What do you want out of life?

It's the late 80's and I'm walking North Beach in San Francisco like a cop on his beat. It's mainly dancing I come here for, either at the Palladium or the DNA in SOMA.  My close friends aren't much for dancing to house or similar type heavy dance music so I'm already, in my early 20's, becoming a lone wolf.

The rain forces me into a tiny bar on the corner of Pacific and Columbus. This is my first time into Mr. Bing's. The owner, Bing himself, is bartending this quiet evening. I'm not a bar person, though, for me its dance and strip clubs in the City. But the weather has led me here for safety and I need something to do so I check out the jukebox, which is one of those old machines that plays 45's. You drop in your money, usually 4 plays on the dollar, and the mechanism grabs the record, flips it up, moves it over to the record player, and drops the record down to start the music. The music selection is mainly old big band jazz music and Motown rhythm and blues.

We talk for awhile, me and Bing shooting the breeze. This happened a long time ago and I don't remember the context but it was memorable and I had fun. A few months later I, this time with some close friends, returned to Bing's while window shopping the strip joints on Broadway and taking posed photos with the strippers who tried to lure us into their dens. I preferred the smaller, intimate ambiance of Bing's over the loud and crowded nearby Vesuvio.

For a couple or three years I would peek into Bing's and slam down two or three drinks while taking a rest from the strip clubs or the Palladium. Around 1992 or '3 I met a new, old bartender named Bruce. We automatically hit it off and slowly my infrequent peeks into Bing's turned into common 3-5 hour expeditions. Because he cared, Bruce would let me sober up for my long ride home to Sacramento - by doing shoots of Crown with me after hours. It is a miracle my dumb ass never got caught on a DUI or that I did not injure another or myself.

Somewhere around that time Bing retired. His son Robert and a new bartender named Mike, who many called Scooter, which I never understood, brought new life to the bar. Through the years many local regulars have come and gone, the jukebox changed a couple times as did the television, the Golf machine came and went, but basically the bar remained the same for years and in fact, my most memorable times were from 2005-2010.

But now the bar is different. Bruce has retired, Robert is retired, and Mike is the last one standing. Newer bartenders Dickie and Conson do good work but for some reason the magic is almost all gone. Maybe it is the new influx of tourists due to the bar appearing on Anthony Bourdain's travel show? Maybe it is the reasons Bruce and Robert "retired" that fill my heart with sorrow? Maybe I'm just getting old and rejecting change?

To answer my question, what do I want out of life? I want to kick back with Bruce and Robert and the whole gang and do shots and laugh and blast 80's R&B and play dice and stagger out of the bar at 3 am looking for cheap, greasy food.

That ain't going to happen ever again. That is the past and now I sit at the bar watching the tube wondering where everyone is. Then Big D. walks in, and Jason and his crew start a dice game, and Ryan blasts in on shore leave, and Jaime is doing shots with a stranger, and Chandra is hugging everyone, and Conson is wondering whether to play the over or under on the game. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?

Then I remember that I do like chilling in Dickie's bar during Saturday afternoon watching his strange but funny friends argue about trivial San Francisco history and I do like and have faith in Conson, the new Sheriff in town, and Mike is still there being the old holdover veteran from the old championship team, acting as the link from the past to the future. Maybe this is the beginning of a new marriage, like when Richard Burton remarried Elizabeth Taylor?

Wait, I think that ended in another divorce.