Duso's Bar: You do that voodoo that you do so well

Leda at work

Doc's report:

Well, I'm piggybacking on Cole Porter to get “Duso” into my headline. It's a stretch, but worth the effort, because an afternoon there was drenched in holiday season magic.

A friend whose opinion I respect suggested just before his death in April that my copy was long-winded and my references obscure. I reminded him, citing “Hamlet,” that “Brevity is the soul of wit” and underscored the point with a familiar Latin aphorism: “Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.” (“When I labor to be brief, I grow obscure.”)

So I'll limit my remarks on a simply delightful visit to Duso's to four points.

One is that, having grown up on the east side, I expect a trip to the west side to bring with it some of the pleasures of travel abroad. Duso's didn't disappoint.


We were exposed to the wondrous and unfamiliar cultural highlights you simply can't get in the South End: new drinks such as Chicken Cock, pumpkin pie and grapefruit vodka, and a Fireball/RumChata mixed drink.

Next, I met a man I'd seen naked a hundred times, but not for 48 years, a friend of the G-man's. We played high school basketball together under Lefty Franz at St. Stan's. The showers were

On the wall at Duso's

“Brace yourself, Bridget” primitive.

Third, while trekking down memory lane, it turns out that the G-man's wife is the sister of the woman who married my best friend from high school. Small world -- except for the last names in the Polish South End. They try not to leave any letters out.

Finally, our bartender, Leda. You don't meet women named Leda on the east side of the river. She indulged me as I recounted to her for the millionth time, I'm sure, the story of the famous Leda. One of the gods, in this case Zeus, comes down from heaven as a bird, in this case a swan, and impregnates a virtuous queen, in this case Leda.

Hilarity ensues, in this case the Trojan War. You can read all about it in Yeats' “Leda and the Swan.”   

You simply don't have that kind of talk with women named Mary Jo.  

----------
See the hairy guy's report on Duso's: An old Midland Street bar with new lingerie, old signs, games, no food but $1 pints any old time