Waldo's

I write these things twice a week. I’d love for you to become a paid subscriber. I only ask $5 a month. Cost of a beer….but it really helps on this end. I’ve been doing this for 3 years. My paid subscribers are the ones who make it possible. So I humbly ask for your support so I can keep on keepin’ on….

They needed help, so of course they got it.

What seemed most remarkable about it was how unremarkable it all seemed. It was the way the world should work, in miniature. In Scranton, on our little piece of ground, it’s the way we roll.

Nobody was prancing around saying “look what we’re doing!….look what we’re doing!”. There was none of that. The community support came with the same resolution as getting up and going to work in the morning.

Everybody knows Waldo’s Tavern on Green Ridge Street. If you don’t, you’re not from here. Waldo’s is what it is. It does not put on airs. It ain’t fancy. Nobody is gonna hand you a hand-towel in the bathroom. But it’s cold beer and great wings and bartenders who know your name. It’s the kind of place where I once saw a guy arrive to pick up his take-out, order a beer as he was waiting, get into a deep conversation with a complete stranger, and decide to eat his take-out in the bar to continue the debate. If you’re looking for somebody to talk to, you’ll find ‘em. If you just want to sip your beer in peace, that’ll do too. There’s live music and a cool outside patio and a badass vintage shuffleboard table and a clientele of saints and sinners that check just about any box you can mention. Everybody gets treated the same. Unless of course you mess up. Be good or be gone.

Last month the building had a fire in the attic. They had to close. It’s the bar business. Every day you’re closed, you’re hemorrhaging money. Governments swoop in to save banks, not bars. Waldo’s was never gonna be “too big to fail”. The pandemic took a big chunk out of them. And now this. There’s nothing romantic about owning a bar. Morgan, the owner, lives in the apartment above with her husband Jackson. Bankers don’t live above their banks. This is Morgan’s life. There is no eject button in the cockpit. She was gonna have to fix all this. But there was no way she could do it alone.

But this is Scranton, boss. You ain’t ever alone. I don’t think she even had to ask.

So of course one of Waldo’s main competitors stepped up and offered their own place for a benefit. Vinnie and the V-Spot are not your average competitors, mind you. The 2 bars are a mile from each other. A nice drunken walk when you need some air, or the DUI roadblocks are up. We’ve all made that walk. The bars are more like a brother and sister act. The staff of one is likely to be spotted in the other after a shift. There’s a camaraderie in North Scranton that’s off the charts. And contagious. Countless other bars, from Dickson City to my own local, Barrett’s in Archbald, reached out to help. I’ve lived here all my life, so I don’t know if they do this sort of thing in other places. I hope they do. I suspect they don’t.

courtesy of John Canjar and Nowhere Slow

And yesterday’s benefit was savage. Six hours of bands and solo acts donating their time. Hundreds of people showing up on Saint Patrick’s Day to hang out and be merry and help others. The vibe was perfect. A tent was set up outside to handle the overflow crowd. Morgan was there and seemed to greet everybody by name, to say thanks. In truth we owe her way more than the little we did. She’s the first one there when anybody else needs her. Waldo’s has hosted more benefits than anybody can count over the years. As a bar owner, nobody treats musicians better. I’ve seen her go into her own pocket on slow nights, and pad the envelope on busy ones. There were 6 acts at the benefit yesterday, but that’s only because there wasn’t enough time for 60. Waldo’s is beloved because Morgan is beloved.

(As an aside, if the towing fines Vinnie saved attendees by patrolling the Glider Diner parking lot and getting their cars out of there could somehow be collected and added to the haul yesterday, we might be able to afford duel heli-ports at both bars so nobody has to walk anymore…)

Waldo’s will be back in a few weeks. I’m tempted to say it will be “better than ever” because that’s what you’re supposed to say, but in my own curmudgeonly Scrantonian way I hope it’s exactly the same as it was. I don’t want Waldo’s to be better. It was always perfectly good enough the way it was.

Scranton is what it is. It’s everything that is good and bad and right and wrong and lost and found in a nation that sometimes feels like it just might split itself in two out of spite. But then all of a sudden it can turn in on itself and say “wait…..we gotta do this for one of our own first…..” and all the bad shit gets put on hold….and it sorta reminds you that maybe, somehow, because we need each other, we’re gonna be ok.

In a bit…

—tf