For many semesters, a debate has been ongoing at Harper College about humanity and its priorities. The first structure we erected was a house–this is self-evident– but what was the second? The History Department backs what is called the Church Hypothesis. Worship comes first with homo sapiens: twas ever thus, the Historians say. (Historians are prone to using phrases like Twas ever thus, which is why they get invited to so few parties.) The Sociologists, who did get invited to shindigs, preferred the Tavern Theory. History is something that happened while people were drinking, the Sociologists often said. The Archaeology Department claimed to know the definitive answer, then tried to barter the information for more shovels and khaki shorts; they were ignored. The Chemists asked if anyone had considered dissolving the problem in acid; they were similarly ignored, but more politely. (Everyone on campus was a bit scared of the Chemistry Department, possibly because the Chemistry Department liked that everyone was a bit scared of them, and so every few years would “accidentally” aerosolize herpes or something.) Little Aleppians ignore academic quarrels until they turn into court cases or riots, and did so here.

The neighborhood had the answer. Bar. Bar won, bar none. Bar was first, second, third, fifth, and sixth, and fourth was not a church, but a hardware store. Little Aleppians got around to God, but they needed a drink first.

There was the Wayside Inn, which was almost verging on classy (except for the sexual slavery). Right down the Main Drag was Shakespeare Phil’s place, which catered to your more degenerated of gamblers and so eschewed whores as distractions; and the Clay Pigeon, where the owner had rigged up a contraption to chill beer–Our Beer Is Cold As Dick! was what the sign out front read–that exploded regularly; and Dale’s Room, where even locals with the temerity not to be white were allowed to drink; and a small but sturdy saloon in Chinatown whose name nobody wrote down before it was torched in a race riot.

La Salon Intempertioux opened in 1885, when far fewer people spoke French; the carpets were from Paris (Texas) and the bartender had a rambunctious mustache. Can-can dancers could, and did. Verna’s opened the same year, and had a dirt floor which patrons would leave their effluences upon. The Büntz brewery had a biergarten attached (as did the high school for a few years in the 1970’s, but that’s a whole different story), and the Parker Bar had a rooftop lounge, which was open for well over an hour before customers started pissing onto pedestrians below. Spooling Antwerp’s was good for a fight, but you might get your hair stolen. The Fantic, which was on Fantic, served tequila and the bartenders spoke Spanish; it was a swell night out except for when the cops would come by and beat people up. Nobody in the neighborhood felt bad in the slightest for drinkers slipped a Mickey Finn at the Choral Hydration.

In 1900, you had the Hotel Bar at the Norwegian. Big-time writers and big-game hunters drank there, and diplomats with briefcases cuffed to their wrists, and men who said they were “businessmen” and left it at that. The lion tamer, when the circus was in town. Women who knew many horses. Actors, but only the right kind, and not too Jewish. Giorgio was at the bar: he was known locally as Gorgeous George, and not ironically. He was black-haired and blue-eyed, which is a combination that short-circuits onlookers’ brains, and tall, and he had an Italian accent that other Italians would have pegged as hickish, but Little Aleppians thought was the height of sophistication. Giorgio went by only his first name because the Norwegian’s owner, Duke Dorleans, was a man of propriety and custom, and so the bartender was called by his first name, the chef went by “Chef,” and everyone else was “Boy.”

Kellerhaus opened in 1902, in the basement of a workshop on the Downside that produced counterfeit glue. The adhesive was less adulterated than the whiskey; no one came to the Kellerhaus for the drinks. They came for the pit. They came for the rats. They came to see King. 100 in six minutes was his best. All present noted the lack of blood on King’s muzzle, and agreed it was the sign of a true athlete. The dog was awarded a beefsteak for his efforts, and the rats were burned in a ditch out back. The crowd was the same as the Norwegian, mostly.

Corner bars. Lukie’s and Smitty’s and the Tuscaloosa. Nickel beers and pickled eggs, and a place to put your foot up; Americans have always demanded the ability. Juke Joints. Spartan’s and Big Lou’s Opry. Piano and a drummer. Sweaty-type places with tin roofs.

Prohibition began in 1920, the same day that the Irving Club started pouring. First nightclub in the neighborhood. Shows nightly, and then the tables would disappear from the dance floor and the Irving Orchestra would play hot jazz for the tipsy-doodles to flap about to. It was the kind of place they wrote about in gossip columns; hell, it was the kind of place in which gossip columns were written: a waiter would bring the telephone to Darcine Fast’s table, and she would get the Cenotaph on the line, dictate her copy. Popper Girls came by the tables, so-called because their cameras had flashbulbs the size of basketballs that went POPzhweeeeee when they would snap you and your wife. (The first skill a Popper Girl needed to learn was how to work the camera, but how to spot a man who was with a woman he’d rather not be photographed next to was a close second.) Around the corner, in a rented corner of a basement, was a makeshift dark room; the girls would, at the end of a roll of film, dash from the club to the darkroom and cook up glossy black-and-white portraits, then dash back to the club and sell them for two dollars a print.

The Irving was owned by Billy McGlory. Every place that served alcohol in Little Aleppo was owned by Billy McGlory, although “owned” is not the precise term. Perhaps something like “possessed a controlling interest” is better, as his name rarely appeared in any paperwork. He was an egalitarian publican; no matter how much money you had in your pocket, Billy had a drink that was exactly that price. Whiskey and tequila that came in via the Salt Wharf for the rich folks, and leppy for the poor. (Leppy was a distilled liquor that got its name because–as the saying went–“the only thing y’know for sure is that it’s made in Little Aleppo.” Was it made from corn? Wheat? Potatoes? A guy named Lou? This information was unknowable, as was how any given bottle would taste or the effects it would have. There was the occasional death, or blinding. But you could buy a pint for a dime, so: leppy.)

Little Aleppo: Everything We Can Prove notes the dearth of records directly concerning drinking establishments during the Prohibition, but makes a sturdy case via newspaper reports, diary entries, correspondence, and various other sources that the number of bars remained consistent throughout the Volstead Act’s enforcement. The cops weren’t a problem, unless you didn’t pay them. The feds would pull their dicks out every month or so and raid a place, but Billy would always get word and send his guys over to replace the actual stock with bottles full of water. The next day, he’d sell the booze back to the bar owner. It wasn’t the kind of business you kept detailed records about.

The raids stopped after the 21st Amendment passed in ’33, but that was about it. Right after ratification, a few guys told Billy that they would be buying their alcohol from another purveyor. No hard feelings and all, Billy. It’s business. Billy smiled, and shook their hands, and that evening decided which of the group annoyed him the most, and then had his brother Liam kill the guy that very night. No hard feelings. It is in that fashion that Billy McGlory shifted careers from bootlegger to wholesaler.

The Depression hit Little Aleppo in a way that was both fair and not: everybody lost some money, but some money was all the poor people had in the first place. There was talk in the barrooms of Communism, though the bartenders remained stalwart believers in (and enforcers of) Capitalism, and several putsches took place at the Büntz bierhaus, but none of them had historical repercussions. The Irving Club changed its name to the Menefreghista when the man known locally as The Friend became the new non-owner, and when the war started, two choice tables would be occupied every show by uniformed men and their dates. The Friend picked up the tab, and even supplied the dates. Always good for business to be patriotic, he thought.

The Friend also had a stake in the USO Bar during the war, and much preferred that the servicemen stayed there. They didn’t have any money, first of all, and were constantly fighting or breaking into musical numbers. (The USO Bar was not legally–or in any way, really–connected to the United Service Organization, which did not serve alcohol. The Friend thought that was downright un-American. The boys are defending our country; least you could do is offer ’em a drink, so he opened up a new joint right next to the actual USO hall, named it the USO Bar, charged the boys a dime for a cold beer, and then ignored all the letters from the military’s lawyers.

There were experimental places all through the years. Candle’s was children’s birthday-themed, and each drink came gift-wrapped; a sudden spike in ribbon prices drove them to bankruptcy, along with the fact that no one would ever return for a second visit. Sunsplash On Your Goolies was not helping itself with the name, and no one enjoyed the glass-walled toilets. (This is inaccurate: almost no one enjoyed the glass-walled toilets. A small number of people enjoyed them far too enthusiastically.) Fausto’s Den was billed as for swingers, but what that meant was that Fausto would take his pants off when he got liquored up, which happened at around 7 pm. He had a long, skinny dick that he would helicopter around and slap on the back of patrons’ necks; nobody like it, not even folks who were into that sort of thing. Some nights, he’d jack it in one of the booths. Sweet Ellen’s Banjo Fancy was a beer-and-a-shot-and-a-dozen-banjo-players kind of place, and the business’ demise is the single instance in all American case law to feature the phrase “mercy arson.”

The Hula Hula Lounge on Belly Street did better. Still there to this day. On Belly Street, which is just far enough into the Downside to make rich folks feel like they were having an adventure, but not so deep that they would actually get into one. The world’s only ukebox–a Wurlitzer filled with Don Ho singles–and the sign outside advertised the scorpionest bowls in the neighborhood. No one had any clue what the fuck that meant, but all who sampled the communal cocktail were forced to agree that, yes, the bowl was very scorpiony. Similarly featured were the waiters, who were described on a permanent display as being Fresh From Samoa! (Leading observant patrons to marvel at how much Samoan accents sound like Mexican guys saying “brah” a lot.) Guy named Archie Canton owned it. Sat by the door and greeted his guests–Hello, thank you for your hula energy. Hello–and sometimes fell off the stool. Didn’t matter: the bar had become a pilgrimage, twice over. Crime nerds come by to sit at the table where Boss Tummy got it between the eyes, and rock nerds come by to see the bar The Snug sang about in their song Freaky Tiki, which almost made it onto the charts in ’76.

The Pampered Moose is still around, too, and just as unkillable, but not by cultural milestone: the Moose is directly next door to Harper College. It was a segregated facility: undergrads trying to get laid on the ground floor, and faculty (also trying to get laid) on the second. (Grad students were, by tradition, allowed upstairs upon invitation. The professors had–consistently and relentlessly–always abused this tradition by allowing and banishing grad students for petty reasons, political reasons, and no reason at all. By the end of most nights, post-docs and master’s candidates would be crashing into one another on the stairs.) Moose heads jank out of the walls, real ones, massive. Candy shot ’em and Spud stuffed ’em. She was a hunter and he was a taxidermist. Candy and Spud owned the place; they had a good thing going.

(There are, as you might expect from members of an institution that introduced the concept of “Surprise Bolshevism” into the discourse, occasional rousing discussions about the morality of the moose heads. The Philosophy Department has accused everyone of speciesism; the English Department has demanded Philosophy stop using that word. Queer Studies had almost publicly denounced the trophies several times over the years; the lesbians were all for it, but the gay guys loved the moose and sabotaged each attempt. The Chemistry Department noted that the moose were not perfectly aligned, and they were fixed immediately.)

No students to argue about the armadillos on the walls of the Armadillo Room, and also there were no armadillos on the walls. Folks got fucked up in the Armadillo Room. Could be that another patron would do it to you all of a sudden, or maybe you and the bartender would collaborate on it all night, but you were getting fucked up in the Armadillo Room.

Everyone in Little Aleppo had been there once. Maybe twice. Any more than that was suspect. It was where disgraced teachers hung out. Failed actors. Stuttering con artists. Men who sold fictitious real estate; women missing fingers. Child actors now grown, with faces warped yet familiar. The lowest-level criminals you can imagine. Lower than that. Lower. Guys who tackled supermarket cashiers, that sort of thing, the worst kind of miscreant. The Armadillo was a mean drunk.

It was also directly across the street from police headquarters, and so the denizens of the Armadillo would brawl with the LAPD (No, Not That One) semi-annually. Sometimes the cops would start it; they’d saunter in three and four across, and the biggest one would cuss out the bartender around until some drunk dope threw a punch; the rest of the force would come rushing in through all doors at that point. Other years, the patrons would walk across the street, knock on the cops’ door, and say, “Wanna fight?” And usually–just to make sure that the answer is “yes”–somebody would coldcock the officer who answered the door.

It was tough to find a bar in Little Aleppo without a coke dealer, but the Armadillo Room was the only place in the neighborhood with a PCP dealer. Dedicated PCP guy, too. Not “I can make a call.” Had it on him.

God protects fools and drunks, we’re told, and the Armadillo Room was full of foolish drunks and drunken fools and they belched out their treason and plans; this sort of thing seeps into the masonry. Buildings become infected. Rooms redouble upon themselves. And thus the walls did become strong and the loads become bearable, and so in the Quake of 8- received nary a scratch.

You know about the Wayside Inn. The second one, the one without the slavery. (There were many patrons over the years who enjoyed role-playing at a master-slave relationship, but it wasn’t the same.) Manfred Pierce opened up in ’64. Journalists and historians would write articles about him after the fire. Little Aleppo: Everything We Can Prove called him a “radical capitalist.” Manfred would’ve liked that.

And you know about the Morning Tavern. Opens at dawn, closes at nightfall. For the real special drinkers. Bartender had inky-black hair and inked-up arms, She was in a tank top that had a duck on it; it was giving the middle finger, and fraying letters underneath read DUCK YOU.

“At first, we’re in caves. Or just huddling under a tree like an asshole.”

“Yeah, okay,” she said.

The bar was sparse, and the young man was clean-cut. He looked over-educated. No socks.

“Birds and beavers and bees figured out how to build themselves houses, but humans are primates and none of our cousins have managed it. It was a paradigmatic type of idea.”

“Gorillas just sit there in the rain and look miserable,” the bartender said. “I saw it on a documentary. It was a little pathetic.”

“I mean, they pile some leaves on top of each other, but that’s not what we’re talking about. A structure. A permanent, enclosed, space. You gotta manipulate the shit out of your environment to produce such a thing. This isn’t digging a burrow or wriggling into a found shell. Building requires second and third-level thinking. It was where we zagged when the rest of the animal kingdom zigged,”

“Our original sin.”

“Nah. We were fucked since we learned to stand.”

He was drinking Braddock’s. She took his empty glass, brought another, filled it. He raised it to her, smiled, sipped.

“The first building was used for shelter. Shit used to eat us. Remember that: shit used to eat us. And, you know, no one wants to get rained on, so the first one was for shelter. The first ones for were sleeping in. Has to be.”

“Has to be,” the bartender half-agreed.

“But what was the second? What was the first communal structure? The first gathering place? It was either a church or a bar. There’s not too many other options, are they? Wasn’t gonna be a Dairy Queen. Church or a bar. Which came first?”

“You got a cigarette?”

“I quit.”

“Me, too, but I want one.”

“Church or bar?”

“Or. Or, or, or. You clever kids and your taxonomies.”

The bartender walked away from the man, down the el-shaped bar towards a regular who could be counted on for a smoke. No matter how much money you had in your pocket, there was a drink for that price in the Morning Tavern, which is just another bar in Little Aleppo, which is a neighborhood in America.