Honor and Serve
December 10th, 2001, I pass the wide picture window of Farrell’s Bar, located at the corner of 16th Street and Prospect Park West, in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, as I do nearly every day. Farrell’s enjoys the dubious honor of being the largest retail outlet for Budweiser beer in the United States – the single tavern that sells the most cold Bud in the US of A. A couple of oldsters, faded men in baggy gabardine pants, had gotten started early that morning, and they leaned against the curved, dark wood of the bar, watching the tube and smoking. The bar is quiet in daylight, but evenings, the place is packed, as fathers, sons, uncles, nephews, brothers, pals and various hangers-on knock back tall Styrofoam ‘go’ cups of Bud and heckle the game on the bar’s TV.
Farrell’s is a neighborhood institution, beloved since the Great Depression, when Dennis Farrell, Senior, first flung open its doors to offer the working-class clientele nickel beer and salt sticks. The doors haven’t been closed too often since, save for the early hours of Sunday mornings, when the Farrell’s regulars reconvene three blocks down Prospect Park West at Holy Name of Jesus Roman Catholic Church, for Mass. Dutiful fathers trailing flocks of shiny, scrubbed kids head out to church, then reappear mid-afternoon at the bar, solo.
It’s a man’s bar, smelling of booze and sweat and smoke. No tables, just a long polished hardwood bar and a pressed-tin ceiling. Women are officially welcome, a hard-earned triumph of the late 60s, yet it’s a man’s place, a testosterone oasis in a world of women, families, and domestic obligations. …
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