Contemporary Authors

• Two and Two: McSorley's, My Dad, and Me ( memoir) Little, Brown and Co. (New York, NY), 2017
• Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Philippines' Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball New American Library (New York, NY), 2010

Library of Congress Online Catalog 1. Pacific rims : beermen ballin' in flip-flops and the Philippines' unlikely love affair with basketball LCCN 2010003851 Type of material Book Personal name Bartholomew, Rafe. Main title Pacific rims : beermen ballin' in flip-flops and the Philippines' unlikely love affair with basketball / Rafe Bartholomew. Published/Created New York : New American Library, 2010. Description viii, 384 p. : ill. ; 22 cm. ISBN 9780451229991 CALL NUMBER GV885.8.P6 B37 2010 Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms Shelf Location FLS2015 103139 CALL NUMBER GV885.8.P6 B37 2010 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLS2) 2. Two and two : McSorley's, my dad, and me LCCN 2016959023 Type of material Book Personal name Bartholomew, Rafe. Main title Two and two : McSorley's, my dad, and me / Rafe Bartholomew. Published/Produced New York, NY : Little, Brown and Co., 2017. Projected pub date 1705 Description pages cm ISBN 9780316231596 (hc) CALL NUMBER Not available Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ONLINE CATALOG Library of Congress 101 Independence Ave., SE Washington, DC 20540 Questions? Ask a Librarian: https://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/ask-contactus.html

• NY Post - http://nypost.com/2017/05/06/a-twisted-version-of-heaven-at-nycs-oldest-bar/

  The secrets of NYC’s oldest bar

  By Stefanie Cohen

  May 6, 2017 | 5:15pm | Updated
  Modal Trigger
  The secrets of NYC’s oldest bar
  Rafe Bartholomew and his Geoffrey 'Bart' Bartholomew at McSorley's Old Ale House. Annie Wermiel

  ‘Saturday mornings were my twisted version of heaven,” Rafe Bartholomew recalls in his new memoir. “I was 5, 6, 7 years old, and every weekend I got to spend a few hours hanging out with grown men . . . Working men, old men, homeless men, policemen and firemen. Men who cursed and spat and groaned, who broke each other’s chops and answered insults with a “Right here!” and a handful of crotch . . . I worshipped them all.”

  Rafe, 35, grew up in a bar — and not just any old one. Since 1972, his father, Geoffrey “Bart” Bartholomew, has been a bartender at McSorley’s, considered by many to be the oldest continuously operating pub in New York City. Rafe’s “Two and Two: McSorley’s, My Dad, and Me” (Little, Brown and Company, out Tuesday) is a tribute to both the place and his dad.

  “When I was a kid, the bar was an almost magical place,” Rafe told The Post.

  Bart got his job as a bartender at McSorley’s by serendipity, after renting an apartment upstairs from the saloon in 1970. The bar became his spiritual home and downstairs living room, and Bart worked his first shift when the owners needed a last-minute fill-in.

  He learned McSorley’s history from Matthew Maher, a bartender who would eventually buy the place, and from John Smith, the “barman emeritus” who’d worked there since the 1940s.

  “The people working here today are still only a couple of degrees of separation between them and 100 years of history,” Rafe said.
  McSorley’s Old Ale House in 1945.Getty Images

  John McSorley opened the bar — then known as The Old House at Home — in 1854 and was an avid collector of memorabilia, posting playbills and newspaper articles on the walls. He sold light and dark house ale only, a tradition that continues today. John didn’t allow women in his bar lest it lead to prostitution, Rafe writes. (The first female customer hoisted a pint in 1970, after a federal court ruling and a city ordinance forbade such discrimination.)

  John died in 1910, two years after changing the pub’s name to McSorley’s Old Time Ale House, and his son, Bill, took over. In 1936, Bill sold McSorley’s to Daniel O’Connell, a policeman who promised not to make any changes. And it’s been that way ever since: Most memorabilia remains, along with decades’ more, so the bar is like a museum of NYC history.

  With Maher having bought McSorley’s in 1977, only three families have owned the bar in its 163-year history. Because John McSorley had the foresight to buy the whole building at 15 E. Seventh St. in the East Village, every time the bar changes hands, the building goes with it, meaning its rent hasn’t skyrocketed

  Signed Jack Dempsey Portrait. "He was a famous Irish-American boxing champ from the 1920s who was a customer here," Bart explained. "He would have given this to Harry Kirwan, whose wife owned the bar at that time. It's signed, 'To McSorley's Old Ale House, Best of Luck, Jack Dempsey, 1940.' "

  Annie Wermiel
  042117McSorleysAW31.jpg
  War Department 'Wanted' Poster for Lincoln's Assassin. "McSorley was always putting stuff on the walls," Bart explained. This "wanted" poster for Lincoln's then-unknown assassin was "free art."

  Annie Wermiel
  042117McSorleysAW37.jpg
  McSorley Nine. "This shows the staff of McSorley's before [an 1877] baseball game. Although it's called the McSorley's Nine, there are only eight people in the photo, unless you count the 'ghost' lurking behind the lineup," said bartender Bart Bartholomew of the blurry specter. "The same ghost appears in another photo taken that day."

  Annie Wermiel
  042117McSorleysAW35.jpg
  Wishbones. "[Original bar owner] John McSorley had a big going-away party for the fellas in the neighborhood -- there were 40 or 50 guys -- who were shipping out for World War I," Bart said. "They were drafted right around Thanksgiving, and they brought in their wishbones from their turkey dinners and hung them up for good luck. When the war ended a year later, they came back and took them off. The [wishbones that belonged to the] guys who didn't come home are still there out of respect. They'll be 100 years old this November." In 2011, bar staff dusted the bones for the first time in many decades, after the NYC Health Department made a fuss.

  Annie Wermiel
  houdini_cuffs.jpg
  Houdini's Handcuffs. Harry Houdini came in here and a cop said, 'Let's see if you can get out of some real handcuffs.' And he did."

  Annie Wermiel

  Bart left his apartment over the bar in 1979, after marrying his wife, Patricia. They moved to the West Village and had Rafe, their only child, in 1982. (Patricia passed away from cancer in 2006.) As a kid, Rafe used to spend Saturdays hanging out with Bart at McSorley’s. During the week, the boy would excitedly wake up every night at the sound of his father coming home. Bart would have chocolate milk and regale his son with stories about characters from his work.
  McSorley’s Old Ale House in 2016.Annie Wermiel

  There was the CIA man who believed a tracking device had been planted behind his ear. Richie Buggy, the waiter who used to work for the NYPD as a decoy, dressing as an old lady to entrap muggers. And Larry the bum, who would howl from the street until someone inside gave him a ham sandwich, gratis.

  But Rafe’s favorite stories were those that involved vomit. His dad told him about the customers who arrived already drunk and took two steps inside the bar before spewing on the floor and then ordering a drink. And then there was the time a chef drank herself into a stupor and threw up all over the bar cat, who had been innocently curled up in her lap.

  “My dad’s storytelling was great. He had me in stitches every night,” said Rafe.
  John McSorley, in a photo inside McSorley’s.Getty Images

  Rafe himself tended bar at McSorley’s on and off in his 20s. But inspired by his dad’s gift for storytelling, he decided to become a writer instead. He has worked at Harper’s magazine and the now-defunct Web site Grantland, and now lives in Los Angeles with his girlfriend.

  With “Two and Two” — the title is a reference to Rafe’s favorite McSorley’s order, two light ales and two dark ales — he follows in hallowed footsteps. The bar has been the subject of a poem by E.E. Cummings, and Joseph Mitchell’s 1940 New Yorker piece “The Old House at Home” helped turn the bar into an institution.

  Mitchell continued to visit until his death in 1996. He would come in the afternoons, when the place was empty because, Rafe writes, “McSorley’s timeless nature allowed him

• AM NY - http://www.amny.com/news/mcsorley-s-book-two-and-two-tells-a-personal-story-1.13567751

  McSorley’s book ‘Two and Two’ tells a personal story

  By Joe Ellingham Special to amNewYork May 4, 2017

  For the past 163 years, McSorley’s has stood in the same spot on East Seventh Street, and for most of the past 45 years Geoffrey “Bart” Bartholomew has stood in the same spot — behind McSorley’s long mahogany bar dishing out mugs of light or dark ale.

  Before he could see over the bar, Bart’s son Rafe became a McSorley’s regular, tagging along with his dad to play on the sawdust-covered floors with the bar cat or listening to stories filled with words he was told not to repeat around mom. Rafe grew up in the bar among the old drunks, the fratty college kids, the neighborhood characters and the ghosts. But most importantly, the photos, news clippings, historical artifacts and dust-covered wishbones that have filled the bar since 1854 — and (mostly) have not been touched.

  After a childhood spent listening to his father’s tales of the bar’s history — yes, that is the chair Abraham Lincoln stood on and spoke to bargoers from while running for president, and, yes, those are Houdini’s handcuffs — Rafe inevitably followed his dad’s lead and began working his own shifts at the bar.

  “Two and Two: McSorley’s, My Dad, and Me” is Rafe’s love letter to New York’s oldest bar, its denizens over the years, and, most importantly, his father Bart.

  amNewYork sat down with the author and his father to discuss the book over some mugs of dark.

  Was this a story you felt you needed to tell, or were you sick of people saying “you should write a book?”

  Rafe Bartholomew: I wanted to tell it, but I was a bit embarrassed. You know, is my story gonna be as good as theirs (the longtime bar staff)? They have better stories than me. But once I started writing, it just started to flow. Then, I just had to get on myself a bit and just get it done.

  There are some tough sections in the book dealing with Bart’s rough childhood, his struggle with alcoholism, and your mom’s fight with cancer. How did your dad react to having some of this awful history in print?

  RB: (Demurs to his dad)

  BB: You know, I was never one for any kind of censorship. I’m not ashamed of anything and I’m not one to hide. I’ve dealt with it. My son tells it as well as I could. We all have our tales. Some are better, and some are worse, than others. He tells it all truthfully and tastefully, and with grace.

  RB: There was some hesitation, but it’s who he is. In movies, the hard parts (of life) can come off as corny or not believable, so (in the book) you gotta just stay as real and as truthful as you can.

  Is this more of a love letter to your dad, or to the bar?

  RB: (Laughs) Don’t make me choose. Both. He brought me in and shared his love (of McSorley’s) with me. He educated me on the history and the people here.

  BB: It was originally called “The Old House At Home,” and it was a second home for me in the years before I got married. So, it was natural for me to bring him in and show it to him. It was something that I could give to him.

  RB: I really wanted to honor him and everyone here for what they do and what they’ve done.

  What do you hope readers take away from this book?

  RB: McSorley’s is a part of New York that means something to all the people that have ever been here. It takes them back to that time they were here and all the good times they had. You know, it’s more than just some bar that you got drunk at that one time. The guys [bar staff] here all have better stories about the bar. And you can’t top Joseph Mitchell’s story [“McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon,” 1943] about the bar. This is, simply, my story about this era of the bar.

  His 5 favorite artifacts at the bar:

  1) Photo of the McSorley’s Nine baseball team “There’s only eight guys pictured. I played baseball as a kid, and I’d look at that photo and make up stories about the players.”

  2) The WWI-era wishbones hanging above the bar

  3) The early-1800s ice box “It’s original to the bar.”

  4) The framed poem about Red the bar cat “It’s on the wall behind the stove, where the cat used to sit. I used to toss tin foil balls to him and chase him around the bar as a kid.”

  5) Framed photo of Rafe and bar staff with then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg “He had made some negative comments about the Irish a few days before, so he came into the bar for a photo op to publicly make up for it”

• NY TImes - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/14/books/rafe-bartholomew-two-and-two-mcsorleys-interview.html

  Tell Us 5 Things About Your Book: Rafe Bartholomew on Growing Up at McSorley’s

  By JOHN WILLIAMSMAY 14, 2017
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  Rafe Bartholomew Credit Leslie Gonzales

  “The clientele is motley,” Joseph Mitchell wrote about McSorley’s, the fabled East Village ale house, in The New Yorker in 1940. First opened in 1854, the bar’s crowd was no less motley when the author Rafe Bartholomew started going there as a child in the 1980s. There, his father would tend bar while the regulars helped babysit Rafe. “I was 5, 6, 7 years old, and every weekend I got to spend a few hours hanging out with grown men,” Bartholomew writes in “Two and Two: McSorley’s, My Dad, and Me,” his new memoir. “Not just any men, but characters — workingmen, old men, homeless men, policemen and firemen.” He would eventually follow the path of his father, Geoffrey, and work behind the bar. “Two and Two” is about Geoffrey’s 45-year career as a bartender; the deep and abiding bond between father and son; and the stories and people that made McSorley’s a city institution. Below, Bartholomew tells us what led him to write such a personal story, what surprises he encountered in the process and more.

  When did you first get the idea to write this book?

  The long answer is just by nature of growing up around the bar and eventually getting into writing. It probably was inevitable that I would end up writing about it and my dad’s career. The answer of when it actually became an idea to try and write a book is that, in 2010, the day my first book came out — which is not at all related, it’s a sports book about basketball in the Philippines — my agent took me to lunch to say congratulations. She asked, “What’s your next book?” I hadn’t thought of anything. I was totally unprepared. I was like, “Well, I grew up at McSorley’s.” Her eyes got kind of wide, and she said: “Well, that should have been your first book. What’s wrong with you?”

  I wasn’t always sure. I said it was inevitable, but I wasn’t always sure if I actually wanted to do it. I was always wary of exploiting my life and my dad’s story. I think that’s why it didn’t happen right away. It took me a while to figure out how to write about the place.

  What’s the most surprising thing you learned while writing “Two and Two”?

  Some of the research I did was reading through my dad’s old journals. He kept them for 20 years, steady. We’ve always been close. Any time I’ve lived in New York as an adult, we’ve just lived here together. Though we’re father and son, we can be pretty open and informal. He said, “You want to read the journal, knock yourself out.”
  Photo
  Rafe Bartholomew’s “Two and Two: McSorley’s, My Dad, and Me.” Credit Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times

  It begins when he was in college in Ohio, and goes through him moving to New York. Reading through the entry after his first night in New York, it says: “Went to McSorley’s Ale House. Drank with two English tourists. Great conversation.” He doesn’t think of it as the beginning of his McSorley’s story, because he ended up living above it three years later, and ended up working there two years after that. But learning that my dad actually drank at the bar on his very first night in New York City, in 1967, was almost too perfect.
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  In what way is the book you wrote different from the book you set out to write?

  In my original outlines, I thought I would try to do more of a deeply researched history of the bar, and also hoped to capture more of everyone who works there, do the full gallery. I never thought of structuring it where everyone got a chapter, or something like that, but I thought I was going to attempt to write about everyone’s lives in more detail than ended up being possible in any book of readable length.

  Of course, you can’t write about McSorley’s without having a lot of history in there, but it’s a more informal history of the bar than a rigorous history. I was worried about falling into the bottomless pit of McSorley’s history. It’s also scary to be treading on the same territory as Joseph Mitchell. The thing I could do different than the historians, the thing that differentiated me, is that I worked there, I grew up there. Of the many people who have written about it, none of them had been as close to it as I had, and I wanted to write from that perspective. It just became clear that the narrative at the heart of the book was going to be about me and my dad — his story, his career and me growing up around the bar.

  Who is a creative person (not a writer) who has influenced you and your work?

  It makes sense for this book to say: some of the other bartenders who I knew when I was a kid. Or one even who I never met. He died in the late ’70s. They’re creative in their storytelling and their humor. I think of a bartender my dad worked with when I was a kid, Tommy Lloyd, who could make me laugh at any time he wanted. A lot of it was pretty dirty and childish stuff, basically Adam Sandler humor, but it worked. The inventiveness of their language and the liberties they would take — which I’m not able to do professionally in the same way — but just the fun and the liveliness they narrated their daily lives with, I hope animates my writing a little bit.

  Persuade someone to read “Two and Two” in less than 50 words.

  It’s a book about a great old bar and the careers and passions of the people who work and drink in the place, and all the love my father has passed down to me from working there.

  This interview has been condensed and edited.
  Correction: May 15, 2017

  An earlier version of this article misstated the decade when Rafe Bartholomew first spent time at McSorley’s as a child. It was the 1980s, not the 1970s.

  A version of this article appears in print on May 15, 2017, on Page C5 of the New York edition with the headline: Where Everybody Knows Your Name (and Dad’s).

• asia society - http://asiasociety.org/pacific-rims-interview-author-rafe-bartholomew

  Pacific Rims: Interview with Author Rafe Bartholomew
  Author Rafe Bartholomew discusses his new book on basketball mania in the Philippines. (Video from Penguin USA, 2 min., 44 sec.)

  Author Rafe Bartholomew discusses his new book on basketball mania in the Philippines. (Video from Penguin USA, 2 min., 44 sec.)

  By Lea McLellan

  When hoops fan and Fulbright scholar Rafe Bartholomew first arrived in the Philippines, he had hoped that basketball mania really was as pervasive in the country as he had been told. Filipino basketball players and fans far exceeded his expectations. As a result, his year-long research grant turned into a three-year journey through Filipino basketball culture, and his book, Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Philippines' Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball is Bartholomew's self-described "love letter to the Philippines."

  Though the book centers on the sport within the culture of the Philippines, Bartholomew finds that the two subjects are inextricably intertwined. His personal experiences—traveling with a popular Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) team, being mobbed by fans in remote rest stops, and debuting as a Filipino soap opera star—give the reader a unique perspective on a culture that is as vibrant and captivating as a PBA championship game.

  Bartholomew, who says that "his heart remains in the Philippines," recently shared his insights into Filipino basketball culture with Asia Society Online.

  ASIA SOCIETY ONLINE: You knew you wanted to write about basketball in the Philippines before you left for your fellowship. Where did the motivation for this project come from?

  RAFE BARTHOLOMEW: I almost stumbled into it. I had played basketball in high school and at a club level in college so obviously I was already interested in the sport, but I was reading this book called Big Game, Small World by Sports Illustrator writer Alexander Wolff. He traveled all around the world sort of like a basketball travel log and wrote about the sport in probably 15-20 countries. There was one chapter in there about the Philippines and that may have been the first thing I had read about the Philippines longer than a couple of pages long. But the stuff he wrote about really inspired me. It was stuff like kids playing basketball in their flip-flops, or in their bare feet, and people building their own basketball courts out of whatever materials they could get their hands on. It was this sort of passion—that they would play the sport by any means necessary—that made me want to go out there and see it for myself.

  ASIA SOCIETY ONLINE: It sounds like when you set out to do this project you were predominately interested in basketball within the context of the Philippines. However, the book is clearly just as interested in Filipino culture on a larger scale. How is it that basketball and Filipino culture have come to be so closely intertwined?

  RB: Once you get out there and once you start following the basketball culture it's too much a part of everything else that is going on with the country to just focus on basketball. I think the reason why it is so embedded in people's lives there is it was the first team sport that was widely accessible and popular. It caught on because early in Filipino basketball history, and also in everyone's basketball history, they were very good at it. Basketball was introduced there by the US colonial government in 1910. They made it part of the physical education curriculum in the public school system. They built playgrounds, they built the YMCA in Manila and so in that way, the game was promoted.

  One of the interesting things is that they [the US government] tried harder to promote baseball because if you think about what period it was, in the 1920s and '30s, baseball was really thought of as the national pastime. Basketball didn't really come into its own until probably the '60s or '70s, but in the Philippines, it was already huge. In the first Olympics to have basketball as a medal event in 1936, the Philippines only lost one game and it was to the United States. They beat everybody else and it was only because of a scheduling quirk that they didn't get a medal.

  Those early successes coincided with the time when idea of the Philippines as a nation was sort of coming into its own also. The Philippine-run part of the Philippine government was starting to try and convince people that they were part of this larger nation. Not "I'm Cebuano" or "I'm Ilocano" or "I'm Ilonggo"—not just part of their regional identity. They were trying to convince people that they were Filipino, and basketball was one of the things that people had in common across different geographical regions and linguistic regions. There are more than 100 distinct languages spoken in the country, so it is still a challenge to get people to break out of the sort of regional mindset. Basketball, and probably Catholicism, are two of the things that are most successful at crossing all of those boundaries.

  It was also because they were so good at it first. People really took pride in it. And over the years, over the generations, parents would teach their kids basketball and they would teach their kids basketball, and it just sort of multiplied over time.

  ASIA SOCIETY ONLINE: Your book combines your personal experience on the court with more historical information on how the game originated and has grown in the Philippines. What was it like doing research for this book? How important was your first-hand experience to understanding the role of basketball in the lives of Filipinos?

  RB: There was the library research and the interviews that I conducted with former players and current players and coaches, so there is that side of the research, and then there was a lot of the personal stuff. The personal stuff is in there for a few reasons. One, from a publishing point of view, it sort of anchors the book with a character that might be more easily relatable to an American reader. It sort of turns me into a guide for this alternative basketball universe, so there is a practical sort of storytelling reason for it.

  The other reason is because too many entertaining and revealing things happened to me or with me playing a role. For instance, that scene where people sort of cornered me and forced me to sign autographs as a PBA player, it's sort of a thing where it says a lot about the sort of basketball mania that sets over for fans there and it is something that I may not have seen if I hadn't lived it in that way. And so the personal side, research-wise, it sort of grounds the book in a level of understanding of Filipino culture that I couldn't have gotten strictly through interviews and academic research.

  I think the tone and my perspective on the subject is based on the fact that I lived there for three years and felt like I was writing for other people who know the country well and I was doing my best to do that. I didn't want to sound like a detached observer that was lecturing about the country. I don't really like that tone. Often I find that tone sort of presumptuous when written by foreigners, no matter how long they get to live there.

  ASIA SOCIETY ONLINE: One reviewer describes your book as "the sort of hymn to a country that's more gushing in praise than anything a native could hope to produce." What caused you to fall in love with the Philippines? Would you describe it that way?

  RB: Certainly. I tell people that by the time I was writing it, I was thinking of the book as sort of a love letter to the country. Of course, it was directed to the basketball culture there, but more than that, it was a much more generalized thing to the whole country, the whole shebang. For me, the reason I enjoyed living there so much was that even though I got to a point where I felt very at home and comfortable in the country, you can't avoid having a foreign perspective on things. To me, that meant feeling like I was constantly learning something new. It's probably true that if I looked harder here in New York, where I'm from, or somewhere else in the states, I could have a similar experience. I'm sure I could find something new about the city here every day but because I'm from here I don't look at it through the same eyes. When I was living in the Philippines everything I saw was like a new story that I wanted to tell or I wanted to learn more about. I could just walk through my neighborhood and see 10 new things that I wanted to learn about.

  ASIA SOCIETY ONLINE: You mention in your book how a Filipino basketball player's style differs from American style, citing both the height factors and how a lot of Filipinos grow up playing in makeshift courts. How else is playing pick-up basketball in the Philippines different from playing in the US?

  RB: Personally, as someone who loves playing basketball, one thing that I adored about the Philippines was that you could play in a good, fun game with guys who were active and in shape and certainly knew how to play, you know might not be fantastic players, but you could have a competitive fun game almost anywhere at any time. Basically if you bring a ball and start dribbling it, people are going to hear it and show up. More often than not, you will have a good enough game going to have some fun. It's harder to find good games here in the states than it should be.

  Playing with people was also pretty instrumental for me being able to describe some of the unique aspects of the Filipino style of play. That comes from having to try and guard it myself and being able to see the moves that come from their style as opposed to what you're used to seeing as an American basketball player.

  ASIA SOCIETY ONLINE: How would you describe your book's intended audience? Who did you feel like you were writing for?

  RB: The way I've always thought of the book has been narrative non-fiction, hopefully for a general audience. Even though I was always interested in sports, I never wanted to be a sports writer. That was something that I was just never interested in because when you think of sports writers you think of covering the game, writing columns about it, and analyzing the game. That is all stuff I like to do, but more like when I'm talking with my friends. As a writer, I have always been more interested in doing narrative journalism, writing about people's lives and cultures and things like that. So this was sort of like a perfect marriage of my interests.

  I always thought that the role basketball plays in Philippine society is interesting enough to appeal to anyone, so I hope there is some general audience for it. Of course I expect that people who like basketball will be interested in it, I think, because at least to an American audience, it exposes them to a side of the game that they probably haven't seen in a place that they probably don't know a whole lot about.

  Also I expect that Philippine audience whether it be Filipinos living in the Philippines or whether it be the diaspora of overseas workers and people who have emigrated to the United States or Canada or Europe. Obviously, I am aware that they exist and figure that they would have an above average interest in the book or more of a reason to pick it up than someone walking through a bookstore that has never heard of the Philippines.

  So I don't know if I wrote the book for any one audience in particular. I know I was more conscious of how Filipino readers would respond to what I was writing because I figured they're the people who know this culture better than anyone else, better than I do and if what I was writing seemed true to them, then that would be the best measure of success.

  ASIA SOCIETY ONLINE: What has the feedback been like from your Filipino readers?

  RB: I've seen a handful of reviews, I've read Philippine Star, Philippine Daily Inquirer, GMA news, and they have all been very positive. I have heard from the guys who are on the team that I followed, other people in the PBA, and so far it's been very, very positive which I'm happy about. I wasn't expecting to totally disappoint them, of course, but you never know. That is what I'm most proud of-that the people who know about Philippine basketball and culture are reading it and saying, ‘this guy didn't misrepresent us.'

• linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafebartholomew

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  Publications

  Pacific Rims
  New American Library/Penguin
  June 2010

  A non-fiction book about basketball in the Philippines, from the American import players who toil in the local professional league to the kids and men across the country's 7,107 islands who build their own courts, play in bare feet, and do whatever it takes to make the game a part of their day-to-day lives.

  Authors:
  Rafe Bartholomew

  Skills

  Copy EditingJournalismEditingStorytellingEditorialNews WritingFeature ArticlesFact-checkingNewspapersMagazinesProofreadingBloggingPublicationsPublishingCopywritingSee 9+

• mailer report - http://www.mailerreport.com/the-rafe-bartholomew-interview

  The Rafe Bartholomew Interview

  Grantland’s features editor chats longform journalism, working for Bill Simmons and his adventures in the Philippines.

  By: Tristan Lavalette

  Every morning at breakfast, I scan a few of my favourite and/or requisite sites on my smartphone to kick-start the day. (Yep, those believing newspapers in the print form will survive past the next decade are delusional or on crack).

  I check my email, Twitter and Facebook. During the NBA season, I’ll peruse ESPN.com. If there was a big cricket game overnight, I’ll scope Cricinfo. But Grantland is the mainstay. I’m on the sports/pop culture website daily. Actually, it’s the main cause for my battle with procrastination.

  Personally, it’s clearly the best sports site around. There’s a plethora of content - longform articles, armchair takes, podcasts - to help waste a tedious day in the office.

  It’s the brainchild of America’s most popular sportswriter Bill Simmons and boasts a slew of high-profile writers, including the brilliant Charles P Pierce, Chuck Klosterman and Wesley Morris. Admirably, most of Grantland’s staff writers are aged under 30.

  My favourite part of Grantland is its features section. It advocates the best traditions of narrative journalism and has had an abundance of indelible pieces, notably from Bryan Curtis, Jonathan Abrams and Brian Phillips.

  Grantland’s features editor is Rafe Bartholomew. He’s only 31 and his recent appointment is heeding Simmons’ desire to nurture young talent. Bartholomew rose to prominence in sports journalism after writing Pacific Rims - a journey into the obsession and devotion of basketball in the Philippines. Bartholomew lived there for three years, immersing himself in the Filipino culture, highlighted by his ability to speak Tagalog fluently.

  On return to the United States, his book’s international success helped him land a position at prestigious magazine Harper’s.

  His skill-set as an editor has unfortunately restricted his writing duties. His incisive prose only makes cameo appearances on Grantland. But apparently Bartholomew is currently churning out a memoir on growing up in New York’s oldest bar, where his dad worked. It’s a book well worth to keep an eye out for.

  In the meantime, Bartholomew took some time out of his frenetic schedule to talk narrative journalism, Bill Simmons and Rick Reilly.

  Lavalette: You have the coveted gig of features editor at Grantland at a relatively young age. What’s a typical day consist of for you? What has the role taught you? Do you miss full-time writing?

  Bartholomew: There is no typical day. I manage a handful of Grantland’s writers and sometimes there are three or four features going up on the site in one day. Some days I won’t have any but I’ll still be working. I’ll be working ahead on big stories or on the rare occasions I won’t be working on something, I’ll be looking for something new to assign to someone.

  It has taught me to work very fast and persistent. The Internet is very demanding. We have to put up a lot of content. It’s not like working in a magazine where you can work on a story for a few weeks. We turn around things really fast. Sometimes it’s frustrating because you want to do more but you can’t. You do a good job, the best you can and then you move to the next story.

  I was never a full-time writer at any point in my career. When I was living in the Philippines I wasn’t a full-time anything. I was doing research and freelance writing whenever I could convince an American publication to publish my stuff, which wasn’t very often. Then I worked at Harper’s magazine as an assistant editor before I came here, where I was a general editor before being made features editor.

  But I think of myself as a writer and I wish I could write more.

  Lavalette: Bill Simmons has been the most popular sportswriter of his generation. What’s it like working for him?

  Bartholomew: Simmons is a really good boss. He is a lot more involved in the day-to-day running of Grantland than people think. He is fiercely devoted to the site and to the people who work for him and help him realise his vision for the site. It feels good that he has our backs.

  It’s cool for a sports fan around my age who probably had a phase or lifelong phase of loving everything Bill Simmons wrote and thought he was the funniest, coolest guy, blah, blah. I had that phase and it’s amazing working for someone who influenced you as a teenager.

  Lavalette: You must get loads of story pitches daily from prospective sports writers and freelancers. What stories attract your attention?

  Bartholomew: Stories I can’t assign to my staff writers. We have NBA writers, MLB writers, NHL writers, writers in New York and California and places like that. So if I see a narrative features idea that is something about a sport, or a subject, or an angle of a sport we don’t have, or a place we can’t send our writers easily, that’s when I think ‘ohh, that could be cool’ and I can’t give that to my other people. I have never, or would not, take an idea from a pitch and just assign it to my other writers but the point is the stories I look to assign are the ones that I say ‘one of our writers can’t do this’.

  Lavalette: What makes a good longform story? What tips can you provide young writers aiming to become adept at longform?

  Bartholomew: There are two things. It needs very in-depth research that takes a lot of hard work and time. Reporting - whether it’s interviews, archival research, observational stuff - and gathering all that material and then turning it into storytelling.

  You can get better by reading the best magazines – The New Yorker, Harper’s – who have the best writers and they know how to put together a story and reading stuff like that will make your writing better.

  Lavalette: With armchair critic type pieces becoming more prevalent with the rise of blogs, are you concerned for longform’s future? Do you think aspiring sports writers should hone their skills by pursuing narrative journalism instead of relying on the armchair critic stuff?

  Bartholomew: No, I’m not concerned for longform’s future. Although there is always going to be a place for opinion writing on the internet. The space for longform writing is huge. There is more interest in this type of writing in years because of the internet.

  There’s been criticism because more of it has created some not very good work. But that happens with everything. It’s like a bell curve.

  The space for it is growing on the internet, alongside the armchair takes.

  I think young aspiring writers can do either one. I think it’s a question of temperament and what you’re interested in doing. You can write great opinion pieces that are funny and incisive and insightful and they’re always going to have a place. They’re an important part of Grantland too because we can’t only assign longform pieces because they take too much time and take too long to finish.

  There is no way to do a daily website that doesn’t have opinion, armchair style component. The two different styles complement each other. They can both be done well. Some writers can do either style. Some choose to specialise in one. It’s more about what they choose to be and what their skills and talents lead them to.

  Lavalette: Media industries are struggling. It’s tough to find employment these days. So, say you’re 21 and out of college. Can’t find a job but want to pursue longform journalism. How do you find stories to report on?

  Bartholomew: The same way I’d do it if I do have a job. You read widely, local newspapers, small stories that can have an interesting wrinkle and can be blown into a bigger narrative. Assuming you want to publish them, you start freelancing or pitching ideas around.

  Lavalette: Grantland’s Dr V story was controversial and copped some criticism. What did you, and the site, learn from it?

  Bartholomew: Everything I have to say about Dr V is contained in Bill Simmons’ response.

  Lavalette: Rick Reilly recently announced his retirement from writing. He produced some of the best longform at SI. But he’s been a caricature of himself in recent years. Do you think his old school style had become a relic in the evolving nature of sports writing?

  Bartholomew: He’s a very prolific sports writer and I did read his back page sports columns at SI in the past. But I didn’t follow his career too closely. I was always interested in sports but not necessarily sports writing.

  I happened to fall in love with the subject of basketball in the Philippines that opened doors for me in sports journalism. I never had a subscription to Sports Illustrated. My father had the swimsuit issue at the bar he worked.

  I loved sports through playing and watching it on TV. I think Rick Reilly deserves accolades, he’s had a great career and like anyone who is as prolific as him will have some swings and misses. It happens. He’s picked apart because of his success and the style he represents, which is fine. Rick Reilly doing one thing does not stop another writer doing something that some might enjoy more.

  Lavalette: You lived in the Philippines for three years. How would you describe that experience? Do you think it was the catalyst for your successful career? You’re fluent in Tagalog. How hard was it to learn the language?

  Bartholomew: Living there and working on Pacific Rims was the most important thing I’ve done in my life. I loved living there. I could have left after nine months but I wanted to keep staying and pursuing the story I was fascinated with.

  For me it was perfect and the cultural aspect tied into the sport I loved and played my whole life. It took me to a country I didn’t know much about and I fell in love with.

  The experience helped me land an internship at Harper’s and led me to being hired there. During that time, Pacific Rims came out and was read by original Grantland staff member and editor Jay Caspian Kang. I met Jay while I was promoting the book and we kept in touch.

  He helped me get an interview, which I eventually got. So, that experience in the Philippines led directly to these gigs but I had to do a good job – and I hope I have – but that work I did over that led to all of that.

  Learning Tagalog was hard. I had a tutor twice a week and she would give me homework for each lesson. I was getting formal instruction for the entire three years I was there. I was going out of my way to make conversations when I would play basketball and hanging out with tricycle drivers.

  It was not easy, took about one year to feel comfortable in the language. After time and a lot of work, it clicked into place. I have worked hard to maintain it.

  A few random questions Best NBA team of-all time?

  Bartholomew: The 72-win 1995-96 Chicago Bulls.

  Longform sports piece every young writer should read?

  Bartholomew: Gary Smith’s Crime and Punishment. Structurally it is a very unique story and can’t be duplicated easily. It’s a fantastic piece. It’s about Richie Parker, former New York City point guard, who committed a pretty awful crime in school and pretty much lost everything. He ended up playing D League ball, but it really changed his career. Gary Smith did a wonderful job of bringing out the humanity of everyone involved.

  Favourite ever sportswriter?

  Bartholomew: David Halberstam

  Have you ever watched Australian Rules?

  Bartholomew: I’ve watched it but never a full game. I don’t understand it. I think it’s interesting that some US college basketball players have found their way into the sport. So, that’s the cool. I’m sure there are cooler things about the sport but that’s interesting from an American perspective.

Two and Two: McSorley's, My Dad, and Me
Don Crinklaw
113.16 (Apr. 15, 2017): p9.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Two and Two: McSorley's, My Dad, and Me. By Rafe Bartholomew. May 2017.288p. Little, Brown, $27 (9780316231596). 813.

McSorley's Old Ale House, in the Bowery, had been a Manhattan legend for more than 100 years, the oldest Irish bar in the city, when the author's father hired on to work the taps. Son Rafe grew up loving the old man's booze-soaked stories and learning the bar's theory of customer relations: "Never find fault with a man until you have all his money." Then, in his twenties and against his father's advice, Rafe joined Dad behind the taps. The book details his memories of that time, and the raffish turns are tinged with enough acid to suggest that Dad's reluctance stayed with him. There are accounts of cleaning up vomit and hitting one another with balls of "feduh," the cheesy slime that gathered behind the bar. McSorley s New York is gone now, with much of the city feeling to the author like a "a playground for plutocrats." We understand when Rafe wonders if his colleagues seem "historical reenactors playing dress-up in a tourist trap," but the nostalgia-drenched memoir makes us want to revisit the joint in its salad days.--Don Crinklaw

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Crinklaw, Don. "Two and Two: McSorley's, My Dad, and Me." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2017, p. 9+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA492536075&it=r&asid=77146485b2828a2b3a12378389c015f9. Accessed 9 Oct. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A492536075

Bartholomew, Rafe: TWO AND TWO
(Mar. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Bartholomew, Rafe TWO AND TWO Little, Brown (Adult Nonfiction) $27.00 5, 9 ISBN: 978-0-316-23159-6

A boy comes of age in one of New York's most storied watering holes.There is no bar in New York City--perhaps even all of America--with as much history as McSorley's Old Ale House, which opened on East 7th Street in 1854. It was a campaign stop for Abraham Lincoln, a gathering spot for Boss Tweed and his Tammany Hall cronies, and a hangout for decades of artists, poets, and musicians. But for former Grantland editor Bartholomew (Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Philippines' Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball, 2010), McSorley's was just home. His father, Geoffrey "Bart" Bartholomew, was a bartender, doling out pints of the bar's signature light and dark ales for 45 years--an almost unimaginable career choice for a recovering alcoholic. As a child, Bartholomew would spend magical weekend mornings at the bar with his father, playing with the mouser cat in the basement, eating hamburgers in the kitchen, and doing odd jobs. Bart never wanted to see his son behind the bar; he was a working-class kid from Ohio who'd nearly been killed by his drunk of a father and a long-suffering aspiring writer who'd never seen his literary dreams actualized. But when Rafe had a college degree in hand and a day job as an editorial assistant at Harper's, Bart acquiesced and let Rafe pick up a few shifts (Rafe quickly realized that his tips would eclipse his full-time publishing salary). The author expertly weaves together entertaining stories from his nights behind the bar (note: never work at an Irish pub on St. Paddy's Day) with more poignant moments between father and son--particularly after Rafe's mother (who was not much a part of life at McSorley's but "was everything else") died from a quick and unexpected bout with cancer. Bartholomew does both his father and McSorley's proud with this touching, redolent memoir.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Bartholomew, Rafe: TWO AND TWO." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485105013&it=r&asid=7a8045c6c60f8284295a2be5012e5295. Accessed 9 Oct. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A485105013

Where Everybody Knows Your Name (and Dad's)
John Williams
(May 15, 2017): Arts and Entertainment: pC5(L).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
''The clientele is motley,'' Joseph Mitchell wrote about McSorley's, the fabled East Village ale house, in The New Yorker in 1940. First opened in 1854, the bar's crowd was no less motley when the author Rafe Bartholomew started going there as a child in the 1970s. There, his father would tend bar while the regulars helped babysit Rafe. ''I was 5, 6, 7 years old, and every weekend I got to spend a few hours hanging out with grown men,'' Bartholomew writes in ''Two and Two: McSorley's, My Dad, and Me,'' his new memoir. ''Not just any men, but characters -- workingmen, old men, homeless men, policemen and firemen.'' He would eventually follow the path of his father, Geoffrey, and work behind the bar. ''Two and Two'' is about Geoffrey's 45-year career as a bartender; the deep and abiding bond between father and son; and the stories and people that made McSorley's a city institution. Below, Bartholomew tells us what led him to write such a personal story, what surprises he encountered in the process and more.

When did you first get the idea to write this book?

The long answer is just by nature of growing up around the bar and eventually getting into writing. It probably was inevitable that I would end up writing about it and my dad's career. The answer of when it actually became an idea to try and write a book is that, in 2010, the day my first book came out -- which is not at all related, it's a sports book about basketball in the Philippines -- my agent took me to lunch to say congratulations. She asked, ''What's your next book?'' I hadn't thought of anything. I was totally unprepared. I was like, ''Well, I grew up at McSorley's.'' Her eyes got kind of wide, and she said: ''Well, that should have been your first book. What's wrong with you?''

I wasn't always sure. I said it was inevitable, but I wasn't always sure if I actually wanted to do it. I was always wary of exploiting my life and my dad's story. I think that's why it didn't happen right away. It took me a while to figure out how to write about the place.

What's the most surprising thing you learned while writing ''Two and Two''?

Some of the research I did was reading through my dad's old journals. He kept them for 20 years, steady. We've always been close. Any time I've lived in New York as an adult, we've just lived here together. Though we're father and son, we can be pretty open and informal. He said, ''You want to read the journal, knock yourself out.''

It begins when he was in college in Ohio, and goes through him moving to New York. Reading through the entry after his first night in New York, it says: ''Went to McSorley's Ale House. Drank with two English tourists. Great conversation.'' He doesn't think of it as the beginning of his McSorley's story, because he ended up living above it three years later, and ended up working there two years after that. But learning that my dad actually drank at the bar on his very first night in New York City, in 1967, was almost too perfect.

In what way is the book you wrote different from the book you set out to write?

In my original outlines, I thought I would try to do more of a deeply researched history of the bar, and also hoped to capture more of everyone who works there, do the full gallery. I never thought of structuring it where everyone got a chapter, or something like that, but I thought I was going to attempt to write about everyone's lives in more detail than ended up being possible in any book of readable length.

Of course, you can't write about McSorley's without having a lot of history in there, but it's a more informal history of the bar than a rigorous history. I was worried about falling into the bottomless pit of McSorley's history. It's also scary to be treading on the same territory as Joseph Mitchell. The thing I could do different than the historians, the thing that differentiated me, is that I worked there, I grew up there. Of the many people who have written about it, none of them had been as close to it as I had, and I wanted to write from that perspective. It just became clear that the narrative at the heart of the book was going to be about me and my dad -- his story, his career and me growing up around the bar.

Who is a creative person (not a writer) who has influenced you and your work?

It makes sense for this book to say: some of the other bartenders who I knew when I was a kid. Or one even who I never met. He died in the late '70s. They're creative in their storytelling and their humor. I think of a bartender my dad worked with when I was a kid, Tommy Lloyd, who could make me laugh at any time he wanted. A lot of it was pretty dirty and childish stuff, basically Adam Sandler humor, but it worked. The inventiveness of their language and the liberties they would take -- which I'm not able to do professionally in the same way -- but just the fun and the liveliness they narrated their daily lives with, I hope animates my writing a little bit.

Persuade someone to read ''Two and Two'' in less than 50 words.

It's a book about a great old bar and the careers and passions of the people who work and drink in the place, and all the love my father has passed down to me from working there.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.

CAPTION(S):

PHOTOS: Rafe Bartholomew, top, wrote ''Two and Two: McSorley's, My Dad, and Me,'' above. (PHOTOGRAPH BY LESLIE GONZALES)

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Williams, John. "Where Everybody Knows Your Name (and Dad's)." New York Times, 15 May 2017, p. C5(L). General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA491707199&it=r&asid=adaec9906319e4bc518016550f0fb8b6. Accessed 9 Oct. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A491707199

Crinklaw, Don. "Two and Two: McSorley's, My Dad, and Me." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2017, p. 9+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA492536075&asid=77146485b2828a2b3a12378389c015f9. Accessed 9 Oct. 2017. "Bartholomew, Rafe: TWO AND TWO." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA485105013&asid=7a8045c6c60f8284295a2be5012e5295. Accessed 9 Oct. 2017. Williams, John. "Where Everybody Knows Your Name (and Dad's)." New York Times, 15 May 2017, p. C5(L). General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA491707199&asid=adaec9906319e4bc518016550f0fb8b6. Accessed 9 Oct. 2017.

• seeing the world through books
  http://marywhipplereviews.com/rafe-bartholomew-two-and-two-mcsorleys-my-dad-and-me-new-york-ale-house/
  Word count: 1502

  Rafe Bartholomew–TWO AND TWO: McSorley’s, My Dad, and Me

  Jun 9th, 2017 by mary

  “McSorley’s has the power to transport any of us to whatever New York era feels most like home. That’s because it doesn’t matter if a person first ordered two and two in 1967 or 2000, or if it takes two weeks or thirty years for that customer to come back. Whenever he returns, McSorley’s will be the same.”

  cover mscorley'sTry, for a moment, to imagine going into the attic of a house occupied by members of your family for one hundred sixty-three years. Old paintings, documents, photographs, small sculptures, war-time hats and helmets, and all manner of other memorabilia fill it from floor to ceiling, and everything there reminds you of the major events which have affected you and those closest to you. Few of us are lucky enough to have such a family attic, but McSorley’s Old Ale House in the East Village of New York City has acquired that status for thousands of customers who have visited it for over a century and a half. Established in 1854 and billed as “the oldest bar in New York city,” McSorley’s, an Irish ale house, serves only dark and light ale, never wine or hard liquor. Owned and operated by only three families during its entire history, McSorley’s has existed continuously at the same location in the East Village since its inception, and many of its employees have been there for decades.

  rafebartholomew_081814Rafe Bartholomew, the author-son of Geoffrey “Bart” Bartholomew, grew up at McSorley’s, where his father is still working as a bartender after forty-five years. Rafe himself began “working” there for fun when he was five or six, his father often bringing him for a few hours on Saturday mornings to help polish the brass, scrub tables, or clean away the greasy gunk that accumulates around and behind some of the memorabilia. On these Saturdays, Rafe had a chance to hang out with grownups and get to know many of the unusual characters with whom his father worked. When he grew older, he worked there as a casual chef and eventually as a waiter and assistant to his father. He knows McSorley’s from the inside, and as he tells the story of his relationships there, especially with his father, he is also telling the story of a neighborhood gathering place, a culture, and a piece of American history. His background as a journalist and fan of fine writing allows him to communicate directly with a wide readership, and his love and respect for his father and his co-workers make his story of McSorley’s insightful and very real.
  By Leonard J. DeFrancisci

  By Leonard J. DeFrancisci

  Both Rafe and his father Bart, who almost became an English teacher, appreciate the McSorley mystique which has attracted famous people from the arts. Poet e. e. cummings wrote a poem about McSorley’s, Dylan Thomas and Eugene O’Neill spent time there, Woody Guthrie sang there in the 1940s, and artist John Sloan painted five scenes of McSorley’s in the years just before World War I. History buffs appreciate the fact that Abraham Lincoln stopped there in 1860 as he was campaigning for office, and an authentic WANTED poster for John Wilkes Booth from April 1865 is displayed on the wall. Houdini left a pair of handcuffs there, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a letter from the White House, and a copy of the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Babe Ruth upon his retirement from baseball appears behind the bar. Other photos of John F. Kennedy, Charles Lindbergh, and Alfred E. Newman share a wall with the hats of firemen from 9/11 and helmets from World Wars I and II.
  Right side, dust-covered wishbones over the bar. Photo by Lee Nelson.

  On the right side of the photo, dust-covered wishbones are seen between the gaslights over the bar. Photo by Lee Nelson. Click to enlarge.

  One story for which McSorley’s is particularly famous concerns the wishbones that have been hanging on a metal bar connecting two gas lamps for a hundred years. Legend has it that in 1917, just after Thanksgiving, a group of newly enlisted New York soldiers brought their Thanksgiving wishbones to McSorley’s and hung them between the gas lamps for good luck as they left to fight in World War I. After the war the survivors returned and reclaimed their wishbones; many remain unclaimed. Additional wishbones were added during World War II and other US wars. As a sign of respect for all the men whose wishbones became memorials, McSorley’s never allowed them to be disturbed, though dust built up and coated them over the years. In 2010, however, New York City began requiring the annual health inspection of all bars and restaurants in the city. The inspectors, of course, found the wishbones, directly over the bar with their long strings of dust, to be a health hazard. To prevent problems, Matty Maher, the bar’s owner, went to the bar alone at 3:00 a.m. one night to clean each wishbone individually and replace it exactly as it had been, maintaining the feeling of trust, he felt, between the lost soldiers and McSorley’s and preserving them as a lasting memorial, albeit one without dust.
  Front room bar.

  Front room bar, with female bartender.

  A high point of the book is the strong relationship between Rafe Bartholomew and his dad, a story of love and good humor, especially during Rafe’s mother’s two difficult bouts of cancer, fifteen years apart. The Bartholomews, father and son, returned to their work within a week after she died, discovering that their almost automatic responses to the needs of the job allowed them some respite from their overwhelming sadness. Their care for each other was both touching and memorable, a feeling which they and the rest of the management and staff have also extended to others who live near the ale house, hangers-on and down-and-outers who appear at the door at closing time. Hiring some to work as night watchmen or gofers, and others to do odd jobs that no one else wants, in exchange for $10 – $20, McSorley’s allows these people to earn some money, enjoy a meal, and have the chance to socialize.
  Be Good or Be Gone, the motto of McSorley's. above the motto by the pipe from the stove, are the handcuffs from Houdini.

  Be Good or Be Gone, the motto of McSorley’s. above the icebox. Above the motto by the pipe from the stove, are the handcuffs from Houdini. Click to see more photos.

  Despite its many episodes of humor, its quirky personalities, the loving relationship between the Bartholomew father and son, and its revelations about this old ale house, the book does have a down side. Far too much time is spent on descriptions of the men’s bathroom, the difficulties of keeping it clean, the detailing of why sawdust is a feature on all the floors, and the crude comments and language the men make to each other, especially at the beginning. The fact that McSorley’s was a men-only bar until 1970, when it had to be sued before it would admit women, suggests that these details may reflect the stubborn male behavior of many of its patrons, and the learned ability of McSorley’s to tolerate it. Ultimately, I am reminded of a college professor who once said, “The Realists called a spade a spade. The Naturalists called it a goddam shovel.” Realism regarding McSorley’s is a good thing. The shovels of naturalism were unnecessary here.
  mugs

  “Look, Ma, two hands!”

  Photos, in order: The author’s photo is from http://sa.kapamilya.com/

  The facade of McSorley’s by Leonard J. De Francisci appears on https://commons.wikimedia.org

  The bar photo showing the dusty wishbones, by Lee Nelson, may be found on http://www.inetours.com/

  The cluttered bar in the front room, with its female bartender, is from http://sideways.nyc/

  The picture showing the “Be Good or Be Gone” motto above the icebox is from https://www.6sqft.com A large collection of outstanding photos from McSorley’s appears on this site.

  The sign of an excellent bartender at McSorley’s is how many mugs he can carry in his two hands. Here a bartender shows he can carry an amazing twenty mugs. Carrying them is one thing, but the weight of them is something else again! http://bachelor10.com/venue/41/new-york-city/mcsorleys-old-ale-house

  TWO AND TWO: MCSORLEY'S, MY DAD, AND ME
  REVIEW. Historical, Non-fiction, Social and Political Issues, US Regional,
  Written by: Rafe Bartholomew
  Published by: Little, Brown
  Date Published: 05/09/2017

• bookbed blog
  http://bookbed.org/2017/02/24/why-filipinos-should-read-pacific-rims-rafe-bartholomew/
  Word count: 1467

  24 Feb Why Filipinos Should Read: ‘Pacific Rims’ by Rafe Bartholomew
  Posted at 21:40h in Pillow Talk, Why Filipinos Should Read by Bookbed 0 Comments
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  BY BRYAN MENIADO

  It’s the month of love, and we hear kilig stories here and there, so I thought I’d talk about something that many of us Filipinos can relate to: our love affair with basketball. We play it on the computer and on the streets. We cheer from our living rooms and from the sidelines. We talk about games and players and teams and coaches. We go all out, local or international. Even NBA stars that visit the country are in awe of how crazy we are about basketball. Now, that’s something we can tag as #MayNanaloNa, huh?

  But why? Why are we so engrossed with basketball? Why are there courts in almost every corner of the barangay? Why do we see faces of basketball stars painted on jeepneys? Why are Tatay and Kuya so emotionally invested in this Finals, arguing every play and scolding anyone who dares change the channel?

  Here is one book that offers a look into Philippine basketball culture: Pacific Rims: Beer Ballin’ in Flip-Flops and the Philippines’ Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball by Rafe Bartholomew. Published in 2010, it provides research and experience-based insights about our deep affection for the game. The author, who is a journalist and a New York hoops fanatic, spent hours in libraries, pick-up games from the concrete jungle of Manila to dirt courts of far-flung provinces and in the professional league itself, through his sideline stint with the Alaska Aces of the Philippine Basketball Association, or PBA.

  [Pacific Rims by Rafe Bartholomew]

  But whether you’re basketball-crazed or not, Pacific Rims is a book worth reading. It is a love letter to us Filipinos, showing the interplay between basketball, Philippine history and Filipino culture. Here are quite sentimental facts:
  1. It tells us more about our colonial imprint

  When Spaniards first arrived on our shores, they brought Catholicism and taught us faith. After 300 years, the Americans brought in basketball to the people who sought leisure amid their struggle for independence.

  A century later, Rafe Bartholomew from New York came over to revisit what has become of basketball in the Philippines.

  After scouring libraries for historical references and interviewing resource persons, Bartholomew learned that the history of basketball in the Philippines can be traced back to the early 1900s. The U.S. colonial government, through the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), brought in the sport as part of the physical education program for the then newly-established public school system.

  The interesting bit is that basketball was first introduced as a physical activity for women as it is an indoor sport. Soccer was the one intended for men. But not so long after, men started to encroach on basketball and since then have kind of “owned” the sports, even dominating the international basketball scene in early to mid-1900s (Yes, we used to be good at this). Today, basketball remains to be viewed as a masculine sports opposite to what it was intended for.
  2. Basketball and Filipino culture

  Since its colonial roots, basketball has become deeply ingrained not only in our school life as part of P.E. classes, but in our everyday lives, too. We see manifestations of these around us, from the jeepneys painted with star players and team logos and makeshift hoops in every nooks and crannies of our communities down to the jersey uniforms we wear as “pambahay” and our anticipation for the Manila Clasico clash (a rivalry between two popular PBA teams).

  Basketball courts have also become staple community projects of politicians under the slogan, “Yes to sports, no to drugs,” which can be considered as both leisure infrastructure and public health campaign. (On the flip side, it can also be viewed as a big political campaign benefiting a politician whose name is printed on the backboard looking for a reelection in the upcoming elections.)

  But one may wonder: what’s special about basketball? Why not soccer or perhaps, volleyball? Why care more about PBA Finals while the rest of the world goes crazy over the World Cup? What makes basketball enticing for Filipinos?

  Anthropologist Michael Tan theorizes that Filipinos, despite our short stature, prefer basketball because of its fast-paced and action-packed style of play where there’s instant gratification. Unlike in soccer where patience is key to achieve a goal, basketball gives far more scoring chances that excite Filipinos. Furthermore, a soccer match can end in a draw, which can be unsatisfying for many.
  3. The court is where it all happens

  During the Spanish colonial time, the plaza used to be the center of the community but in some densely populated areas today, the basketball court can be the only open public space available. Hence, it has become the new center, an event venue for fiestas, concerts, pageants, election campaign and, in times of disaster, evacuation.

  If you roam around any barangay in the Philippines, more often than not, there is a basketball court because the court has become a public resource. In fact, to an extent, it is also where young Filipino men are “made.” And with that…
  4. Basketball as a rite of passage

  After playing some pick-up games with young Filipinos, Bartholomew dug deeper into the role of basketball regarding their social lives: What really is basketball for us, especially to those young boys we see playing on the streets? Bartholomew asked anthropologist Michael Tan, who also researches on gender and sexuality, and here was what he said:

  “The sport had become not just a pastime for young Filipino men, but a rite of passage. When boys reach adolescence, they receive privileges. Their mothers begin to allow them to roam their neighborhoods freely, getting into trouble but also learning how to carry themselves as men. Inevitably, these boys end up playing basketball, first in their own neighborhood, but then branching out to compete against kids in other areas. These early trials teach them masculine virtues like teamwork, aggression, and machismo… So basketball is there to make friends, build alliances. It even crosses class barriers.”

  With that, we can certainly claim that…
  5. “It is more than just a game.”

  During his stay, Bartholomew also had the opportunity to attend and travel with the Alaska Aces of the PBA for one conference. He had access to practice sessions, games, and other behind-the-scenes within the team, as well as the league, that showed him what it’s like to be a pro in the Philippines.

  But unlike in the NBA where teams are city-based, those that play locally are corporate-owned. This is why some team names can be a little silly and borderline ridiculous. For example, the Alaska Aces, owned by the Alaska Milk Corporation, was once called the Alaska Milkmen.

  Other team names include the fan-favorite San Miguel Beermen, Brgy. Ginebra San Miguel Kings and Star Hotshots, all under the ownership of the mighty San Miguel Corporation. Each of the aforementioned team promotes a particular San Miguel product.

  The reason? The PBA, the second-oldest professional basketball league in the world behind the NBA, has solidified its role as an effective marketing tool for corporate branding, utilizing the popularity of basketball in the country. Some of its pro athletes have developed a sort of cult of personality among their fans.

  And with the ever-growing fandom of the so-called diehards, the players, coaches and other league personalities’ scope of popularity usually spills over basketball that, in turn, make them somehow eligible for local show business and, not surprisingly, politics. And these transitions from basketball to outside of basketball are often fruitful.

  This is how basketball in the Philippines is more that just a game. It can be used (and has been used) for other agenda ranging from corporate branding and brand recall to fulfilling other aspirations aside from being athletes.
  6. Basketball and our quest for nationhood

  For some, cheering for a national squad is the “shallower” form of nationalism but one cannot deny the influence it has in our national lives. For example, Team Gilas Pilipinas brought out the raving fans in all of us. Through cheering for our team, we found a common ground of wanting to achieve our much-desired and much-deserved national glory. To see us united about something we love and believe in brings kilig. Here’s to hoping we elevate it to nation-building. ☁

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