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THE PERFECT MIXER: How an Old Brooklyn Barman Got the Kids to Kibbitz
by Joshua Gleason
March 2005
BROOKLYN, N.Y.—Peter Napolitano is one of the most colorful bartenders in all of New York City. He is a man with a galloping passion for ideas, a consummate folk philosopher who will bend your ears for as long as you care to allow. Peter, or Pete, as he is more often called, tends bar at Melody Lanes, a vintage bowling alley located in the Greenwood Heights section of Brooklyn. He has been doing so for the last thirteen years. Though he claims to have never read a book, he can often be found chatting animatedly behind the bar about the fundamentals of super string theory or the writings of Joseph Campbell. “I got a great book collection,” he says. “I haven't read ‘em, but I've touched ‘em, I've rubbed ‘em.”
Pete is bald on top and combs what hair he has left back behind his ears into a silver curtain that drapes just below the base of his neck. His thick, gold-rimmed spectacles magnify the size of his perpetually widened eyes. For a bowling alley bartender Pete's attire is abnormally formal. Every evening he wears, without fail, a tuxedo (sans jacket), replete with black cummerbund, suspenders, and a red bow tie. The red is an apparent homage to Dean Martin. Pete bears a great respect for the dreamy Dean. “What I do here, he did there,” he says, referring to the personability Martin exhibited on his popular TV program. Pete's work uniform is one that he is by no means required to wear, quite the contrary, he insists that he must “fight to dress” this way. A former musician, who played with bands throughout his youth, Pete likens his current job to his old showbiz days. “I'm not tending bar, I'm soloing. I still got my lights, my costume, and the change from stage to here is—it's just mechanical.” Pete performs these solos with the music of his own voice. When he gets wound up on an idea or deep into the particulars of an juicy anecdote, he paces up and down the bar, speaking so vigorously that he must frequently use a napkin to wipe away beads of spittle from the corners of his mouth. Most of his customers rarely pay attention to his largely philosophical rants, waiting just long enough for Pete to fill their pitcher before taking it back to their lane. Of the folks who come in just to sit at the bar, very few are interested in engaging with Pete's ramshackle theories of life, the universe, and everything, but many consider him loveable oddity, and, more often than not, a longstanding friend. In fact, Pete knows just about everyone who walks into his bar. All the ladies that come in happily receive Pete's kisses on the cheek and the gentleman step up to shake his hand and softly bump heads. “Part of what I believe is running a stress-free bar. There's only been one fight in this room and it was two girls. But we let ‘em fight cause we thought we'd see titties.”
Pete grew up on 69th Street and Fourth Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. In those days, Bay Ridge was a mix of Irish, Italians, and Norwegians. His mother worked as a seamstress in Manhattan. His father worked for the Parks Department and, in the evenings, tended bar at a local nightclub. “My old man was smooth and cool. He was like a well-known older guy, not a goodfella, but a rat packer. That's what my pop was.” Pete went to Brooklyn Tech sporadically until he was finally thrown out on account of his poor grades. He eventually earned his diploma from Fort Hamilton. But by that time he was already making a living drumming with rock bands, spending most of his time at clubs in Brooklyn and Jersey. It was a life of glamour and debauchery. “I was brought up by hookers, waitresses, and barmaids,” he once told me, with a certain aura of pride. But his penchant for the rock n' roll lifestyle eventually waned. When his father died, he stopped playing altogether. “That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I was hanging out my whole life, I wasn't there when I should have been.” After giving up music he bet on horses for a year before later taking a job running the grill at Melody Lanes, “just to get some bullets so I could keep gambling.” One night, when the regular bartender failed to show, the owner of the alley put Pete behind the bar. Besides some brief stints at various Brooklyn nightclubs, he's been there ever since.
During the short time Pete worked the clubs he developed the now infamous Pete's Special. “The real name for this drink is One Drink and Cluck!”—he clicked his tongue—”she's fuckin' ready.'” Upon returning to Melody he sanitized the name, to suit what is ostensibly a family establishment. When his invention caught on, Pete was surprised. “It's nice, palatable, pleasant, but it will knock you out.” Pete keeps the drink's ingredients close to his chest, and, at one time he was working to try and get it marketed. In his own half-hearted way he still is. It is not uncommon to hear him asking one of his patrons if they “know anything about patents.”
Pete keeps a small, spiral bound notebook behind the bar that is filled with his writings. He will sometimes make a quick note on a scrap of paper or bar napkin, and many of these are pressed between the notebook's pages. The whole assemblage is wrapped with rubber bands so as to prevent any vital profundities from escaping. Though one would be hard pressed to decipher them, Pete's writings outline his overarching philosophy of human existence, something he calls “epiphanomics,” or “unification theory.” It is not often that Pete gets to discuss the basic tenets of his philosophy, so even the most casual inquisitor will likely find himself rapidly plunged into a passionate, disjunctive monologue on the subject. Often, he will pull you close, look you deep in the eyes, and deliver an unprompted, impassioned, and indecipherable aphorism. Pete frequently talks about stimuli and response. “If you respond to other stimuli more than you respond to your own, then you're a sheep,” he says. Pete insists that “using all five sense at once creates the sixth sense,” completing one's “profile,” and thereby ushering in “the one true self.” Unlike many theorists of the barroom who pass off others' ideas as their own, Pete's ravings are completely homespun: “Someone asked me if I've read Socrates, I said, I don't even know how to spell his fuckin' name.” Nevertheless, Pete believes he has made some serious philosophical breakthroughs. One day he hopes to publish them.
Above all else, Pete is a great lover of people. Even when discussing his musical career he makes little reference to the music that he played, rather, he speaks of it as a vehicle by which he furthered his ongoing desire to meet interesting persons. In 2004, Pete began keeping a phone list of all the “creative types” that happen into his bar. In line with his penchant for unification he devised a plan to bring them all together. One evening this summer Pete went down his list, name by name, and called each of the sixty-four numbers he had collected. He invited all those concerned to something he called “Rubit's Cubits,” a “meet and greet” to be held at Melody Lanes, designed to put “the right people, in the right place, at the right time.” Of the sixty-four, forty-nine showed up for an evening of bowling, drinking, and cognitive miscegenation. By Pete's own account, it was a tremendous success.
In October, Pete held the second “official” Rubit's Cubits (somewhere between the first and second gatherings there was some unofficial “cubiting”—the details of which remain hazy). There are but a few ingredients that distinguish an evening of Rubit's Cubits from a typical night at the lanes. Rubit's Cubits bowling is of the “Rock n' Bowl” variety, accentuated with flashing disco-style lights, loud music, and black-lit pins. Free finger food is served, such as French fries and pigs in a blanket. But the real defining feature of Rubit's Cubits is the fact that half the alley is given over to people who were specifically invited by Pete.
Most, if not all “Cubiters”—as Pete calls them—are young people. “That demographic is Pete's best audience,” remarked Cubiter Greg Wright, 27, who edits reality TV for a living. Wright and his companion Nate Smith, 26, both residents of Park Slope, have been regulars at Melody Lanes for a couple years. It didn't take long before they fell under Pete's lure. “We got to the point where we came down to chat and not to bowl,” Smith confessed. Cubiter Chris Orf, 35, of South Harlem, is a lanky, frizzy-haired fellow in Hawaiian short. Orf, who insists on being called simply “Orf,” is a actor and writer who says he was the first hand-picked invitee to the first Rubit's Cubits. Orf makes the long trip out to Melody Lanes every Tuesday where he meets up with anywhere between three and fifteen friends, depending on the night and enjoys Pete's “enthusiasm” and “infectious energy.” While Orf conceded that in comparison to a regular Tuesday night at the lanes, Rubit's Cubits has a “strange vibe”, he “we makes the effort to be more sociable.” But, overall, one doesn't get the sense that much meeting and greeting actually transpired at the second Rubit's Cubits. By and large, the assembled Cubiters tend to remain entrenched amongst the friends with which they came. But Pete seems satisfied with the level of intermingling. He proudly informs me that he recently introduced Orf to a fellow by the name of Chris Web and that the two are currently working on a film together. Pete couldn't be happier, convinced that he has culled together the best and the brightest bowlers around.
Rubit's Cubits may be Pete's party, but he still must attend to the bar. Listening to him hold forth is faithful row of Cubiters, pints in hand. Would he ever bowl a game if the bar traffic let up? “I hate bowling,” Pete said, emphatically. “It's worse than golf.”
Joshua Gleason lives in Brooklyn.
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