RIP Rock Bottom Brewery Cleveland

I'm sure it's been awhile since I've posted. I can't help but feel that this is a good thing. I still enjoy writing, but that's not where my muse is right now. I am sure that some day it will come back. Maybe in another venue, maybe right here.

I wonder if I still have anyone who checks on this tired old blog. I kind of hope I don't.

A friend pointed out to me the fact that my favorite pub in Cleveland, The Rock Bottom Brewery, is closing on May 30. Yes, I am aware that this is a restaurant chain and there are a dozen such places around the country. There are two within a 15-mile radius of where I live.

That is not the goddamned point.

The point is that I spent a lot of time in the Powerhouse when I lived in Cleveland. I had many a pint there, and enough prime rib, asiago cheese dip, pretzels, and fire-roasted pizza to kill a horse. It was undoubtedly a contributing factor to why I had to move across the entire country in order to lose 15 pounds. Still, I did so love that place. Working backwards chronologically:

Rock Bottom brewery is where I practically lived for the entire month of September 2007. I ate most of my meals there, and if they had a shower that they would have let me use, I would probably not have gone back to my dingy, small, ever-emptying apartment to sleep, bathe, and loathe.

Rock Bottom is where Jess gave me my beloved autographed copy of House of Leaves. Long before I heard this disheartening news, I recommended the book to a coworker today who told me he liked psychological suspense novels.

Rock Bottom is where I went after the breakup — the second one. A small group of friends and coworkers: Joe, Matt, and Tod if I can remember it correctly, met me there after one of the most emotional and traumatic nights of my life. We drank until closing, then drove to go sober up in an IHOP or Denny's in the parking lot of a mall built in the bosom of the just-out-of-town industrial district. I was reminded that my secret desire to completely change my life was manifesting.

Rock Bottom is where I enjoyed half a metric ton of brewer's dinners. The other half happened at the Cleveland Chophouse, which is also closing.

The Chophouse is where I met Toni, wife of...

Ryan was working a brewer's dinner, which is how we met. He's probably the nicest vegetarian I know, and he would ultimately end up quitting Rock Bottom to move across the country in order to fulfill his lifelong goal of working at a tiny Centralia microbrewery for a year surrounded by butchered animal flesh. Live the dream, buddy.

Rock Bottom is where I met Scott. Apparently, I am the only person who calls Scott Scott. Most people apparently call him by his last name, but as Monk will attest, it took me years of living with the man before I was comfortable calling him Monk. Scott would keep working there even after I left, but left for greener, sunnier, bike-friendlier pastures not long after.

It's kind of funny, and I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned this before. When Ryan left and he had his going away dinner at Sokolowski's, I was convinced that I would likely never see Ryan or Toni ever again. They were moving to Washington state, 1,700 miles away. Washington may as well have been the moon as far as my cemented, round, dense Ohio ass was concerned. Dinner ended. We went to Tremont for lavender martinis and salacious conversation. This was mid-August 2007. I went stag because my girlfriend at the time was in another state, busy cheating on me.

We all have our priorities. I was convinced that I was going to stay in Ohio: depressed as fuck, hoping for an opportunity for a better job and eventually wind up married with some kids growing up in a fixer-upper somewhere far off the water in Lakewood or north of Parma somewhere. I still have those possible futurepictures in my head. They are fading, mercifully, like the photo Marty McFly keeps referring to during the Enchantment Under the Sea dance.

Six weeks after the dinner, I was on a plane flying out of that miserable sty forever.

There is virtually nothing — nothing — that I miss about Cleveland. One of the precious few things that I actually liked about that place was the Rock Bottom Brewery. I had a mental picture of going back there, years from now, and checking out who was working the bar, unsurprised that I didn't recognize them and grateful that I didn't have to suffer the ego shock of having them not recognize me. I sidle up to the bar, order the seasonal unless it's an IPA, remark that it tastes different than if Scott would have made it, and flip through a copy of Scene, asking myself how it could possible be better than a Free Times, and then get something with mashed potatoes as a side.

It would have been bittersweet.

I think I'm having a pale imitation of that moment right now. An India pale imitation.