You Can Go Home Again: Alex’s Bar

When we last left our heroes, they were wandering the streets of London in a salt and grease induced haze, the UK shows done and hearts looking homeward……

The fellas said their bittersweet goodbyes on that sultry Monday morning:
The work week bustle of London swirled about us as we stood on separate street corners, guitars and knapsacks in hand, suddenly purposeless as mercenary soldiers bewildered by a world at peace.

We each make our way home in a fashion: Anthony and Alf spend an extra week out in Haiti, volunteers on the Wyclef Jean Presidential campaign until plans for the puppet regime are outrageously interrupted!

Kimm, as usual, takes to a small monastery outside of Kyoto, taking a vow of silence just so he won’t have to discuss the Last Time I Drank….. album with yet another curious fan.

And me? It was a courier flight back home via Minneapolis, where I hand delivered a human heart, cornea and a sparkling green iris to the Mayo clinic.

We finally reconvened on a magical Friday night on Anaheim avenue, a quick pre game tune up with Joe Jost’s specials, eggs, and hefty schooners of Busch!

Ah, Long Beach—how we missed your savory snacks, your sodden alleyways!
It’s with a jaunty skip that we make our way back to Alex’s Bar.

What can I tell you people that you don’t already know?
Those warm red lights, the humid fertile atmosphere…..this is less a bar than a uterus we’d like to incubate in for nine months, smart cocktail in hand!

And so we sling on those guitars one last time, say farewell to the Summer.
The worn leather straps fit into the grooves that have been notched into our shoulders, a physical defect earned by a thousand nights in a thousand bars.

Photos Jeffrey Terranova:

Photos Salvatore J Baxter:

Much has been made of this location and the otherwordly charm it has acquired since filling in for a vampire bar on a popular sitcom.

Pfffft—-please. The regular denizens on any given weekend night would make those wimpy bloodsuckers run away like frightened children……

Yes, it’s on those soaked planks surrounding the bar that the true creatures of the night haunt!

But it’s the next morning, when you wake up in the bed of your pickup truck, which is parked in an abandoned warehouse.
You are wearing nothing but a lobster bib and surgical booties; your mouth is welded open from snoring the dry air and, yes, a most recent meal of chicharrones and hummus.
You look for any clue of what has happened to you, scan your body for any new wounds. And then you spot it:
The tell tale stamp on the back of your hand.

It was a night at Alex’s, afterall, and you are truly back home.