Back in the Mid eighties the Post It Note was kind of a new thing, manufactured exclusively by 3M in Saint Paul, Minnesota. During these times I was a managing chef at a restaurant in a little berg just north of St Paul. It was quaint little place, not without its downsides of course, and it did sort of become a family for the employees. Evan, the other kitchen manager and I split our shifts, one would cover days during the week then do a double shift on Sundays, brunch and dinner, the other would cover nights and have Sunday off, rotating the schedule weekly. Both of us had Mondays off, provided we avoided answering the phone when Mark, the owner, called us to cover his Monday shift. Evan and I were also roommates, quite another story, often on Mondays we would sit through twenty or thirty rings then disconnect the phone from the wall. I’ll get to the post it, eventually. Sunday nights started to become a ritual of meeting up at the restaurant around closing, eating dinner, rounding up the various closing staff and head off to the Trolley.
Usually four or five people, Mark would often come, Me, Evan, Lynnette D…ski a kinky haired polish girl from North St Paul, Carol, a kindergarten teacher who picked up weekend shifts waiting tables for pocket money, maybe one of the bus staff Dan a fresh 21, or Shelley our underage but devastatingly cute bus girl. Rog would always come, the dishwasher, descended from Japanese American stock at Two fifty plus pounds it was rumored he had Sumo in his blood. You’ll have to excuse me a bit for prattling on, I’m recollecting fresh memories as I write and of course gaining a sense of sentimentality as these memories refresh. I never really considered this that special of a time in my life, seemed like I was just doing my best to get by, too busy to recognize how we all had become connected. Seems at that particular point in time we were all struggling, somewhere around ’87. A quick check of Wikipedia tells me Reagan had prostate surgery early in 87 tough enough after 6 years of the guy we all had to deal with his prostate also. Digression. So yeah Sunday night we would all go out, most likely the only place we would see each other outside of that strip mall restaurant.
The Trolley was a strip club in East St. Paul with as many odd eccentricities as our whacky staff. It was not sanitized, the floors were sticky and for some reason the dancers were behind glass, sure some law requiring immorality to have a barrier from the moral, which is which who knows? We would hang out, at times sliding a bill through the crack in the glass for our favorite dancers who after a time we got to know, aside from the glass it was informal, people would just hang out. The pool table was flat and lots of sharp players would swing a stick, even me a time or two, I was no match for the types that brought their own stick. Some times it was just us and the dancers maybe a bouncer and the bartender.
Is any of this that special, maybe not. As I travel, I see a world so considered in its construction, considered in a way to not offend and to idealize. Safe. Environments so prepossessed about image and presentation that it becomes the character and personality. Much like a person who is so insecure about their faults or weaknesses they become their own presentation instead of personality. It is these various defects, idiosyncrasies, stickiness in a way that slows me down to examine what out of the ordinary, which once was ordinary. Flashing by a world of like textures, pastels and patinas, searching for something beyond the generic.
One Sunday we headed out for our ritual fun, upon entering we were greeted by three sad faces, the bartender, a dancer and the bouncer. Examination of the bar revealed an empty space and random detritus where the glass box used to be. Turns out a faction of the city council felt Jerry Mondeschien’s chain of strip clubs, three to be exact, to be a black mark on the face of St. Paul’s less desirable neighborhoods and revoked his club license. I just did a search for the trolley to confirm the owner’s name maybe some pictures of the club. Results just showed a bunch of articles about bringing back the trolley system and revitalization of St. Paul’s eastern neighborhoods. Nothing about the place we would all hang about.
3M’s factories were dotted all over the Twin Cities area. The Post it factory, just down the street from The Trolley. On those wet winter nights we would actually park in the empty factory lots. The heavy adhesive smell of post it glue would hang in the air as we walked up the block on 7th street. I always liked that smell.