Loud, Not Clear

Casey’s Back Alley Bar & Grill is one place that will feel noticeably tamer should the smoking ban at bars, clubs and other public venues go into effect as scheduled on Jan. 1. On crowded nights, and that is most of them, the smoke at Casey’s feels about as thick as the crust on this nightspot’s celebrated pan pizza.

You will probably hear Casey’s before you see it. As I approach the parking lot one evening, I feel the rumble of bass and perceive booming coming from the darkened interior. It is the jarring alternative-rock of Echo Love Chamber, and brother, do they echo.

There may be something for everyone here. To the left of the front entrance is an almost genteel-looking five-table billiard area, walls painted in a backdrop depicting a trompe l’oeil view of the New York City skyline.

Deeper inside, toward the bar, four guys are playing Foosball, twirling their players at eye-blurring speeds. Directly across the main seating area, mostly high tables and wooden stools, a considerably more gentle video game called Golden Tee ’97 has drawn a crowd of golf nuts.

I repair to the bar, a long, curved wooden area where a model missile, colored toxic orange, is embedded nose first atop the glass racks. Soon I am approached by Chris Walther, an off-duty bartender who spots me taking notes and immediately begins bragging about his employer. Walther is munching on pan pizza, drinking beer out of a tall, frosty glass stein. “You gotta tell everybody about the pizza,” he exhorts, so I taste a piece, and it is springy and cheesy, sure to please fans of thick pizzas.

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Meanwhile, the bar and dance-floor areas, reasonably sparse with customers at 9:30 p.m., are inexorably becoming thronged with men in cowboy hats, flannel shirts and casual wear and young women in designer jeans, a group that seems to be distinguished by the liberal use of eye makeup.

I decide on a shot of Jagermeister, served from a three-bottle Jagermeister dispenser. The idea is fairly irresistible, because this the first such contraption I’ve ever seen. But the bartender, on the lookout for the uninitiated, warns me that the stuff tastes like Vicks Formula 44, and he’s right.

Next time, I’m going for one of Casey’s specialties--a black-and-tan, a combination of Guinness Stout and Bass Ale, both of which are available on tap at the bar.

As I work my way to the exit, I stop to chat with three women who came from Huntington Beach for a bachelorette party, a welder looking for love and two transplanted New York moms on a night out. As I reach the parking lot, my ears are ringing, and it takes me a minute to realize that that the music has stopped, temporarily.

BE THERE

Casey’s Back Alley Bar & Grill, 1325 N. Tustin St., Orange. (714) 538-9685. Live music Tuesday-Saturday night. Cover: $5. No cover Sunday-Monday. Pizzas are $5.50-$16.