Geno’s
625 Congress St., Portland
221-2382
Tom Waits for No One
Geno’s, the legendary Brown Street rock club, was forced from its subterranean digs last winter and has since relocated aboveground, to Congress Street. Its new home is the much bigger space last occupied by The Skinny, a club that’s also resurrecting itself where another bar (Whit’s End) once was.
The new Geno’s has touches of its punk-rock past, but like the reborn Free Street Taverna, it’s been resurrected in noticeably spiffier form. Geno’s now looks like a nightclub inside a rock club (which, granted, is inside an old porn theater), and the bathrooms are finally off the Superfund list.
The club still hosts rock shows about three nights a week, as well as the odd theater production, film series and dance night. The monthly poetry reading I hosted there for years may have sown its last ode, but the big-screen TV’s gone, too, so everyone’s even.
Speaking of everyone, where are they during the Happiest Hours, between 5 and 7 p.m.? Not so much at Geno’s these days. I basically had the place to myself last Friday at 5:30. Even the old Brown Street regulars don’t seem to visit as regularly. The big room gets even bigger when the music’s not playing.
There are no good reasons this is so, only bad ones. The smoking ban hit small, family businesses like Geno’s harder than those owned by people with enough extra money to give a fellow family-restauranteur-turned-Congressman cash for his gubernatorial campaigns. Portland’s beer-after-work, blue-collar culture is at the butt end of a long, slow decline due to cultural and socioeconomic factors too boring to mention here.
Sure, there are a couple things a happy hour crowd may find wanting at Geno’s. Food, for example, is limited to microwaved Hot Pockets (the chicken pot pie one is actually pretty good) and whatever nuts and candies can be scrounged by the handful from the quarter vending machines scattered around the room.
I know the lack of draft beer keeps some social drinkers away, though Geno’s list of bottled beer is surprisingly diverse and cheap. There’s PBR (in bottles) and the American triumvirate (Bud, Miller and Michelob), but also Heineken and Geary’s, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and pint cans of Guinness in house.
“ASK ABOUT OUR WINES,” the beer menu urges (connoisseurs may wish not to do this). There’s hard liquor, too, including Allen’s, but the hardened cheap-brandy drinkers don’t hang out at Geno’s for some reason (another good reason everyone else should).
Also on the plus side, the bar’s jukebox made the move from Brown Street with its excellent selection intact. Iggy and the Stooges are still back-to-back with Sinatra, Waylon, The Rev. Al, Tom Waits and ELO. There’s pinball (“The Sopranos” these days), pool and foosball tables, and video crack (a bar-top touch-screen machine).
The new place is showing artwork in the lobby — currently a series of colorful robot drawings by Kim Convery and sketches of cars on laminated graph paper by Joe McVetty III. Some of William Legere’s paintings and photos show up elsewhere, alongside vintage framed promo shots of bands that played the old place, like Malachite (a scowl-lipped all-female affair from Boston) and the Trash Brats (apparently a Poison-inspired glam outfit).
Where are you now, Brian O’Blivion? Still playing bass in the Trash Brats? Geno’s hasn’t forgotten your face, with or without the mascara and blush.
Some new faces are showing up, a Geno’s bartender told me that Friday, and things pick up once Rock Time rolls around (10 p.m., 11). This is also when many of the bartenders, cooks and waiters from the Old Port get out of work. They’re going to Geno’s to kick back in a comfortable bar.
Perhaps in a year or two the new Geno’s will be as consistently crowded as Norm’s two joints just down the block. After all, Norm’s an old punk rocker himself who played the old Geno’s many times.
In the meantime, feed the jukebox. Stay off the video crack. Rack a triangle for a game of eight-ball. With any luck, someone’ll be by to beat you shortly.
— Chris Busby
Geno’s is open seven days a week, from 5 p.m. on.
