Thursday, April 19, 2018

The Cave

Everyone that has ever considered themselves a Chapel Hill townie is going to be posting their remembrances of The Cave over the next few days, as it closes after some 50 years as a Chapel Hill landmark.  Everybody's got their own Cave and mine was a little different than yours.

My Cave was created when I was a freshman at UNC, Fall Semester 1978.  I was taking Honors English with Dr. Julius Raper and spending way too many afternoons and evenings at Troll's (despite being under the drinking age during the first 2 months of school).  During an after-class discussion with a couple of guys that turned to darts, they had to take me down to this place way on the west end of Franklin Street (or so it seemed to this dorm-bound freshman) that they had discovered.  I was admonished to behave myself, as this was a townie bar that did not tolerate asshole students being assholes. I was led down the dark steps by Clive Stafford Smith (then Minister without Portfolio of Double-Barreled Hyphenless Last Names and later an OBE and internationally-known civil rights lawyer) and Adrian "Che" Halpern, currently (still, I think) a local immigration lawyer.  Being so pre-lawyered up, we walked into the low-ceilinged underground haven around 4 in the afternoon to be met by a couple of geezers (they had to be at least 40) playing backgammon and the clack of billiard balls coming from the back room.  But most importantly, the two lovely dart boards up front, undoubtedly positioned at precisely the regulation height.  We managed to behave, I managed to not get completely crushed by the Cambridge-raised Mr. Stafford Smith, and we managed not to get stared at for being, well, freshmen.

I was in and out of the Cave a bit over the next few years, back when amplification was outlawed (I used to know who was the first performer to break the "no amps" policy but I no longer remember).  But when we bought Rhythm Alley in the mid-80s, the Cave became both a refuge and a bank.  I would escape to Tijuana Fats or the Cave when necessary during sound checks and Meg was always willing to sell us quarters when we inevitably ran out during busy weekends as the pool tables in the back were serious metal collectors.  It was at the bar at the Cave that I loudly pronounced to Greg Stafford and anyone sitting within 50 feet of me that the Pressure Boys were the best damn band in the world.  (I was right.)

After we sold the club and moved away and then moved right back, I didn't spend a lot of time down there, partly because I'd stopped smoking and could no longer deal with being in smoky rooms.  But I did catch a show there every now and then after they installed a big-ass smoke extractor and of course like all clubs they stopped allowing smoking as well.

While it was certainly not the last time I was there, the last memorable night at the Cave was during the 2005 NCAA championship game.  I had ridiculously believed that I could squeeze into a bar as a single somewhere and watch the game.  I'd ridden my bicycle into town thinking that would be safest and would get me closer than trying to park.  But of course I quickly realized what an idiot I was and decided to stop in at the Cave for a beer before deciding what to do next.  I ended up down at the end of the bar, talking to Laird Dixon and Jack Whitebread (at the time I had no idea who the hell either of them were) and peering past the fridge to see the game on the 15" black and white TV on the back bar while being served beers by the incredible Mr. John Howie Jr.  I didn't see much of the game but that was a night I will never forget.

Chapel Hill is an evolving organism.  We'll survive the demise of the Cave and Spanky's just as we've survived the demise of Town Hall (before my time) and Pyewacket and Papagayo's and Tijuana Fats and Lizard and Snake and Pepper's Pizza and the Intimate Bookshop and we'll survive the eventual demise of Cat's Cradle and Local 506 and the Carolina Coffee Shop.  Things won't be the same, but they'll be ok and we'll have memories of all the crazy shit we've done at places that were much cooler than where people hang out today and those people will tell tales of their favorite places to their kids who will create favorite places of their own.

So raise a cold one to the Cave and all the people that made it a place to remember, then go make some new awesome memories at your new favorite place.