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30 Responses to Monday Matchbook
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Little Judge got a Big Head.
I also enjoy how Little Judge’s head remains stationary, while his body engages in the contortions of living: waving at his many likkered-up buddies, wedging The Head into tiny cars to avoid the Giant Falling Telephone Receivers…
akly?
When someone hasn’t touched a drop, they’re said to be “as sober as a judge.” That’s what’s known in the trade as Sweet Irony…
Besides the stationary head, he’s very creepy looking.
Square ears, open ended eye sockets and no discernible fingers other than the thumb.
Oh, man, the glories of free-enterprise liquor. I grew up in Georgia where liquor was totally free-enterprise. But since 1973 I’ve lived in Alabama, Virginia and North Carolina, all states with government liquor stores. I miss the gaudy neon of free-market “package stores,” as they euphemistically called them in Georgia when I was growing up. I miss the sales on merchandise, the advertising displays, etc, all of which are banned in dull, government-run ABC stores.
I suspect Little Judge got into business through contacts he made while hearing cases during Prohibition, if you get my drift.
Is it “Little Judge’s Liquor Store” or “Little Judge’s Liquor”? Do they both have prompt service? Perhaps, like the Gallagher show he has an identical looking brother trying to capitalize on the confusion. Maybe he was using the free parking lot and floating phone to sell his own booze out of the back seat of his car.
If so, we may never find out the true story. They probably haven’t spoken to each other in decades.
en Español usted dice “Judge Ito”*
*bad pun for Court TV followers
Court TV is now TruTV: “It’s not reality, it’s actuality!”
Ironic name for a liquor store.
I wonder if Big Judge had an even bigger head?
Free Parking. I’m on my way.
Click the link on my name for the streetview at the address
739 E 14TH ST
MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55404
That seems a pretty likely candidate to me.
I worked at Little Judge’s for a summer in the early 90s while attending the U of MN.
Two kindly and funny Iranian brothers helped manage the store, while an old retired pugilist with a hulking frame, a flat nose, and a bad attitude (who was good friends with the owner from their childhood days) thought he ran the store.
The busiest days of the month were, of course, the day the welfare checks came. Our patrons stopped at Griswald Drugs (later change to the “North Central University Bookstore”) right next door to cash their checks before stopping in for some Night Train or Mad Dog (yes, those were our most popular sellers, followed closely by Country Club Malt Liquor and Olde English – “It’s the Power!”). Then, a few of them would hop across the street to the Band Box hamburger joint to drum up some thirst.
The worst part of my job there was delivering liquor to some of the seediest areas of Minneapolis. For each delivery, I earned one cold hard dollar.
As for the name, Little Judge’s – it was in fact owned by a Judge. One Honorable Judge Meshbesher, as I recall. His son, (or maybe one of his brothers, I don’t remember) was one of the big partners in the Mpls law firm Meshbesher Singer and Spence (now simply Meshbesher and Spence). I think it was the ‘least successful’ Meshbesher son (ie: not a lawyer) who was then put in charge of the Liquor store.
I remember the day I got to deliver a hatchback load of fine distilled mix-ables into the plush conference room of Meshbesher, Singer and Spence, thinking, “at last, I might finally get a tip” only to be shown the door with an empty hat in my hand.
Still, it was better than the time I delivered to the dope king-pin of Mpls, or the naked-sex-crazed octogenarian… but those are tales for another day.
One of the worst jobs I’ve ever had.
–
If you’re trying to find it via street view on Google maps, move your POV to the tri-section of 14th St, 10th St, and Chicago Ave, looking South.
rivlax Says:
June 29th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Oh, man, the glories of free-enterprise liquor. I grew up in Georgia where liquor was totally free-enterprise. But since 1973 I’ve lived in Alabama, Virginia and North Carolina, all states with government liquor stores.
Government liquor stores? What the ???? Did you call each other Comrade?
A hooch Emporium? That’s the bee’s knees. I stopped drinking back when I was in High School (I could see it could become a problem…). Free parking AND delivery? Well, all of your objections are overcome on the cover of one matchbook. Bottoms up!
bulldog- Sounds miserable. I bet you studied that much harder, thinking you did no want to do this forever. My college jobs encouraged me in that regard.
Here’s a link to the street view:
http://tinyurl(dot)com(slash)l6duwg
Darn! didn;t obfuscate the URL sufficiently…
Repost:
bulldog- Sounds miserable. I bet you studied that much harder, thinking you did no want to do this forever. My college jobs encouraged me in that regard.
Here’s a link to the street view:
http(colon slash slash)tinyurl(dot)com(slash)l6duwg
Ah, yes, the glories of the state Alcoholic Beverage Commissions (ABC). Relatively common in Bible Belt states. What better way to keep tabs on those pesky demon likker drinkers?
Back when I was in college, all the ABC stores were counter sales ONLY. I.e. you asked the counter guy to get your hooch from the back. No browsing. It sucked. At least now, all the metropolitan stores are self-serve.
In contrast, practically every grocery and drug store in California has a liquor section. I used to love taking friends from back East to the grocery to yuk it up over the generic liquor: big plastic bottles with plain white labels and bold black print declaring the contents. “RUM,” “VODKA,” “TEQUILA.”
According to the matchbook, the store was once at 1413 Chicago where a parking lot for NCUniversity now sits. The photo from the 1990s is of a later location at 739-741 E. 14th St., the southwest corner of 14th and Chicago. According to a 1998 Strib story, NCU bought the building and leased it to the liquor store for some years before evicting them in 1998.
Get a load of what the building looked like originally: http://collections.mnhs.org/visualresources/VRDbimages/pf129/pf129716.jpg
The building has been completely stripped of anything that made it architecturally interesting.
Tony
Ohio has state liquor stores (with their attendant high prices). Since Cincinnati (my town) is literally right across the river from Kentucky, the privately-owned stores there make a killing.
Ironically, it was right around the corner from Little Skunk’s Rehab.
Thanks!
HunkybobTX – yep, that’s the spot!
Oh, to remember the days when the bums would come in with their freshly-aerosoled silver and gold spray-paint goaties as they made one last huff before coming in for the good stuff.
That job (and view of humanity) did indeed spur me on in my studies. It also lured me into a summer-long romance with Mickey’s Big Mouths (I got a discount – it was almost like not paying the sales tax!). The best part of the job was stocking the walk-in cooler. The Judge didn’t have air conditioning.
rivlax Says:
“I grew up in Georgia where liquor was totally free-enterprise.”
Well, it beats the ABC store but “free” it ain’t. It is all controlled by a few very well-connected distributors. At least they could no longer ignore the move toward specialty breweries and we can get decent beer.
Is it just me, or is that caricature just begging for someone to photoshop it into drunken oblivion?
Free parking? Don’t need it some places. I once worked/hung out at the last drive-up convenience store in the state; we sold beer an hour after the liquor stores closed, so we made a killing for that hour(and on all the lazy, I’ll-pay-ectra-not-to-get-outta-the-car regulars the rest of the time).
But that was nothing compared to a GINORMOUS drive-thru liquor store I saw once in Texas. Coming from the land of neighborhood taps and beer depots, it just made the mind reel.
Haven’t seen a drive through liquor store in years, here in TX. It also used to be legal to have an open container in the car here so ong as the driver wasn’t holding the container. It was not too long ago – ’90′s. One Aggie I knew called the Lone Star Lights he had in the back seat ‘road cokes’.
I remember a sporting goods store called Judge Little Sporting Goods Store. I still have a putter I bought from that place back in 1972.
rivlax Says:
“I grew up in Georgia where liquor was totally free-enterprise.”
True. We also had liquor stores here that had drive-thrus that would sell you a cup of ice and a mixer to go with your hooch. Very convenient and probably dangerous until they passed the open container laws in my home town.
So is it a liquor store for trial court judges (“little” judges, as opposed to appellate level judges) or for judges who fail the “you must be this tall to enter this liquor store”?
@bulldog: Looking forward to hearing more about the naked-sex-crazed octogenarian!!