[Hey everyone. As a regular reader of these posts, you’re *obviously* enjoying the free stories, Wow places and life lessons. LOL. Seriously though, if we were sitting together in a cafe, wouldn’t you buy me a coffee? I think you might. Well, here’s your chance to do that. Just go to https://buymeacoffee.com/daveblum and, you know, buy me a coffee. I’d really appreciate it! ~Dave]
Wow Place #257: Zam Zam, San Francisco, CA
“You are all Barbarians!”
That’s what my Western Civilization teacher, Vincent Learnihan, used to call us students when he was particularly frustrated with us.
“If I was a Viking, I would cleft you in twain with my broad-edged sword.”
To take a class with Professor Learnihan was to live in a constant state of wariness. At any moment, you might receive a pop midterm, where you could be tested on literally anything in the textbook, including the footnotes. If you were late to class, forget about getting in. The door was locked and you had to either sit in the hallway with your ear to the door, or go into the courtyard and stand by the window.
Was Professor Learnihan a cruel, sadistic taskmaster, or was he simply teaching us a lesson about the importance of maintaining high standards?
Upon graduation from college, I moved to San Francisco and found myself one evening hanging out with friends in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood, looking for a place to drink.
Friend: “Hey, let’s go to the Persian Aub Zam Zam Room. They have the best martinis in town – if you can get in.”
Me: “Why, are they crowded?
Friend: “No, you have to get by Bruno?
Me: “The bouncer?
Friend: “No, the bartender.”
Getting a drink at Zam Zam (as it’s called now) was pretty much Professor Learnihan all over again. Or the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld.
A stout, balding immigrant from what is now called Northern Iran, the legendary Bruno Mooshei was an exacting bartending with a reputation for cantankerousness. The owner of Zam Zam, the family business, since 1951, Bruno ran his establishment with an iron first. As a patron, you were expected to observe three basic rules: 1) Come in and sit on a stool 2) Put your money on the bar 3) Order a martini. Don’t order anything else. Don’t ask if it’s gin or vodka. Don’t order a third drink. And whatever you do, don’t sit at a table! Otherwise you might get an earful from Bruno like “Those tables are closed. Get the hell out of here – this is a bar, dammit.”
It didn’t take much to get kicked out of Zam Zam. When I went there with my friends, I recall Bruno perusing us carefully as we came in, assessing our clothes and demeanor. Luckily we passed muster – not so for the next group who entered and promptly got ejected. “Get out of here you Yuppies! Why don’t you go to the bar down the street? I think you’d like it better.”
If this all sounds fairly terrifying, it kind of was. But it was also a lot of fun! Just like taking a class with Vincent Learnihan was a blast. Like Bruno, Learnihan was darn good at what he did. In fact, I wound up falling in love with Western history that semester, that’s how good a teacher Learnihan was. Interestingly, in our senior year, a few of us got to know the professor outside of class and discovered he was actually a pretty sweet guy. Who woulda thunk it?
I never had the opportunity to get to know Bruno, of course – unless you were a regular, he kept you at arm’s length. But man, did he make a great martini, perhaps the best I’ve ever had, and at $2.50, they were a bargain. There was no Plymouth or Hendrick’s at Bruno’s bar – just Boords gin, poured in a cocktail pitcher filled with ice along with a tiny amount of vermouth.
Sitting in the Zam Zam room, with it’s red walls, ornate bar mural and faux-Arabian décor, was definitely an experience. In a 1991 column, the great columnist Herb Caen called the bar, “A place that time forgot. It’s a movie palace of yesteryore, its curving bar filled with worshippers sitting in silent contemplation of the silver bullet in its graceful stem glass… ‘Take me to the zuh Cazbah.’”
Bruno died in 2000 at age 80. Although Zam Zam continues on under different ownership, it’s not the same. Having a martini there in Bruno’s time was a rite of passage – akin to getting by the gatekeeper of the Emerald City on your way to see to wizard. Or getting an “A” from Professor Learnihan. (I got a “B+”.) We need more challenges like that. We need more people who do things very, very well, with exacting standards. We need more Zam Zam rooms. We need more Brunos.
(Although most of us are pleasure seekers, eagerly awaiting our precious retirements, we do tend to wax poetic about the times when we were really challenged. I pretty much hated my experience running a trail marathon — gasping and wheezing for miles on end – until it was over and I found myself filled with the delicious satisfaction of high achievement. I have to think that we humans are made to challenge ourselves. That’s when we’re the most happy – even if we don’t realize it at the time. As JFK said about going to the moon before the Russians, we do things like this “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Set yourself an audacious goal today. Get into Bruno’s bar. Ace a Learnihan test. Kick some butt.)