Word: barring
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Hooch's publicity blitzkrieg reaches its most absurd heights at the promotional events held at various clubs and bars around Moscow and St. Petersburg. Stunning college-age women wearing Hooch's signature green T-shirts pass out free bottles and merchandise while running games, races, raffles, and dance contests. It's the Hooch version of a Labor Day picnic. Others consist merely of men and women chugging Hooch while someone of the opposite sex holds the bottle. Perhaps the most bizarre event however, involves two people who have rubber hoses tied around their waists with a bottle of Hooch hanging...
Taking turns vacuuming their cars, the men give directions to the Harriet Tubman House, on Columbus Street, and also recommend a stop at a local watering hole--a jazz bar called Wally's Bar. The firemen apologize for being so boring, and the large door closes, sealing them back inside their noisy station...
Wally's is a bit harder to find. The bar hides on the opposite corner below a small white sign that reads "Bud," and, underneath, "Wally's Cafe." Bud is printed many times larger than the actual name of the establishment and gives no hint about the emphasis of the business. A blue poster behind plastic lists the musical line-up for 1995. Like a billboard for defunct business, the curling paper brags about "some of the biggest names in the jazz business," and warns the wary patron "not to be surprised when you see famous people in Wally...
...lady wearing a blond wig and looking something like Joan Rivers comes out of a door next to Wally's holding a corkscrew. She opens the bar door and then turns around. "What are you waiting for, baby?" she asks. "You can go in there. They like white people in there." She smiles, as if she just told a good joke. Seeing a blank face, she presses harder. "Don't you know Wally's? It's famous. Everybody knows Wally's. Why, just yesterday we had Branford Marseilles come in here to drink a glass of wine and play...
...turns out that Wally is a real person and in fact he's still alive. Wally is 102 and his grandson, Michael Penn, manages the bar for him. The evening of my visit, Mike is busy setting up for an AIDS benefit. Old black men and young white college students fill the barstools. On the wall are collections of "Best of Boston" and "Best of On the Cheap" awards. Wally's even has T-shirts for sale at $15 dollars apiece...