A Harry’s Bar That Never Saw the Likes of Hemingway

In New York, it’s in the old East India Company building. In Venice, it’s beside the Grand Canal. In Hong Kong, it’s a ferry ride from Tsim Shat Sui. And in Los Angeles, it’s on the Avenue of the Stars--a replica of the one in Florence.

Harry’s bars aren’t just bars. They have become smug enclaves for the sleek sets of the world. They resonate. Hemingway wrote in and of them. Billionaire Raul Gardini, Italy’s America’s Cup godfather, finds them chic enough to hang out in.

But in San Diego, Harry’s Bar is a plain old neighborhood bar that happens to be called Harry’s.

Located in the Hotel San Diego opposite the Greyhound depot at the less desirable end of Broadway, Harry’s and a take-out joint called Sushi Deli Too, are part of the once-elegant 500-room palace built in 1914.

At 10 o’clock on a Wednesday night, Broadway is the territory for wandering sailors, street people, hookers, scared-looking back-packing tourists and a sleek, prematurely silver 40-ish gent--who, as it turns out later, is a refugee from Wall Street. He is hurrying past when the sign catches his eye: Harry’s Bar.

He stops, thinks for a moment, looks around, then on impulse swings open the door.

Inside, there’s a Karaoke going.

“Come on, Candice, come on . You can do it. You’ve lived it!” croaks a Harry’s regular, holding out a microphone to a small group of weather-beaten older folk at the end of the bar. They’ve had enough to drink to be sentimental and angry about their lives.

“ ‘Midnight Train to Georgia,’ ” Candice! You’ve lived it! Come and do it, darlin’.”

“Yeah I’ve lived it, but I’m too drunk,” mutters Candice. She lets her old friend help her off the bar stool, and she laughs at herself as she weaves her way toward the stage.

Someone pushes a remote. The music starts, with train whistle, back-up chorus and all. Candice goes “Whew!” then picks up the song at “. . . midnight train to Georgia . . . “ her gravelly voice sounding like Tom Waits.

By the third chorus, there’s an earthy passion that pounds out on words like “ my life” and “ my world.” This woman has lived, a hard, dirt-scrabbling life, and when the last chorus fades, she stands there like a broken Piaf, the microphone dangling in her hand, her face red and busting out in sweat, maybe even tears.

“You spoke it, Candice,” says her old companion.

Once your eyes get used to the low light, you see this is an elegant place painted Irish green with a nice solid wooden bar and nice solid wooden furniture. Except somehow the mix of people speaks of a bar that, like the downtown surrounding it, has passed its business-class prime.

A large black-and-white photo shows the Hotel San Diego in its post-World War II heyday with fine Studebakers and Packards parked outside, and sailors’ locker-clubs next door. “Single room, with bath: $3.50 per night,” reads the sign. “Double, with detached bath: $3.00.” Next to it is a picture of Harry’s Bar and a prosperous-looking 1930s foursome, ladies with feathered hats sitting with their baggy-suited companions.

“Martini,” says the Sleek Gent.

“How much for a beer, sir?” chimes in the wispy-bearded guy who followed him in. He kind of bounces up and down on the balls of his feet, like a young pup waiting for a morsel.

“Two-fifty a bottle. Dollar-seventy-five draft,” says the bartender.

“Uh, oh. Great. Thanks a lot. I’ll, uh, tell my friends.”

He makes to leave, but then the old man at the end says, “OK Charlie, buy him one on me. Hey! Come down here!”

The young man bounces toward his benefactor.

“We have a better crowd Thursday nights,” the bartender says apologetically to the Sleek Gent. “Seem to get a lot of young people from the colleges in then.”

“You know I used to go to Harry’s in New York all the time,” says the Sleek Gent, who says his name is Robby.

“Harry’s. It was . . . different than this. Kind of heavily paneled, a men’s bar. Wall Street types. We’d do our bond trading right there. Buy a bit, sell a bit--write it up afterward back at the office. That was the thing.

“Not a single guy ever reneged on a deal done in Harry’s. That’s when a handshake was a handshake. Before Ivan Boesky and his crowd,” says the Sleek Gent, now a financial consultant in San Diego.

Hey, hey mama, won’t you dig that beat . . .

“I used to be barman here,” says Gino, a wiry man sitting up at the bar sipping Coke-and-something. “I learned my trade in Hawaii from old-time barmen--how to mix real drinks, you know, cutting up everything, mixing it properly. You can spoil a lot of drinks by putting too much alcohol in them.

“A barman can bring in a lot of customers if he tries,” he says. “But, like now, Charles here. He knows more about the bar than his manager.”

Think of all the hate that there is in Red China . . . Then take a look around, to Selma Alabama . . .

“Know something,” says Gino’s friend, another guy named Gino. “I’m thinking of going back to Michigan, where I come from. People here in California, they’re laid back-- too laid back. They never get involved in anything. People think something’s wrong back there, they do something about it. People here aren’t as radical as they used to be back home.”

The Sleek Gent shifts uneasily. He refuses another drink. “Have to go meet my, uh, girlfriend, down at Sfuzzi’s.”

“Wow, that’s one of them expensive places,” says a another friend of Gino’s called Gadget. “One glass costs what you get a pitcher for here.”

“Judges used to come here,” says Gino I. “Professional people, but that was way back.”

Gadget is talking to Sleek Gent. He tells him that he lives at the Golden West, a nearby residential hotel. He had lived at the Y across the road.

“Sure, this place might not be like New York, judges and so forth, but it’s real. It’s friendly,” he says. “Pitcher of beer costs $3 in Happy Hour. Guys can come here, get drunk and go home quietly. Other bars around here are really expensive, or they get really dangerous.”

“Sure, sure,” says Sleek Gent.

Next to him a large lady is drinking sake, a regular offering now that the place has Japanese owners.

“Hey, Gino!” she says to Gino II. She’s looking at the Karaoke song list. “This is our song! I’m going to do it! Want to come do it with me?”

“I’ll sit right here and listen babe,” says Gino II. “You know what this place reminds me of?” he asks Sleek Gent. “The ‘Cheers’ bar. Like on TV. All sorts. Watering hole.”

“I’d recommend Sfuzzi’s, on 5th,” the ex-New Yorker confides, as he plops off his stool. “It’s more . . . well, a different class of people.”

As he leaves, the guy with the bounce and the cash-flow problem when it comes to beer is also walking out. He holds the door for the Sleek Gent with an exaggerated sweep of the arm.

Outside, Sleek Gent hurries off into the night to find Sfuzzi’s and his own kind as the sounds from Harry’s Bar waft out into the night--with Gino’s girlfriend on vocals. . .

I’ll make a brand new start of it

In ol’ New York

If I can make it there

I’ll make it anywhere. . .