San Diego Unseen: An Urban Portrait
A lover of all things shady, the San Diego Central Library is by far my favorite.
I once walked in on a homeless guy giving himself a sponge bath in the men’s room, and, unfazed, he just nodded and winked—and I don’t mean with his eye, either. So it was with high expectations that I headed to Navajo’s The Library (7459 Mission Gorge Road).
A freshly reset electronic ticker counting down the months till the next New Year greeted me, as did a life-size statue of Jack Daniel rocking a pair of Oakley’s for that true Tennessee-pimp sensation. Here, the big “X” on bottles of X-Rated Fusion Liqueur is covered with a hand-scribbled “PG” and television sets are mounted one atop another as far as the eye can see, giving the joint a 1980s media-tycoon’s-office feel. By the bar, a California state flag hangs proudly underneath a black light, giving Monarch the bear a fiendish stoner look.
The Library is distinguished by online reviews like “[It’s] an alcoholics bar. No doubt about that” and “Where everybody knows your name? Fuck Cheers! Let’s go to The Library.” But bartender Eric sums it up best: “It’s a sports watchin’, cheap drinkin’, hooking up with chicks sorta place.” I was one for three.
He was doing the Pee-Wee Herman dance to Supertramp’s The Logical Song, rocking a Frank Zappa T-shirt and decorated my pint with a paper umbrella. “It instantly classes everything up,” he declared.
A Van Halen mini concert on the juke followed, and a hint of Dateline NBC could be heard humming from one of the flat screens in between Sammy Hagar’s screeching. “He was everybody’s idea of the perfect best man,” reporter Keith Morrison said in his trademark voice, “until he met Shirley.”
The barman’s Dance Dance Revolution performance later reached its peek with Me First and the Gimme Gimmes’ version of “Rocket Man.”
“This is what you call a real barn-burner right here,” Eric said.
Two hooched-up bros approached the bar and asked for another round. “I’ll have a Jgerbomb,” one said. “And give my buddy here a big rubber dick. Black, preferably.”
The central branch was my favorite library. Till now, that is.
