mortality strikes again, again

As you've all probably pieced together from the last few mumblings, the Hubbel Street Bar is Dead. There's not enough room here to recount the whole history and I'm not going to get into the reasons why it's gone now. nstead, let me take you on a journey, if you will: The story of the a bar, a boy and a dream.


(Note lower left, the folding bar top that is hinged and hanging but at no point, to my knowledge, was NEVER equipped with a mechanism that would hold that piece upright and thereby rendering it useable. Note also the cobbled together collection of bar stools and high ratio of Liquor To Shelf Space or LTSS.)

It was a quiet, hot summer in Houghton that the bar was born. That's when Ace Hardbody and I were jogging heartily through the woods and happened upon a top from an old science lab table made of that heavy, fire-proof and nary impenetrable material you all remember from chemistry class. What it was doing out there, alone and away from it's family, we had no clue; but at some 2 feet wide by 8 feet long we immediately saw the hundreds of applications such an objected offered. And the one use that mattered. With nothing but time to kill, we immediately put on our thinking caps and launched into action a three man plan that would requisition our new found piece, under the cover of darkness and with the power of whiskey. And just as it's tattooed on my ass, "We carried that 150lb slab, drunk, through 3 miles of forest with nothing but our BAL and wits to get us through." The rest, couldn't have been easier.



To pass the time during the initial construction phase, we set out to drink one (or actually, at least six) of every type of beer sold in the metro-Houghton area. I think some people there might be drunks.


Bar version 1.0 featured an albino AND a woman.

Eventually, thanks to the work of our bearded friend T-bone, we managed to scam some more bar top material, this time made of a stone material, but originally designed for the purpose. This was a two piece addition and featured the help of a pick-u truck. The existing section was rotated 90 degrees and shifted so to allow the wider, newer section to serve as "the main bar." Oh, and also, "dinner table," "guest bed," "work desk," and "dance floor." I'd post some of those dance floor shot, but uh, my lawyers advised against it.


The bar gets long, bent and a few new keepers. Note the "Malt Duck" sign amid the VERT high assortment of bar paraphernalia.

So that's the story of the bar. Or at least the parts that can be retold here without incriminating, embarrassing or condemning those of us that lived it. The rest of the story require a dank room with booze and stools to be retold. And remember, I'm not trying to live in the past; the moral of the story is simple. If ever given the chance, you should all rent an old house, dump an absurd percentage of your total yearly income into an extremely traditional and extravagant bar, and surround yourself with tremendous group of drunkards with which to live out your "cheers" fantasizes. Then get blown out. Also, drive a Cadillac.