I haven’t written anything in quite a while. Every time I got an idea I got sidetracked, or backburnered it, or simply stared at the blinking cursor and couldn’t find the words. Every week that went by without writing something the momentum slipped away more and more. It became harder and harder to shake the rust off and put something out into the world, and I became more and more ashamed of how little I have accomplished over the past few years. Sometimes it takes a loss to put things in perspective, to hit that uncomfortable point where action is finally less painful than inaction. Having a loss always spurs me to write, to organize my thoughts and feelings and put them in their right place, to clear my head and find a way through the cloud. Today I found out about a loss.
Last Saturday I had a sad day. There was no reason for it, it was just a day that I felt sad. I know that it isn’t cool to talk about negative emotions, and that they are often hidden under the highlight reel of social media, but we all have those days. I learned a long time ago it is best to just take in those emotions, feel down, embrace the suck, and eventually make it through the other side. For some reason all the sadness that I felt that day was about a place that I used to call home.
I moved to Albany less than a month after I turned 18. I lived in various dorms, ramshackle houses, and places that have since been bulldozed for the next 7 years. After graduation I visited as often as I could but then one day I went back and it didn’t feel like home anymore. Most of my friends had moved on, the places that seemed familiar weren’t anymore, and I had changed and built a life in Vermont. It was what growing up was supposed to be, albeit on a delayed timetable afforded to manchildren like myself. Some of my best friends still live there, and I visit every few months, but it isn’t home, it is just a destination.
While it was home to some of my greatest memories, and forged most of the friendships that I hold dear today, I can’t help but equate Albany with sadness. Not just because it is a grey post industrial city where the summers are marked with stagnant humidity and the winters are a slushy mess. College wasn’t easy on me, I was plagued by anxiety, insomnia, and a bad attitude that jaded many of the good times that I did have. I was very angry all those years and I wasn’t a very likable person, not to mention that I really didn’t like my self all that much either. Visiting makes me think of the person who I used to be rather than the person who I have become. But the saddest thing about Albany, in my mind at least, is that whenever I visit I get the overwhelming sense that it is filled with ghosts.
To be clear I ain’t afraid of no ghosts, and these aren’t spooky ghosts. They are just the ghosts that live in my memories. I have a very good situational memory, I can remember experiences and situations far better than most people. I often find myself telling people stories about things they have long forgotten or repeating back to them quotes that they thought were throw away words that somehow managed to lodge in my brain. I also can drive past a place that I haven’t been for years and remember exactly when I was there and who I was with. Because of that the crooked dutch streets and worn down boulevards of Albany are filled with hundreds of manufactured landmarks that trigger explosions of memories whenever I drive them.
These memories bring up a time that may not have been as rewarding as today is, but was certainly more care free, at least through the lens of nostalgia. I flash on people who I haven’t seen in years, and many who I will never see again. Some of them are people who have died or those that I have had a falling out with. The ones that I feel the worst about are the ones who just faded out of my life, because at one time we were so close because our world was so small and now I don’t even know where they wound up or who they have grown up to become. I can deal with visiting gravestones, and knowing where my enemies are (I have insomnia and the internet, I know what they are up to), it is the ghosts of former friends who aren’t in my life anymore that make me the saddest. One of the places that these ghosts remind me of the most is a little place on Lark street called Bombers Burrito Bar.
Let’s be clear, Bombers was not an authentic Mexican place. By most standards the burritos were not objectively good. They were at best mid level under seasoned low class food sold in a dirty basement and a slightly cleaner bar by a variety of hipsters. Each burrito was the size of a nerf football, weighed more than a brick, and was sold underneath a giant neon sign for less than 9 bucks (including tax) during my college years.If you went on your birthday you could get a free burrito, or if you were in a big enough party you could get a giant margarita for free. So cheap, filling, and served with booze, that was the trifecta for the long term college student like myself. Plus every one of my friends felt the same way, all you had to do was mention the B word and we would be scrounging up our change and piling in a car and heading to Lark street in search of burritos and adventure.
On the night before my 21st birthday I headed to Lark street at 11pm and walked upstairs at Bombers. I have never been to the bar before since I didn’t have a fake ID, but I had heard years of stories passed down from others about the delights that happened up there. It turns out that there was no bouncer and I just sat down at a table since I was the only one there. When the waitress came out she said that they were closing early instead of at 1am, and I was dejected. I explained that I planned on having my first legal drink there at 12:01, specifically a Strongbow cider, but I didn’t want to hold her up. She took my order and came back a few minutes later with my burrito and a Strongbow just for me, when I tried to pay she wouldn’t let me, she also wouldn’t let me leave. Her and another bartender closed up and shut everything down and at 12:01 we all took a shot of Jager, they didn’t let me pay for that one either. In a long an lonely summer it was one of the few moment of happiness that I can remember.
Last Saturday I made a plan. To get myself out of my funk I was going to head to Albany, and spend the night before my 38th birthday eating a burrito and drinking a cider at Bombers (I was going to pass on the Jager). But as with the best laid plans it will never come to fruition. Today I saw an article that said the Bombers closed for good last weekend. It isn’t a surprise, they have been going rapidly downhill and COVID/Inflation/Worker Shortage hasn’t been kind to the restaurant industry. But it still hurts.
Judging from the comments after I posted the article it hurts for a lot of other people to. Those of us who remember an Albany that was different from the one that is there today. Those who shopped at the Ghetto Chopper, and ate wings at Ralphs, who saved the free drink tokens from the Elbo Room, and partied at the Holland Houses. Those who remember our crazy professors, and what it was like going to a college with 2 buildings, or how we all knew what day of the week it was by what Fraternity was wearing their jerseys. Bombers in many ways was a token of those simpler days, a relic of the mid 2000s when we had Faux Hawks and wore wristbands, when text messages cost 10 cents a piece so we called each other on our flip phones, and we all gathered around the TV to watch House or PrisonBreak in real time with commercials. It was a foundation of many great memories, but now that the giant neon sign is going to come down it will just be another ghost in the city that I used to call home.
Owen Foley 