Galveston.... a pleasant surprise!

We rolled into Galveston expecting very little, and were pleasantly surprised.  A fun beach side, and a relatively quaint downtown with great cafes, bars and restaurants.  A short drive down the beach to Surfside finds deserted beaches and some old school bars.  Housing and rental prices are very reasonable for island living.  We caught a few local soloists playing, and they were pretty decent entertainers.

Verse 4 - The move to Key West and Gardi's Internet Cafe

This post is a continuation of The Bowery Station Story.

We had hoped to move all our belongings to Key West, do a little exploring, and then take about a year and explore the good ol' US of A on a road trip.  After having traveled so extensively in Europe, and it being before the advent of the smart phone, we understood the need for internet cafes wherever we traveled.  Europe at the time was far ahead of the States, with immense Internet cafes in every town.  Arriving in Key West we immediately realized... Key West was lacking.  There were one or two small places to get on the internet, with dilapidated computers and sticky keyboards, but there were no true, functional internet cafes.  The need kicked us in the teeth.

After loading our all our belongings into storage in Key West, we took a stroll down Duval, hoping to get a gauge of commercial rental prices before we left on our year long road trip.  Starting at the North end by Sloppy Joes, we made a few calls...tiny places were going for $20k/month...ouch.  We kept walking, kept calling.  About the middle of Duval Street things were down to about $6-$8K/month.  Then we hit the intersection of Duval and Truman Ave, US Route 1, and we saw a small for rent sign in a dusty deli, pseudo coffee house.  As fate would have it that day we walked in and asked the girl what the dilly was.

She expressed that not only was the location for rent, but the whole business was for sale, and I should speak with the owner in the back.  Out stepped a small little Italian man, (and a great salesman...and ultimately a great friend), and bada bing, fifteen grand a hand shake later we were in business in Key West.  Only nine days from wheels up in Germany and we were back to work in Key West.  So long to that glorious idea of a cross country road trip.... but we were young...we would get there someday..... right?  RIGHT?

To make a long story short, Gardi's Internet Cafe flourished, lines were out the door, cash was rolling
in...but alas...is life all work?  After one full year, working 8 to 8, 8 days a week, as was our store moto, we had maybe spent 2 days outside the shop.  We had one chance to get on a boat when some friends came who were visiting, and we couldn't find reliable employees.  We served internet, coffee and Key Lime Pie.  We even made the Key Lime Pie for many restaurants on Duval and sold it to them wholesale.  Hogsbreath, Caroline's, and Fogarty's just to name a few.  Often times making over a hundred pies a day, knee deep in condensed milk...  But was this why we moved to the Keys?  Hell no.  We can all define success in many ways, but being a slave to your own creation out of pride certainly wasn't in our formula. (Remember this concept for later on in this diatribe of a blog/book!)

We sold the business after a year, Lisa quickly found a job teaching, and I returned to the tech world with a job at the Office of the State Attorney.  But, we regained our lives...weekends off, vacation, holidays...a guaranteed paycheck...oh... and we got ourselves out on the water...both living and playing on the water for the next decade!  Life my friends, is and was good!  We even tied the knot officially after years of living in sin.... which really changed nothing as we still kept sinning.  We enjoyed the lifestyle of living on a Sailboat in emerald green waters, and lived on shore as well in the rustic world that was Key West at the time.  Either way we were out on a boat or kayak almost every day, living the life we only dreamed of years before in Vermont.

So, at this point, an intuitive person might be asking themselves... "self, what does all this drivel have to do with BS, why did I buy this book, and/or why am I wasting my time reading this blog?"  Of course I would answer....sucker!  But I digress...read on.

After our captive foray into self employment, and the freedom that our return to working for the man offered, we were able to get out and experience the bar, and the live music scene in the Keys.  Venues like the Hogsbreath, Schooner Wharf and The Green Parrot offered up some top national talent, mixed in with the best of Florida, and the local scene.  Granted, many of the bars on Duval felt the need to cater to the visiting tourist, and put on more of a shtick... many still preferred to showcase true talent.  It wasn't hard to find great live music on any given night, comfortably perched on a bar stool garbed in shorts and a tee shirt... the days of Nectar's had returned to our lifestyle....albeit in a much warmer climate.  Also, the flexibility to travel had returned with our government sponsored vacation time off.  Granted, it was hard to get anywhere quickly or easily from a remote Island chain...but it wasn't impossible.

Stay tuned as The Bowery Station Story unfolds in it's next episode...Where in the World is Apalachicola?

Change of plans.... Westward Ho!

Well, much to our disappointment we were forced to cancel/postpone our Italian adventure with less than a day to go.  So sitting in Atlanta disheartened and dismayed, we quickly made a change of plans and turned the wheels west!  We had Texas on the radar for our return in June, but... no time like the present.

Our first stops along the way was for a "Krewe du Pooch" celebration in Mandeville Louisiana across Lake Ponchetrain from New Orleans, and for some mud bugs in the home of the Crawfish, Breaux Bridge, La!  The show must go on, Texas... Route 66... let the wind blow!

Verse 3 - Hello Heidelberg!! Welcome to the real world.

This post is a continuation of The Bowery Station Story.

Graduating Champlain I was fortunate enough to immediately land a job with a tech firm that did contract work with the Army known as Vermont Systems, Inc. (An outstanding company I might add... and one that is the essence of true American capitalism... driven by creative individuals who out worked any competition!  I learned a lot about going the distance in customer service and dedication from the gang at VSI.)

In that job I traveled three weeks a month, found myself working 60 hrs a week on various military installations, and all for only about half of what I had previously been making taking pictures of Santa Clause.  I suppose that defines progress, right?  Regardless, the job did take me, and us, to Europe.  There I met a few folks that wanted to hire me directly for the Army, working out of Germany.  Who could have imagined... something that never could have happened had I stuck with the golf...and skiing...and odd jobs.  Could I possibly leave the town where I had gone to Grade school, High School, and multiple Colleges all within a mile of each other for a job overseas??  Could we leave family and lifelong friends for an experience of different cultures and travel?
Mom would get postcards, we bolted.

My job in Germany was based out of Heidelberg, but I traveled to most every Army post in Europe training folks on a proprietary software developed by my former employer VSI in VT.  Lisa joined me, and headed on down to the DoD schools to find employment.  They were very excited to discuss her employment...until they found out we weren't married.  Sorry, but unless we tied the knot, there was very little chance they could work her into a slot in the DoD school system.  We didn't feel it was the most romantic and sentimental reason to get hitched, so Lisa took a teaching position at the University of Maryland located just off post, and even did some online instructing.

Conveniently, after a year or so, a contract opened up for a position to join me in my efforts to deploy the program I was working with at the time.  Lisa applied, and was awarded the contract and suddenly we were both on the road together, working hand in hand at the same task for the Department of Defense.

So then, as more recently with Bowery Station, people frequently asked, "How can you live, work and travel together 24/7?"  Amazingly, we did quite well.  For some reason, we found a good synergy, and our strengths were compliments to the other's faults... well in other words, Lisa covered my ass.  We did quite well, where other couples may have disintegrated.  That was quite telling, and in the long run...may have started the story of the BS that is Bowery Station, or should I say... gave us the confidence that we could take on such an endeavor.

We traveled and we worked.  When we weren't traveling for work, we were traveling for pleasure.  It was a great couple of years...at a time when the borders were being erased and the EU was becoming a reality.   We were there for the advent of the Euro...one day we were using Deutschmark and Lira, and the next we would go to an ATM and out popped Euros.  Ryan Air ruled with low cost flights around Europe, and we were fortunate enough to get to the hometowns of most of our immigrant grandfolks....to say we had a great time would be the understatement of a lifetime.

But as all good things must come to an end, Lisa's contract was up, we missed our family and friends, and we found ourselves yearning for the good ol' US of A.  So we decided it was time to head back across the pond and see what awaited us there.

Our new found exploratory spirit begged us of the question..."But where too?"  Should we return to VT, and the freezing cold we always wished to escape...or...should we head to the Florida Keys and spend our vacations visiting the frozen north. After taking about a beer to think about these options, we decided.... Key West...here we come.

Stay tuned as The Bowery Station Story unfolds in our next episode.... The Move to Key West and Gardi's Internet Cafe!

Decisions.... Decisions

Well here we are in Decatur, GA on the eve before our flight out of Atlanta to Italy tomorrow.   Clearly faced with tough decisions regarding whether we should get on the plane for our planned three months in the homeland of our forefathers.   Will it be more challenging to encounter society's reaction to the Coronavirus, and or the virus itself in a foreign nation versus here in the States.  There are lots of ways to look at it, and many points to consider.  Fortunately there are more enjoyable decisions we are faced with as well, such as the huge array of Single Malts available at this fine Irish bar Mac McGee Irish Pub here in Decatur.   I started with an Aberlour 16 to start the th(dr)inking about our soon to come other choices.

Verse 2 - Make Hay When the Sun Shines

This post is a continuation of The Bowery Station Story.

Lisa is a smart woman. (Well, she married me, right?)  Having almost a full degree in accounting under her belt, and after having taken a pause from higher ed, she made the bold decision to return to College for a degree in education.  Her perseverance impressed me.  It made me think about my own development.  At the time, I ran a collection of small businesses, from DJing weddings, to building decks and lofts for College kids, to taking photos with Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny in area malls. I worked radio, even dabbled in flying, and worked the doors at area bars.  Of course, I had to dabble in politics, at one point even serving on the Burlington City Council.

While individually this odd assortment of seasonal endeavors seemed insignificant, collectively it made some good coin, and I enjoyed serious flexibility with my time.   I had a ski pass and two golf memberships...and more importantly, the chance to use them.  I could even break away to the Keys two or three times a year, or deer camp, or disappear for lost weekends in Montreal, Boston or New York.   Yes, admittedly, I was a jack of all trades, and most obviously... a master of none....but it was a decent lifestyle.

A bit off topic at this point, but very important to note.  One yearly endeavor I enjoyed was working in Jamaica as a DJ for college kids in March.  It was the heyday of MTV in Negril on Spring Break... and I was one of the boys at the helm of the mixing board coordinating drinking and other competitive collegiate events!  On one such jaunt, I acquired a ball cap from a drunken Ball State University student.  It read... BSU.  I wore it religiously back home for years.  Never had I adorned myself with a shirt, or cap that garnished so much attention.... almost to a person, people would noticed the hat and comment on it...they were fascinated, both with the BS, and the BS...U.   BS in my mind had begun.  Over the years I had dabbled in the potential of running a bar here or there, but I realized even then... if I ever really did, it would have to have a name whose initials were BS!

So why in the world would anyone ruin a flexible life with no real commitments, right?

Well, I had a good amount of learnin' under my belt, but nothing that amounted to a degree.  I had started at Cornell, but Electrical Engineering is as dry as it gets, so I dabble in other degrees at UVM and St. Michael's College.  I even, at one point tried to mix a more exciting degree with warm weather, and spent a semester at Embry-Riddle in Daytona learning to fly.  Hell, being in College and on Spring Break full time...sounded right up my alley.  Then I saw the student loans piling up and decided to finish my Commercial rating at a small FBO in VT.  However, evaluating the prospects of trying to pile up flight hours at $6 as an instructor compared with DJing a wedding on the weekends for what at the time was a couple of hundred bucks....and a full week off to ski and golf....I intuitively put flying on the back burner as well.

But time had passed, and I yearned for a profession that might garner more respect and potential.  I felt that the growing tech scene was slipping by me and I needed to know more.  So, inspired by Lisa who was ardently pursuing her goals of teaching, and with all my amassed scattered credits... and the knowledge I could eek out an Associates degree in a year...I slipped my way up the frozen hill to Champlain College, and signed up for another tour of doodie!  Hell, I had been to four colleges, why not make it five.  For the record, having attended Cornell, and Champlain, I can unequivocally state...Champlain is by far a better institution of learning... by far. All those Ivy lagers never matched up to a hometown brew.  Don't fall for the hype, learn something tangible.

A year passed and we both found that we had dun gradeated.  I'm sure taking seventeen years and five schools to earn an Associate Degree made my parents proud in comparison to the other Doctors and such they had raised.  Lisa took a job teaching at my former grade school, oddly teaching the children of my former grade school classmates.  Nothing spoke more to time slipping by than knowing Lisa was having parent teacher conferences with the girl, now woman, I had taken to my 8th grade graduation dance.  The concept of how fast time flies was finally thrust in our faces...and I felt like an old fart in my mid thirties.

Stay tuned as The Bowery Station Story unfolds in the next episode.... Hello Heidelberg!! Welcome to the real world.

Verse 1 - The Hay That Fed the Bull!

This Post is the start of The Bowery Station Story.

We like beer.  We like live music.  When I say we, I am referring to both me and my wife Lisa.

I grew up in Vermont and Lisa moved there in her early 20s, during the early 1990s.  We met in Burlington, which at the time had become a live music mecca...around the time Phish was just hitting stride, catapulting from the bars of Burlington into the national scene and onto the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine.

Their justified rise to stardom drew musicians from Boston, New York, and around the Country to Burlington, only to electrify the live music scene further.  Everyone looked for their chance to play the stage at Nectar's, the namesake bar of Phish's first album, A Picture of Nectar, and one of the stages they developed their unique sound on.  Lisa and I were blessed to be able to wonder out on any given night and find an array of live music options, with exceptionally high levels of talent.  The days of my youth in Vermont of sneaking in the fire exit of a smoke filled beer hall on a back road and listening to cover rock bands as underage kids were far gone, along with the mullet.  This was the early 90s in Burlington, and the live music scene was on.... big time.

One thing Lisa and I both noticed on our almost nightly ventures bouncing between blues, jazz, grunge and zydeco venues while sucking down the suds of the evolving Vermont Craft beer scene was.... it was friggin' cold.  I mean full on bugger freezing cold.  People whom have never experienced the term, or it's inspiration, don't get it...  you step outside, and even if you don't suck air in your nostrils, you feel everything that is exposed to the air begin to freeze immediately... immediately.  That's bugger freezing cold.  The kind of cold that hurts to breath.  When it wasn't cold, it was raw.  Damp, rainy, dreary and well ....still damn cold.  Summer, which might occur for a week or two sometime in July or August depending on the cold fronts, was short.  Like weekend short... over before you know it kind of short.  Like, don't take too long a nap short. Thus standing in line to hear your favorite musical act was more than likely a painful wait...but ultimately worth it as always.
The bugger freezing cold led us to expand the radius of our outings....like for EIGHTEEN HUNDRED MILES of an expansion.

As often as we could we would scrape together enough gas money, and Lisa and I would jump into whichever vehicle of ours at the time showed the most promise of making it... and make an old school road trip to Key West.  I had done this on my own since High School and during my many spring breaks in Colleges...  (Seventeen Years and Five Colleges to gain an Associates Degrees to be exact) and had already learned it was never good enough to simply make it to points in Northern Florida such as Daytona, or St. Pete, but rather, one must dig deep and go the distance... yup, Key West always offered a guarantee of shorts and flip flops.  There wasn't nearly as much craft beer, and the music was much more Buffett-centric at the time, but the need to thaw out took precedence over our other entertainment priorities.

It needs to be mentioned that I had played guitar most of my life...well I should say that I played with guitars.  The reality was that I never really seemed to get past a collection of five songs that I had currently memorized at any one time to really impress any chicks.  I also, frequently put it down long enough to lose any sort of callouses I had developed, making the choice to pick it back up that much more painful.  I occasionally would try to check out an Open Mic in Burlington, but inevitably due to the talent base in town... someone like Trey Anastasio would step on stage for an all night jam with comparably talented musicians... thus it quickly dashed any hope I had of auditioning my bastardized version of Country Roads for all the world to see.  As well it discouraged my interest in developing my talent any further on the ol' six string.

Ultimately,  I relegated myself to the friendly Vermont campfire, although I'm sure my friends were none too thrilled with my sixth rendition of Brown Eyed Girl as they roasted their marshmallow and swigged back 32oz Gennie Cream Ales.  Needless to say, I left the performing for the pros, but always wished there was a venue or stage to showcase my level of performing, and get the experience of playing through a sound system in front of a crowd.

Stay tuned as The Bowery Station Story unfolds in the next episode...Make Hay When the Sun Shines!

When in Rome....

Trevi Fountain here I come!   I found this nice little garden to appreciate as we anxiously await to depart for fair Italia.

La Bocca Del Toro

The Mouth of the Bull... AKA How BS began...

So, as folks that never knew where Apalachicola was, nor would have ever thought we would have run a music venue in the panhandle of Florida, we find ourselves in a very strange paradigm, and ask ourselves often...  well.... how the hell did we get there??
Now that we have sold and began to move onto new adventures, we thought we would write a book (originating in Blog format)... well not so much a book but rather an explanation or better said ...an exploration, or even more so an exploration... of why... or how.... but ultimately a tale about the trials and tribulations of how something, anything for that matter, manifests itself.  But in particular in this case that something that manifested itself, or festered like a disgusting infected boil... became Bowery Station.  Essentially and ultimately...well... why.... That's BS!

What will follow in this escapade of a tortured memoir, is a history, a down to earth, real life explanation of how Bowery Station came to be, and perhaps why it ended.  From the essence of who we are, who we were, and what inspiration created the small, humble, lost in time music venue that had become what it was...a space so many found to be home... the joyful, performer centric music venue in the last part of old Florida that we all have come to love and appreciate.

Herein, entwined in factual history, you will find truth, guttural honesty, detailed information, mixed with embellishment when needed, and even yarns of service industry woes. (Not to mention run on sentences!)  Those painful and empathetic tales of the service industry will be easily recognized by those who serve the public, and this is coupled with some straight out bitchin'... cause we all bitch.  Anyone who takes on a creative project knows, you will be faced with adoration mixed equally with critique... which requires a vent to exhaust such frustration.   Deal with it.  You will find it herein as well.

It is a history, a story riddled with rumor and whereby we will set the record straight.  Some may see their face in the story line, others may feel they resemble an individual character, but rest assured all the names and faces have been fairly well replicated so as to portray exactly who the scoundrels are, but we will cover our asses well enough to provide plausible deniability.  So let the lawyers sort it out if there are any "crybabies," .... after we publish and make our millions on selling this poor excuse for toilet paper...of course.   Some folks and businesses will be referenced by their real names, mainly because we trust them not to sue us, or we hope our yarns will compliment their own business efforts.

Sections of this diatribe will be denoted by an historical and factual section, alternating with service industry woes, and ultimately painfully true anecdotes that have occurred at Bowery Station.  It is composed primarily in the first person, from my perspective, but representative of OUR perspective, both Lisa's... my proofreading consigliere... and mine.

So enjoy, or should this rambling eventually make it to print form... use each page as a much better purpose...if you have placed it appropriately atop the old crapper tank as bathroom reading material.

Stay tuned as The Bowery Station Story unfolds in the first episode.... The Hay That Fed the Bull!

(*Please note that all blog posts associated with the story of BS will all appear under the category of The Bowery Station Story)

The Living Street rocks LaBelle Florida

A strange thing happened on the way to Southern Florida... we ran into The Living Street in LaBelle FL!!   As always they are putting on a great show, and opening eyes.  It reminds me of one of their first journeys into Apalachicola and we enjoyed watching them grow a following.   Shannon Lease.... where is my dance partner!!!???