[Editor’s note: For this week’s essay we’ve once again pulled out a relic from the archive of Slim Goodbuzz, who served as Duluth’s “booze connoisseur” from 1999 to 2009. Twenty years ago the Sultan of Sot paid a visit to the O’Gilby’s, 511 E. Fourth St. in Duluth’s Central Hillside, and composed this article for the November 2004 issue of the Ripsaw magazine. O’Gilby’s closed in May 2008; the location is now a parking lot.]

The great thing about being an alcoholic in a region with so many bars is that there is one to fit each of my moods. No matter what I feel like doing, there is an establishment that caters to that specific type of fun. O’Gilby’s isn’t the kind of place you go to see live music. It isn’t the kind of place where you go to try to pick someone up. It isn’t a place where you go to dance or to participate in illegal gambling. No, O’Gilby’s is the kind of place you go to when you just want to get plastered and sit around like an Ethiopian with flies on your face. And tonight I’m having the time of my life.

“Give me a bottle of your worst beer,” I say to the bartender. Christ, I don’t care what kind of beer I get, I just want to know what the worst beer in this place is, but he’s not willing to play this game with me. He just stands there looking at me, thinking maybe I’m not serious, until the woman sitting next to me says “Pabst! Pabst is the absolute worst,” firmly establishing O’Gilby’s as a non-hipster bar. In hipster bars, Pabst is considered the best, so much so that in the Twin Cities there are places where a PBR goes for $5. It’s strange that metropolitan prissies who couldn’t tell you which end of a hammer the handle is on love such a working-class beer. I think it’s part of that ” look at me, I’m creating irony” thing.

Take it from a guy who knows the top shelf from the bottom shelf: Pabst is a great $2 beer. If you’re drinking it to match your meticulously askew trucker hat, however, you are an annoying little twat. There’s no irony to be found at O’Gilby’s, thankfully, so the PBR is reasonably priced. Call me cheap if you like. I assure you that the people who call me cheap don’t drink every day.

All around the bar, people are sitting and drinking, listening to “When the Levee Breaks” groaning out of the jukebox. Some of them are engaging in conversation, but some aren’t. Everyone is smiling and laughing and laid back, with nothing to prove to anyone; it doesn’t matter how laid back and mellow you get here, because this is O’Gilby’s. They actually keep a little orange pillow (trimmed with lace and embroidered) behind the bar for a patron named Gordy, who is known to frequently fall asleep with his head on the bar. Now that’s laid back.

“I see a beer in my hand but I can’t feel myself holding it,” says the guy at the bar next to me. This guy’s a little too laid back, if you know what I mean. The beer in his right hand isn’t much cause for concern, however, the car keys in his left hand are.

“Let me see those keys,” the bartender says, and the guy, who is obviously squiffy enough to think this is a normal request, tosses his keys to the bartender, who pretends to examine them for a minute, then stealthfully hides them in a drawer. It takes the guy about ten seconds to forget the exchange ever happened. His companions note the exchange, though, and nod their approval.

Back toward the door, a couple of guys are ruining everything by actually doing something — playing pool. I can’t stand for all this activity. I’m gonna puke in the corner pocket and head home.