Dispatching some new info and a couple quick thoughts on things relevant and thing decidedly not so relevant…

We here at the Mongoose Den are glad you made it out of Thanksgiving alive and well, and we’re anxiously awaiting your imminent return to us. We want to hear all about your Thanksgiving as well as your plans for Christmas and Kwanzaa. We’ve a few new things to show you when you stop by at the Den. First off, our Draught Wall continues to beef up, and we are scouring the scene seeking out all those frothy brews we expect will please you most. Look out for a few special and rare seasonal beers both on Draught and on Cask coming very soon. Secondly, as the weather around here cools down and our tremendous city of Houston settles its bones into an almost slumbering pace, we have concocted a few new blood-warming cocktails to get you through the winter – think about the best Irish Coffee you’ve ever tasted and a scalding and toothsome Hot Bourbon Toddy.  Also, we’ve been aging batched cocktails over the last six months or so (in point of fact, since before we even opened our doors to you and all the other Charleses.)  Now the dust has settled over the rafters a bit, and we think these oddly delicious studies in what patience and time can accomplish are finally ready to be unleashed upon the masses.  A few new food items have appeared on our menu that we find rather more appropriate to the season, as well.  A particularly great one is spinach sautéed in olive salad, lemon and garlic on a toasted sourdough baguette with melted provolone. You must try this.

Lastly, keep your eyeholes peeled for the emergence of the “Charles Club”, a drinking and literature club that will surely prove legendary.

And last, lastly: We recently came across a relatively new book (2011) entitled Hello Goodbye Hello by one Craig Brown. It is a remarkable read in many ways; however, of particular interest is a section in which Mr. Brown describes a journey taken by one of the world’s most creative and elegant talents, Rudyard Kipling. Kipling had traveled much of the world by the time he was just 23 years old. He had witnessed a gunfight in Chinatown, met real Cowboys in Montana and landed a 12-pound Salmon in Oregon. He had also fallen in love with she who would be his first wife.  But none of this impressed Kipling so much as an encounter with a man who at the time was Kipling’s idol, Mark Twain, a man who was (is) the purest embodiment of all that is America. The two men met at Twain’s stately home near Elmira, N.Y. and talked for only about two hours. They discussed many things, including the possibility of Twain writing a final ending to his infamous rascal, Tom Sawyer. The curious thing here, what impressed us so, is that Kipling considered this moment the most intensely satisfying and amazing moment of his entire life. Seventeen years after this encounter, Kipling would go on to become world famous and, amazingly, Twain would become so enraptured with Kipling’s work and his creative oeuvre that he made it a point to read Kipling’s Kim at least once every year. Twain said of Kipling, “He is a stranger to me but is a most remarkable man-and I am the other one. Between us, we cover all knowledge; he knows all that can be known, and I know the rest.”

Here’s to Rudy, and here’s to Mark, but mostly here’s to you, Charles – let’s pick up where Twain and Kipling left off, for surely there is much more knowledge to be known.

The stools are new, but you can see
That B.A. Rifsner built the steel
Here inside the Auditorium Grocery

A saw in the rafters will set pine free
That old time feeling is for real
This place is the only bar for me

Your Friday night might only be
A touch of bourbon and an orange peel
Here inside the Auditorium Grocery,

But that might just be all we need
As an older Houston is revealed
In the only bar for you and me

Through the windows a century breatheS
Sit and feel how history feels
Here inside the Auditorium Grocery,
This place is the only bar for me.

-shafer hall 10/2/12

As the oven sputters,
young hearts flutter,
and our regulars coo
to one another,
there is still much of you
between these walls.

Thanks again, squab;
I’ll help add a twig or two
to your next nest
in Houston or in the sky.

-Shafer Hall

From offices high and far and wide,
The people descend with one purpose in mind,
The fabulous, rich, the poor and the plain
Shoving and pushing and ‘Beer me again!’

With tastes diverse and palettes to please
It’s my job to serve them and charge them their fees
Our Selection diverse and our beer list is long,
‘Ere, scuse me matey, get rid of that bong’

Sorry to break from this tale I must tell
But drugs in a bar is my vision of hell
Clean spirits is what we want you to take
So that hangover free you will hopefully wake

Or beer, that most noble and ancient of ales
The hops, the malt, the incredible smells
Of little yellow flowers in an English field
Bobbing around to the wind that they yield

There’s a ruckus in the corner it seems to me
And someone may have said something funny
That wasn’t taken as well as it might
And suddenly now we’ve got our first fight.

Good Adam descends and pulls them apart
‘Fore damage is done to a bodily part
Hands are shaken and pats on the back
‘Sorry old boy, I’ll cut you some slack’

These are the problems we often will face
When drink makes feelings get out of place
But a kind word can soothe and smooth and disarm
For none come here with intent to do harm

I’ll break way now and leave you to drink
Afore all the customers cause a stink
Waiting and thirsting for spirits or beer
Longing and needing some Friday night cheer

The weekend has landed, it’s finally here,
And it’s time to make my guests feel so very queer
The spirits are flowing and the beer shoots out
Lager and bitter, Pilsner and stout.

-Andy Charlton

We wanted to send you a note from here inside your safe quarters; this is your well-fortified former grocery.  It is the home of the big door, and it is the home of the even bigger fridge.   It is the home of over two hundred liquors, approximately one hundred draught, bottled, and cask-conditioned beers, and it is the home of one baboon named Charles.  That’s right.  We named him after you.

For those of you keeping score: the contents of your bottles, cocktail glasses, and imperial pints represent approximately twenty states in the Union over two dozen countries on four continents around the world.   In the coming months, we will strive to increase those numbers in a few different ways.  Corey has been diligently sipping new beers, and Mike and Theo have been carefully curating our liquor lists.

Andy, our beloved British Skipper who comes to his nickname by way of direct heritage from Lord Admiral Nelson, has initiated a Tuesday-night program of cocktails from around the world.  This month features French cocktails, including three different versions of the French 75, with creative new names that will surprise you when you see them.

A new initiative to combine our two favorite things, i.e. liquor and beer, will be introduced on Monday night, when Moonshine Mike and Half-Asleep Hall will be experimenting with beer-based cocktail recipes, some created by mixologists from around the world and some created in-house according to our demanding specifications and your own.

Live music is now available to you on Sunday and Monday nights.  Literary events and classic films are to follow in the next few months.  But in the meantime, Charles, just keep doing what you do best.  Keep keeping us busy.  Keep Shafer awake.  Keep your head up and diligently watch for the fangs of certain gaudily-decorated poisonous snakes.  Keep our quarters safe, that we may all continue to be that which we are.

Yours in the bond,

Charles

PS: Who was dreaming when the Roy Orbison came to us in our dream?  There is only one answer.  It was you Charles, and it was me.  Charles.

Corey, Ian, Mike, and I were in a festive mood. The pouring of the multi-leveled concrete slab in front of the Mongoose was both a physical and a psychological victory for all of us. It was a substantial thing (that mere hours before did not exist.) It was also as close as we would come to signage—our friend Alan used styrofoam to create reliefs in the concrete. One side gives our address, 1011 McGowen, and the other side quotes Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses: “That which we are, we are.”

The Tennyson poem was important to us all. In addition to Ulysses drinking “life to the lees,” (the fermented debris at the bottom of the bottle) he describes a life in which “though much is taken, much abides.” Our beloved Mongoose is built on the site of the 1915 Auditorium Grocery. Though the meat and produce of the old grocery have long been removed, much abides in the brick walls, the concrete floor, the nearly-petrified wood beams, and in the signature of steel-worker B. A. Rifsner up in our black steel facade.

As we sat on the patio in front of Leon’s, in front of the well-traveled “waterway” of McGowen Street,  strange sailors and journeymen washed up on our shore. A forklift driver from Oklahoma named James Big Knife stopped and talked to us for a while (he was a non-drinker.)

Around ten o’clock, an odd fellow sat down next to us. He was drinking rum and Coke, and he had a lot of opinions. We would’ve gladly told him that we were opening a craft beer bar across the street, but he never asked. He expressed himself uproariously, and we didn’t mind letting him do all of the talking. He told us that he liked Leon’s because of its reasonably-priced and well-made drinks. (We agree!)  He also told us that he doesn’t like to go downtown, where he has to pay “ten bucks for some kinda craft beer stew.” We laughed heartily. In many ways, we knew what he meant. He went on to describe the “college dropout in Oregon brewing frat-beer in his basement” (he seemed to be conflating his prejudices in this particular rant) and then he said something I don’t remember about the Houston Rockets. As he walked down the street, muttering to himself, we talked about who we’d like to see at our bar, and we agreed that we’d like to appeal to anyone, including that guy. That which we are, we are, and that which he was, he definitely was. That which our customers will be, they will be, and we will find the beverage that best suits them. For those of you roaming with a hungry heart, we will find that which you will drink to the lees.

But we look forward to the adventurous customers, those who believe with us (and with Ulysses) that “tis not too late to seek another world.” We have spent years seeking new worlds through unusual beers and spirits, and we hope that you will join us in the gleaming, untraveled margin within Mongoose Versus Cobra, as Corey, Ian, Mike, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses and I try “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”