The Rambling House | The Avenue | Keane’s Bar | Cleopatra | YouTube Rabbithole
Alright @YouTheReader,
We’ll jump right into the pints of Guinness before finishing off with The Lumineers Cleopatra…
#GuinnessChallengeSeason
@Kids don’t try this at home. Not just because you’re underage and will have plenty of pints to drink if that ends up being your thing when you’re older but also because Guinness is actually best served in a pint glass from a tap. A pint of Guinness varies depending on the drinking establishment. If the keg it sits in is rarely poured, it can lead to some underwhelming taste. Rather than stealing gimmicks, I’d like to start taking Notes while drinking Guinness. My grandfather from Connemara, whom I never got the chance to meet, Thomas Davis, used to drink pints and by all accounts was a self-taught thinker. The one rule I’ve imposed on myself is that I will only have 1 pint per sitting from each establishment I review, so @AnyoneWorrying, don’t worry about my drinking habits. The Guinness Challenge is to “cut the G” on your first sip (more like a gulp and a half). If this is your first time hearing about it, I didn’t come up with the fun challenge @YouTheReader can try the next time you have a Guinness. The 0.0 to 10.0 scale will be extraordinarily nuanced but as a reference point, the only perfect 10.0 I plan ever to give out is at the Guinness Factory in Dublin one day.
Song On In The Background: Valerie by Amy Winehouse
Notes if you can’t read my sloppy scribble: “Burger, chicken curry, chopped salad, but really all their food is good” says Deanna the bartender. Guinness is the top seller here. They have live bands on Fridays and Saturdays, with Irish sessions on Sundays. Large wrap-around bar. A Guinness Golf “Split the G” Tournament is being held on March 9. Deanna is sorta a Giants and Yankees fan, but a huge fan of Morgan Wallen along with Jelly Roll. “I love Woodlawn, I’m originally from Connecticut. It’s a great community, with people who care about each other.” Shilelagh Law comes here on a quarterly basis.
I had no idea there was such a thing as a Split The G Tournament. I wonder if I would be any good? Prob need a bit more practice. This Saturday Ireland takes on England in the Guinness Six Nations so they’ll be serving Irish breakfast and pints at 11:30 AM. Then, at 1 PM in the Guinness Golf Split The G Tournament. They have raffles, prizes, giveaways, and an Irish session will be going on in the background. Sounds like good craic! The Rambling House has been an institution in Woodlawn for over 20 years. Great Irish-American sports bar with a projector screen for sports, live bands, and darts. They also have a party room you can rent out for events. I look forward to grabbing another pint of Guinness at The Rambling House again!
Notes if you can’t read my sloppy scribble: Named after Katonah Avenue. 2 men are speaking Gaelic and I have no idea what they’re saying because they haven’t said Pogue Mahone. That’s a good thing because it’s the only phrase my dad taught me and it’s “Kiss my arse.” Dartboard and pool table. The bartender went out for a smoke to let me finish without paying. As a somewhat upstanding citizen, I’ll leave him a Ten-er with 2 singles. The shtick was about the size of a quarter, a beautiful pint, with the right amount of fluff to it.
The Avenue has dart boards and that has hosted other Woodlawn pubs in dart tournaments. On the TV, they will show the Rugby Six Nations, EPL, horse racing, and American sports as well. They also host live music performances. The pint of Guinness was excellent and when I did a bit of research on their Instagram, I found out they are a pro-doggo pub. I look forward to grabbing another pint of Guinness at The Avenue again!
Song On In The Background: Sunrise by Darren Kiely
Notes if you can’t read my sloppy scribble: The name of the pub comes from the owner, Seamus’, last name. He’s also the frontman of The Narrowbacks. I’m here today writing because of the Keane family. No really, my parents met at Seamus Keane’s dad, Paddy’s pub that was called Peggy Gordon’s in Woodside, Queens back on Saint Patrick’s Day of 1989. Pretty cool, yet I’m still a staunch unbiased critic of Guinness through and through so no handouts even though if they handed me a Coca-Cola in a glass, I’d still have to call it lovely. The Irish writers’ poster on the wall is cool. They have a pool table, also darts, and their bar is a nice auburn color to write on. Eoin is the bartender. He’s from County Claire, has lived in New York for over a decade, and loves New York. Big fan of rugby. Kieth Earls and Jack Crowley would be his favorite players.
It was good criac talking sports with Eoin. He knows his Irish Rugby well and keeps up with the GAA while starting to get more into American sports. The Keane family has over 40 years of bar and restaurant experience so of course they pour a proper pint of Guinness. They have been around the block with their own version of the Irish Pub to nearly every Irish neighborhood in New York from Bainbridge Ave to Midtown, Woodside in Queens, Pearl River, Nyack, and now back in Woodlawn in the Bronx. Even besides the fine pints of Guinness, Keane’s is a great place to grab one of their weekly specials, drink, sing, and dance. Also, I forgot to mention that Darren Kiely had performed a few times at Keane’s as well as The Avenue, just over a year ago “before he got big” as was DM’d to me by @keanesbar the next day. I had no idea that he did. The pub had just opened up so it was just me and Eion with no music on in the background. I picked Darren Kiely’s song Sunrise out of random happenstance because it was stuck in my head for listening for the first time the week prior. I guess sometimes things happen for a reason, pretty cool. The Narrowbacks will be playing at Keane’s this Friday night. I look forward to grabbing another pint of Guinness at Keane’s again!
Today’s tune is Cleopatra by The Lumineers. Since the start of #GuinnessChallengeSeason once a month I’ve played a song off their albums in chronological order so this is #15.
Okay, so this is a song that many know all the words in their head and can get the gist of but may not understand the perspective it’s coming from. Well, that’s at least how I always heard it. Do you recall what (Pint&Pen&Paper Week 53 Vol I) was about? Of course not, that’s my job to keep you up to speed. The opening song of the album, Sleep On The Floor, comes from the perspective of a guy asking a girl to run away with him. In the music video, oddly enough a funeral is the setting. This song Cleopatra comes from the perspective of the girl’s point of view. As you see in the music video below, she didn’t leave with him so the opening lines are her explaining herself.
While Wesley Schultz was visiting the Republic of Georgia, he met a woman whom this song is based. On the band’s Facebook Schultz wrote, “She’s older now, but when she was about 16, she unexpectedly lost her father. And in the midst of that loss, her boyfriend with whom she was madly in love with asked her to marry him – Georgia was a particularly religious country (Russian Orthodox) and it wasn’t uncommon to marry young. She was still reeling and numb from the death of her father and refused to give him an answer.”
While I’m not sure what the girl from the Republic of Georgia’s name is, they cleverly used Cleopatra for the song. The prominent historical figure was the last Queen of Egypt. She was a doll back Before Christ. Cleopatra would use the art of seduction to gain more power, having affairs with the likes of Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony. Damn, we’ll have 3 Ancient Rome bits this week after tomorrow’s Critiquing the Critics.
Wesley Schultz wrote, “We often get asked why the title Cleopatra – for this song, the name worked so well because here is this young girl, overflowing with confidence and believing the world is her oyster – she will rule it one day! As she looks back, she realizes that at that age, we try on all of these masks of identity, like an actress. We are confident in the world and ourselves, but with very little experience to back that up.”
The real person “is largely inspired by a real person I met in the Republic of Georgia who is a female taxi driver… As an American, a lot of what we do is tell the world how great our life is. People create stories about themselves through social media which are completely disconnected from what we personally know about their lives. I felt cleansed to be around someone who was just telling me how it actually was for them.” (Source: Wesley Schultz) This song came out in ‘16 and I sorta think a lot has changed on social media since then.
I feel exposed. I do be sometimes writing scripts and at times playing the clown. For chrissake, I’m in an hour 72 standoff with a mouse and he still hasn’t eaten the feckin’ peanut butter.
In fairness to myself, from writing Week to Week Notes over time, I do feel a bit cleansed.
This verse is about how Cleopatra is remembering back to when she was in her younger high horse days as she is presumably in a nursing home. Those days have vanished (gone with the wind). Double meaning however because the 1939 movie Gone With The Wind is about overcoming insurmountable odds through self perseverance.