Charlie's
Somers Point, New Jersey
This one's a bit more personal, as it was a place of curious welcome to me. Once, as a self-consciously sophisticated Euro-American teenager and, secondly, as one who had seen evil and really didn't want to see anything more complicated than a beach, a surfboard, and a wave. It, too, is still open for business.
Charlie's welcomed me home from overseas on two different occasions. The first was when I returned from Scotland and had to get used to warmer water, sun, tiny money, and girls who actually smiled. The second time was not as filled with youthful exuberance. I was only a few years older, but that period had been filled with darker responsibilities. It's best that I let those days pass and not speak of them.
Instead, let's speak of Charlie's, where I found myself once again in a summer. It was still a neighborhood place, set in the community that provides middle-class homes for those who work in the commercial boating and tourist industries on an expensive barrier island across the bay. It had its own set of characters on their familiar stools; it had a kitchen of sorts that served something resembling food.
Mostly, though, I remember one of the charter captains had a couple of large pots boiling in the back from which he would pluck some good-sized shark's jaws to display to the customers and eventually have mounted on walls.
On the next block over were a couple of places that served the energetic and enthused college demographic. I was only in my early 20's, but my world-weariness made me middle-aged and I didn't want to hang out with the summer vacation kids. So, I found a hour or so in the evening at Charlie's to be a likely place to end a day's surfing, order something inedible, while listening to the tales of charter boat crews. Some of the other surfers would join me and, with some fits and starts, including one evening where I wound up with a black eye, we beach bums were accepted into their community.
Suffice it to say, my life changed and I was not back there for some time. Upon my return fifteen years later, I found that Charlie's had decided to join the contemporary era and had expanded the building, "disappeared" the regulars, added an honest-to-gosh kitchen with highly edible food, and opened a dining area. There were families there now, eating together. There were t-shirts for sale behind the bar ["At the shore since '44"]. The shark jaws were gone, though, and I was kind of sad about that.
But, it was still, at its heart, a neighborhood place that was as friendly as south Jersey can be when you're not a local and still a good place to end a long day shredding the waves. The surfers who had started coming there were still coming, albeit now with their children and, as of last summer, their grandchildren.
I've found sanctuary in a number of places during my life. Churches, certainly, and libraries. A coffee house in Greenwich Village and a deli in Cleveland. Bars and restaurants, too. Almost all of them are gone, now, so I'm glad that there are still some Charlie's left in the world for me and those like me. Certainly, it was a place that allowed a kind of exorcism.
Maybe it's because I'm a bassist, but everything is better and more cohesive if there is at least some portion of steady rhythm present.
