Radio Daze...St. Pat's Day 1982

It seemed like genius to us at the time.
My radio saddle pal, John Emm, and I dreamed this up over morning cocktails at our San Francisco "show prep" headquarters the Iron Pot. The "Pot" was a restaurant and bar just across the street from our radio home, K-101 FM. The food was cheap, plentiful and really good but Tito, Italo and Louie made their bones on the bar crowd that consisted of the local North Beach residents and lots of thirsty bankers from the financial district. John and I were "the boys" from the radio station; sort of the Cliff and Norm of the saloon that looked an awful lot like the Cheers bar. We ambled in daily at approximately 10:04 AM after finishing our morning show broadcast and would proceed to relax ourselves into something north of a coma until it was time to catch the train to the rest of our day. We knew everybody in the place. We were "oiled", happy and well loved by the staff and most of the regulars. We came up with our best ideas here. Hell, we could have saved the world if only the world had listened...or was as drunk as we were.

It was early in 1982. I had come to San Francisco in late 1980 to do the morning show on K-101 for Charter Broadcasting. John had been there as the morning newsman for, I think, around a year or so. He had a storied radio career that began in Miami and had blown up in Los Angeles a couple of years previous when his drinking had gotten him fired and bounced into rehab. He had been sober for several months when I met him. (I knew none of this at the time.)
We went for drinks the same day that I met him. There are some people that, I think, have "cocktail eyes" for each other. You meet them; like them and immediately know that the both of you love to drink. "Hi, you seem like a lot of fun...Let's get boiled!"

So, there we are in the Iron Pot having "a few" and spit balling ideas for promoting the morning show and it came to us... St. Patrick's Day is coming! Both of us are Irish and love to drink. Let's see if we can con our program director into letting us do a "K-101 St. Patrick's Day Pub Patrol"!!! It was brilliant! We would get a green limo to take us around to the major San Francisco Irish bars. We would be decked out in green and would have prizes for the bars we judged to be the best Irish bars in the City. A phone report would be done from the various establishments each half hour and it would be great fun for all involved. PLUS...we would spend the whole day drinking FREE. God, we were good!

The station bought the idea. St. Patrick's Day arrived and as we finished our show the green stretch limo pulled up outside the station to take us to our appointed rounds. We, of course, began with the Iron Pot. It was Italian but it was OUR promotion and we loved the place. After doing a "phoner" from the Pot we headed for Ginsburg's Dublin Pub a Jewish/Irish place at the corner of Bay and Mason. That stop went well. We were already certain that Herb Caen, the beloved columnist of the San Francisco Chronicle would be all over this story in tomorrow's paper. We were happening!

Ginsburg's was the last stop I can recollect. We did go on to other joints but somehow it all went wrong. The limo driver quit somewhere on Geary street. Something about one of us throwing an empty bottle from a moving vehicle... And, I do remember crossing the Golden Gate bridge at some point. The rest has been reported to me by others over the ensuing years.

The next morning after finishing the show the general manager, Fritz, wanted to see both of us in his office. This couldn't be GOOD. We were both feeling a little, no A LOT, woozy and were in no mood to be yelled at. Not that we had any choice in the matter. Fritz, who had a high pitched voice, was screeching in registers that made my head hurt even more as he waved a fistful of telephone message slips containing "complaints" regarding our conduct during our mission of the day before. "Here's one from the manager of Houlihan's in Sausalito wanting to press charges on the two red-faced guys who harassed his kitchen staff last night." I wanted to deny this one, but couldn't be sure. It was a tension convention around the radio ranch for the next few weeks, although we did survive. Maybe they would forget about this by next year and we could do it again. Then again...probably not.

Six months later I was fired in a purge instituted by a new program director. Emm stayed a few more years and actually became news director for awhile before moving on to KGO, the news-talk station. I went to Seattle, Las Vegas and then back to San Diego in the ensuing years leading the life of the typical itinerant disk jockey.
Both of us continued to drink.

I've been thinking about John and all the good times we had probably because he is coming to see me and my wife, Linda, tomorrow. He has a new wife that neither of us have met. I was lucky that Linda had more staying power than any of John's earlier wives. John is working in Denver these days, doing the news on KOA radio. He hasn't had a drink in over ten years and is doing great.
I haven't had any booze in nearly eight years.

This should be interesting.
Different...
Honest, and I hope, fun.