Where everybody knows your name...

Published in The Post-Star (G1)
11/03/05

Six bars rub shoulders along the first 500 feet of Caroline Street, just off Broadway in Saratoga Springs.

Locals can easily slap a few labels on most of them, but Desperate Annie's (or "D.A.'s," as regulars call it) is harder to typecast. It attracts both cops and college kids; hipsters and aging hippies; the barely 21 revelers and the over-the-hill drunks.

"This is the kind of place where cops can sit down with criminals and not worry about work getting in the way," said Isaiah Rees, 34.

Rees has been a bartender and bouncer at D.A.'s for nearly a decade, but he's a newbie compared to John Branson, who has worked behind the bar for 25 years.

"It's a family of sorts," Branson said.

The only rule, he said, is don't be a "jerk," although he used a different word.

Nothing is especially spectacular about the place at first glance. It has the dirty floors and dim lighting of many neighborhood bars, with decor that looks straight out of the free box at a yard sale.

It might be the huge jukebox that draws people in, or the hundreds of postcards plastered on the ceiling -- a collage of bare breasts and cheesy vacation photos sent in by loyal customers.

It's probably not the stuffed deer head wearing sunglasses mounted on the wall behind the bar that keeps customers coming back.

More likely, it's the bar's lack of pretension. If Desperate Annie were a real person, she'd be the girl who was popular in school because she never tried to be. She would be nice to everyone, while making her closest friends feel like they belonged to some special club. And, miraculously, she would never age.

"When you're in your 20s, and trying to find your home away from home, that's what this place can be," said Justin Wilcox, 34, who lives in the city and has been a regular D.A.'s customer since his college years. "There are certain things a regular can count on, that will always be here -- like cheap drinks, and the Simpsons pinball game."

Wilcox said he's outgrown spending five nights a week at the bar, but other customers are more dedicated. Kevin Roberts, 43, stops in at D.A.'s almost nightly.

"I've been coming here for 25 years, since I was a college student," said Roberts. (The drinking age was 18 then). "It's mellow and comfortable. Nothing ever seems to change."

That's just what the bar's owner wants to hear.

"I bought this place in 1993, and the only things I've added are the deer head and the picture of Elvis," said D.A.'s owner, Travis, who goes by his last name only.

He goes by one name, Travis said, "to keep some mystique" and if you want to hang out in his establishment, you'd be wise -- even if you can discover what it is -- to avoid using it, because he's very touchy about it.

Depending on whom you ask, the Annie who inspired the bar's name 30 years ago was either a local girl who was underage and desperate to get inside, or a rather promiscuous lady who would do anything for a drink.

More desperate men than women show up in D.A.'s these days, but the all-male staff is eager to fend off the "meat-market" label that can get slapped on bars.

"No one gives you any trouble here. Women can come here and feel comfortable. They know that the bouncer will talk to anyone who's bothering them," Rees said.

So, is D.A.'s the neighborhood Cheers? The place where everybody knows your name?

"Yeah, I guess it really is," Branson said. "We're like Cheers with bad language."

On a recent Friday night at about 11, three young twenty-somethings wandered down Caroline Street and through the doors of D.A.'s. They showed the bouncer their IDs and waited for his approval.

"I've never been in here before," the guy told his two female companions.

He looked around, taking in the jukebox, the postcards, the deer, and the clusters of people talking and laughing.

"Cool," he declared.