Ripped at the Red Lion in 2001

[Editor’s note: For this week’s essay we’ve once again pulled out a relic from the drunken compendium of Slim Goodbuzz, who served as Duluth’s “booze connoisseur” from 1999 to 2009. Twenty-five years ago the Sultan of Sot paid a Valentine’s Day visit to the legendary Red Lion Bar in Duluth, and composed this article for the Feb. 21, 2001 edition of the Ripsaw newspaper. The ol’ “Roar by the Shore” closed in 2007 and is now the location of Zeitgeist Arts Café.]

So, it’s Valentine’s Day and here I am at one of my favorite watering holes, the Red Lion — the fucken Roar by the Shore. By all standards, this is not supposed to be the day to get ripped out of my godforsaken gourd. This is supposed to be the day to wear pink and purple, eat a whole helluva lot of candy and watch Richard Gere movies. I ask you this: Could there be a better day to puke your guts out?

The Red Lion is always awesome; it doesn’t matter if it’s full of pathetic drunks or young hip-ocrites slumming with Black Labels (the beer or the band). Either way, it’s full of my favorite folks on earth. Tonight it seems to be a good mixture of wasted middle-aged sots and good-looking lesbians: Yes, these are my people.

The first thing I do when I walk in, after appreciating the longhair with the latest copy of the Ripsaw sticking out of the back pocket of his jeans, is head immediately to the men’s room because I’ve had a bit of a head start, having sucked down five or six Huber bocks before taking the last DTA bus downtown. In the john, there are two thoroughly screwed up dudes standing at the urinal and at the toilet, trying desperately not to fall down or bump into each other mid-piss. So they’re weaving back and forth like the sheer force of it is going to bowl them over, and I’m standing there with that scene from Ghostbusters going through my head; you know, “Don’t cross the streams! Don’t cross the streams!” But these men are long-standing veterans of the barroom. They don’t even come close.

Back out among the semi-living, things are weird for the Lion. The place is decorated with pink crepe paper, and a DJ is spinning lovey-dovey hits from the ’50s and ’60s, though the records keep skipping uncontrollably. Everybody is skunked to the gills. It’s like a terribly unsuccessful chemically-free party at the youth center, only with middle-aged sots and good-looking lesbians. I sidle up to the bar where a sturdy femullet is popping open dollar cans of Black Label for the masses. Next to me this guy with really clean white pants is sipping a can, and I can’t express how lurid it looks — the bright red can, the clean white pants. I want some of this vile cheap beer and I want it now.

People keep crowding in; most of them are obviously single and all of them are ready to get tanked. The regulars, identifiable by their jaundiced eyes and dirty Starter jackets, come in and mingle with the younger drinkers who for some reason have decided to come here on Valentine’s Day. And it all works — this joint is jumpin’ and everyone is having fun. A woman with long hair and an even longer skirt sums it up best when she screams, “God! I love this bar,” and starts giving out high-fives.

When the DJ spins “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” everything turns up a notch. This fat guy at the bar gets so excited he can’t even sit on his barstool. He leaps up, or rather he falls off the stool and somehow lands on his feet, then suddenly starts singing along in a rich bass. “Yippee-eye-ooooo! Yippee-eye-ay-ay-ay!” His hat is without a doubt the most appropriate symbol I have ever seen at a Twin Ports bar. It reads “Full Steam Ahead.”

Just about that time, three men in caps go up to the bar and order pickled eggs. This causes a considerable stir among the drinkers, as pickled-egg eating is a rare and wonderful occurrence at any bar. Everyone huddles around to watch them do it, and they suck down the eggs without hesitation. One of them says, spitting vinegary egg all over the place, “Not bad … definitely better than the eggs at La Belle.” At this remark, I spill beer all over my lap.

But eggs are not the only delicacies the Red Lion has to offer. Along with the ubiquitous Red Hot Skins and something unidentifiable labeled as “Porkie Snacks,” a nearly hidden jar of cloudy liquid behind the bar holds pickled turkey gizzards. This isn’t some kind of science project — you can actually buy these things with the purpose of eating them. Charged with confidence having witnessed the eating of the eggs, I start eyeing up the room in an attempt to discern just who I might talk into sampling the gizzards. This turned out to be a mistake. I won’t get into the gory details here, but trust me on this: You don’t want to pick out the drunkest person in the room and offer to buy him a pickled turkey gizzard. Not without a mop, anyway.