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| (Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff) |
Another month passes and bar eats shit. This time it's Packy Connors in Roxbury, who've finalized the sale of their liquor license to the group behind "upscale" "concepts" like Gem, which I wrote about a while back. Woops, looks like is going to be obsolete sooner than I thought. Then again, I sort of predicted that in the intro when I said most of the places in here would be gone before long. Oh well, it's not like Roxbury needs bars, right? Let's jam them all over into the waterfront. Here's what I wrote about Packy's in the book below:
Pat “Packy” Connors Tavern, 203-5 Blue Hill Ave., Roxbury.
I believe the correct euphemism for Packy Connors is a “troubled” pub. There have been so many incidents of violence here over the years that Boston Police and the licensing board seem like they're always trying to shut it down. So how bad is it? A shooting here, a stabbing there? Not quite. The police have been called here over 100 times in the past five years. It's been closed down temporarily and reopened so many times you should probably check the crime blotter in the newspaper before coming over here just to make sure you're going to be able to get in. As it is, they've been forced to curtail their hours; closing time is now at midnight. So, problem solved, right?
The bar, which was opened back in the thirties, has the look, both inside and out, of an Irish tavern. That's mostly what it was throughout its long history. But after many of the other white owned businesses moved out of the area in the 1960s, it was gradually adopted by the African American community that moved into the neighborhood. It's now usually referred to as the “black Cheers” of Boston. Although I don't remember the part in Cheers where Norm got shot outside the bar.
Like the Dublin House just around the way, it's a curious mix of styles at Packy's, with both old entrenched Irish and African American cultures rubbing up against one another. That means ancient framed Bruins jerseys next to photos of Martin Luther King and local politician campaign signs on the walls of this huge space.
The bbq and soul food here are standouts though. It actually has the feel of a summer camp mess hall in a way. A really, really unfortunate summer camp. There are brown formica booths and ravaged tile floors, a long bar that leads to a deli counter in the back, hanging fake flowers, picnic tables, brown drop tile ceilings. There are no windows, and everything is painted dark, so it's very dim inside.
It's possible that I had no idea what a dive bar really was until I stepped foot in here. There's a birthday party of sorts going on here when I do, with a cake displayed on a big table in the middle of the room. It's a gathering spot for families by day, but plenty of the less desirable nighttime crowd mixes in as well. One crack zombie almost falls over onto my table as she stumbles through the room. In a Boston Globe story in 2009 after a high profile shooting outside the bar here, former Licensing Board Chairman Daniel F. Pokaski talks about how “he has seen other beloved neighborhood bars, places where 'everybody knows your name,' that became 'hellholes' after midnight.” If that's not the perfect description of a true dive bar, then I don't know what else to say.
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