interested in knowing that because of the energizing effect the ice breaking celebration had on patrons, the common phrase, “Breaking the ice,” was consequently created.”