Tim Grobaty: Requiem for Curby the bartender

REQUIEM FOR A BARTENDER: Our friend Curby sold his beloved Galaxy 500 convertible on Tuesday. He gave the money to his landlord to pay past-due rent and then went off and shot himself.

We can't recall, over the 20 or so years we've known Curby, a time when he wasn't troubled. Nor can we recall a time over that span when he wasn't cheerful or a joy to be around.

"Curby" wasn't his real name, it's a nickname based on his difficulty navigating the sudden change in roadside altitude when he was in his cups. But it's the only name he went by, and it's all we're going to remember him by.

He was born as a bartender - a couple jiggers therapist, a couple jiggers hilarity and the rest all heart.

Seeing Curby anywhere outside a bar was like seeing your schoolteacher at the supermarket. It just didn't look right. And looking every bit as wrong was seeing him in anything other than a gaudy Elvis shirt (as opposed to a staid, bland Elvis shirt), or a blinding Hawaiian number. A Hawaiian-style Elvis shirt was perfect.

Though he worked in a number of bars over his short life - he was 49 - we knew him best from his days as nectar-director at O'Connell's, the venerable bar on Fourth Street and Temple Avenue. He'd have our drink waiting for us before we hopped onto a barstool.

His wit was rapid and wicked, and he felt welcome to interject it into any conversation that was going on on the civilian side of the bar.

Our favorite moment was when O'Leary, a perpetually disgruntled Irishman, came into O'Connell's one afternoon all grouchy as usual.

"Timothy," he called us, as all Irishmen do. "I went to the doctor today and he put his gloves on to check me out and the sadistic bastard used TWO fingers! I asked him why he had to use two ..."

Curby walked past just then and chirped, "Maybe he wanted a second opinion."

The suicide thing, though? Not so funny. His friends - both over the phone like in the old days, and on Facebook - expressed their feelings in equal parts sadness and anger.

They wondered, no doubt, why he didn't ask them for help. But Curby rarely did that. Instead, he helped everyone else, both materially (he literally gave us the shirt off his back once, though we told him to hurry up and put it back on) and through his earnest listening. He was eager to take on everyone's problems, but unwilling or unable to handle his own.

He loved it when we put him in our column, which we did several times over the years for any number of reasons, though usually having to do with serious matters of mixology.

He was righteously adamant that a martini's chief ingredient is gin, not vodka or chocolate or cotton candy.

A couple of times, we urged readers to swing by his bar for what we claimed was Curby's famous "50-cent piña collider," a drink that, when people started showing up with their four bits, he had to invent, as well as sell at a loss, which he covered himself, presenting us with the bill on our next visit.

When we stopped going to bars - we found it cheaper and safer to have our own built - we lost touch with Curby, though we continued to put him in a column when appropriate.

So, there's this: With people getting geared up for the Grand Prix, it's important to set your day off in the right direction with a bloody mary.

Curby's recipe was fairly basic, but nevertheless great, and he made a bunch of them every year at this time as race fans made their first stop of the day at O'Connell's.

This year, for the first time in 20 years or so, you're on your own for your breakfast cocktail, but here's how Curby made it:

Over crushed ice, pour an ounce and a half of vodka (don't waste the good stuff; any brand that sounds like the name of a Cold War villain in a bad novel will do fine).

Fill with tomato juice. Add a couple dashes of Worcestershire sauce, three splashes of Tabasco, two or three shakes of celery salt and a dab of Atomic brand horseradish. In a dire emergency, we suppose you could use another brand, but we wouldn't stray from Curby's recipe.

For garnish, use a pickled string bean, not a celery stalk. If you're going to use a celery stalk, you might as well make yourself a watermelon martini.

At this point, a fitting memorial is in the planning stages. Drop us an email, and we'll let you know when it's set.


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