Honky Tonk Blue

Redd's -- Fourth Quarter

A Cosmopolitan. For real. Bright pink. Set off with a nice green lime, in a moderne Martini glass.

Needless to say, just about everyone else at Redd's Restaurant & Bar in Carlstadt -- known as a watering hole for diehard Giants fans -- is drinking beer. Coronas with limes in their mouths are in the hands of many of the guys here, as they watch the Giants inching their way toward -- can it really be? -- an incredible upset victory over the not-so-perfect Pats. The score is now 10 to 7, with eight minutes left in the quarter.

But Bobbie Jo Brelsford, who ordered the Cosmo, is marching to a different drummer -- and not only in her choice of refreshment.

"Come on, Patriots!" she screams, her necklace of red blue and silver beads bouncing up and down and she jumps.

"Who drinks a Cosmo at a football game -- especially the Super Bowl?" she asks, rhetorically. "I do."

Brelsford, a Manhattan resident (she grew up in Pawtucket R.I., hence her loyalties), was there with four friends, Tom Berlinski, Tom's older brother Andy, and their pals Chris DeCarlo and Mike Giancaspro, all from East Rutherford.

All of them are wearing blue beads.

Wait, it gets better. Tom is the boyfriend of the Cosmo-drinking, Patriots-loving Bobbie Jo.

Tom is a Giant's fan.

"We haven't talked in the last two weeks," Tom says. "I supported her team the entire season, and she supported my team. Until now."

Every few minutes, the room erupts into a "Come on, El!" "Let's gooooooo!" or a big  "oooohhhhhhhhhhh!!!" as the Giants defense stops the Patriots on third down, forcing them to punt.

"Come on, Patriots!!" Breslford shouts.

"Sit down, Brelsford!" one of her friends shout back.

The four buddies are yelling, high-fiving, and hugging each other as the clock ticks town and the score inches up.

But Bobbie Jo, sipping her Cosmo, is confident. "When the Patriots win, I'm gonna dance on the bar, baby," she says.

But things are in the wind now that not even a Cosmopolitan can take the edge off.

"Yeeessssssssssssssssssssssssssss!!!!!" the room erupts, as Eli Manning passes the ball to Plaxico Burress in the end zone. The score is now 16-14.

"If Eli wins tonight, I say kudos to him, because he's no longer in his brother's spotlight," Brelsford says magnanimously.

Now it's just an incredible 30 seconds left, and the unthinkable is unmistakable. The Giants are going to win this thing.

"Come on Manning! Yeah! Yeah Yeah!!!"

Suddenly, like a volcanic eruption, the whole bar explodes. It's over.

"Yesssss!  Yessssss! Yessssss!"

"This is a miracle," Tom Berlinski says.

People are hugging. People are screaming. People are slapping backs, hands, the surface of the bar -- anything slappable.

"I think it's amazing," DeCarlo says. "Very unexpected. If you told me at the first half of the season that they would be champions, I wouldn't have believed it."

His buddy Giancaspro seconds that emotion.

"They were the underdogs from the beginning," he says. "Nobody counted on Eli to do it, but he came out of his brother's shadow."

At another end of the bar, Brelsford is sitting by herself. She has a thoughtful look on her face.

"What about that dance on the bar?" I ask her.

"It was postponed," she says.

   

Photos from Redd's in Carlstadt

 

Rick's -- First Quarter

I have heard about this Rick's American Cafe, and also about Monsieur Rick.

Wait, let's start again.

Rick's American Bar & Grill in Clifton, as it turned out, is not a hotbed of intrigue where all the refugees and black marketeers of Europe have come wheeling and dealing for the few precious exit visas. Not exactly.

But this much-loved hangout, in the general vicinity of Giants Stadium, is a place where a surprisingly diverse group of football fans -- all stripes, all teams -- have gathered to watch the Giants trounce the Patriots on 32 screens. Like the movie says, everybody comes to Rick's.

"Here's a Redskins fan," says bartender Chuck Argenti of Ridgefield, seven years with the place, as one regular walks through the door.

"And here's a Dallas fan," he says.

There's even a New Orleans Saints fan, y'all. "I don't like the local teams," says Al Dibenedetto of Clifton. "I like to be different. You say it's white, I say it's black."

Most of the enormous crowd cheering, yelling and pounding the bar-tops are of course True Blue. Bartender Argenti among them. "It's just very unexpected," he says. "You don't expect the Giants to be in the Super Bowl. It's a true example of a team playing as a team."

"Knock his helmet! Knock his helmet!" yells Joe Torres of Garwood, as the Giants defense kicked into high gear.

"I always say, 'Knock their helmet off their head,' " Torres says. It's almost the end of the first quarter, and things are looking good for the Giants so far: 3-0.

"Defense! Defense!" the crowd roars loudly -- very loudly -- as the TVs boom from every part of the room.

"Could you ask them to turn it down?" says Serena Gallagher of Clifton, a slightly pained look on her face, as she walks up to bartender Argenti.

Argenti complies, turning the sound down from about 3000 decibels to 2090.

"I'm really a basketball fan," says Gallagher, who is here with 6 friends.

"I've made a deal with my friends," she says. "They come here with me for basketball games, and I come here with them for football games."

Photos from Rick's Cont.

 

Photos from Rick's in Clifton

Goin' out for a beer and a Bowl

Yo. Big Blue in the houuussssssse.

Or better yet, not in the house. You know what it's like watching the Super Bowl in the house.

Dudes in front of the wide screen TV force-feeding themselves Tostidos while the women-folk are upstairs in the guest room watching a Netflix DVD of "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants." And all through the neighborhood, toilets flushing in unison at 7 minute intervals.

That is, except for the families -- mine for instance -- where the ladies are the sports fanatics who hijack the TV while the guys go out and bond over weepy movies (my brother and me during Super Bowl XXXVII, "The Hours," 2003 -- no, I'm not making this up).

OK, not many families.

But this isn't about families. This isn't about home. This is about the strange, mystical, exhilarating thing that happens when too many dudes who have had too much beer are together in a bar.

Now it happens -- full disclosure -- that I don't follow football.

I don't really even know much about Super Bowl XLII, the greatest event in my next-door-neighbor's lifetime, the contest that will determine whether the favored New England Patriots will become the first NFL team to complete a perfect season, undefeated since the 1972 Miami Dolphins, or the Giants -- think of it!!! -- will give New Jersey a whole new reason to be proud now that Tony Soprano is off the air.

No, I dont know much about that.

But I do know about drunk people in bars.

That's because -- full disclosure -- I've spent a lot of time playing in bar bands.

And I can tell that the Super Bowl party at Rick's American Cafe in Clifton -- one of three joints I plan to visit during a Super Bowl night pub crawl -- is going to be a lot better than any gig I ever played.

It's going to be a lot better because there's goinig to be no drunken woman staggering onto the stage, grabbing the microphone, and blurting, "Can I sing something?"

Welcome!

Record reporter Jim Beckerman will be voyaging out into Giant Bar land.