an important birthday

Damn but does it seem like a lot of people around here were born in July. One of those people is our good friend and main dude about this place, Chaz Martenstein. Chaz owns and operates Bull City Records, is a major player at Bull City Headquarters, and most importantly works the door here at the Pinhook twice a week. Chaz you are living god.

Anyway, Friday, July 17th, Chaz is throwing a birthday party at the Pinhook. You should come wish the man well, and stay for the incredible line-up of bands. All the way from Minneapolis, Pretty Boy Thorson & The Fallen Angels kick things off at 10 with an off-the-rails Uncle Tupelo vibe. They are “rollicking”, I’d say, and have a repertoire of important songs about drinking and hamburgers.

Durham’s Dry Heathens continue the awesomeness. These guys sound like they’re one step away from robbing a convenience store so they can buy chainsaws, but actually they are nice guys and Friends of Ours.

Finally, if you’ve never seen Raleigh’s Whatever Brains, DO NOT MISS THIS SHOW. Jagged American rock with an undercurrent of awesome menace, WB is one of the best bands in this area. Perhaps THE best, depending on who you ask. (Me. Ask me.)

Love,

El Hook

BE. INFORMATIVE. B-E. INFORMATIVE.

Alright everybody, it’s time to dust this fucker off. Wipe all the construction dirt and stale beer residue off this blog and GIVE INFORMATION TO THE PEOPLE. Cozy up in yr favorite chair, we doin’ this.

It’s been an awesome summer so far at the Pinhook. We got a new pool table, a Ms. Pacman/Galaga machine that doesn’t crap out all the time, Tekken 2, and this terrifyingly violent game called Carnevil where you just cold blow away monsters with a gun. I think I remember playing this game at a mall arcade many years ago. My parents were most likely horrified.

All these new additions are fine, but the most awesome thing in the world is that our patio is open.  It overlooks American Tobbaco, the DPAC, the Bulls’ Stadium and, uh, the jail. On the 4th of July we had a perfect view of the fireworks, and an excellent time was had by all. We have a grill back there too.

But the MOST awesome awesome thing is simply the quality of the music we have had over the last few months, and the even more kickass lineup that this summer has in store for it. The passion and professionalism of the bands who have played here has been staggering, and we are extremely grateful. We’ve moved into full-fledged music venue mode, and we want to be THE PLACE TO PLAY.

GodDAMN, there is so much good music coming up. I Was Totally Destroying It, Hammer No More the Fingers, Architects of Feat, Three Days in Vegas, Dry Heathens, Whatever Brains, Jews and Catholics, The Sidekicks, DJ Sleazy McQueen…put all of them into your pipe and fire it up.

SUMMER! WHOOOOOOOO!!

Love,

PHK

THE PINHOOK IS OPEN! come to troika.

Ha.  That sounds like come to mama.  Which can be totally weird.  Really, though, come to Troika.  Troika is the Durham Music Festival that rocks throughout several venues in this amazing town.  We’re really lucky to be a part of it this year.  Ha.  Good think we’re open.

A few days ago we went through hell getting our licensing and forgot to do necessary things like sleep, shower and call our moms, and blog, but somehow we got everything in order by the election.  What a momunmental evening.  There were throngs of people downtown, which is something I’ve not seen before.  Everyone was hugging and crying and then dancing to Nate’s hot DJ mix after a landslide win.  I’m sorry and slightly shocked if anyone that is reading this blog was upset by the outcome, but the amount of love that was fyling around in this bar was comforting and elating.

So now, fellas, we’re open for real!  Our hours are 4pm-2am everyday but Sunday, because Sunday is just too good of a day to drink.  We haven’t set schedules so you’ll see all three of us here all the time, kind of like you will when we do set schedules.  Our Pacman and Pinball machines are bunk until further notice (which shouldn’t be long but I spose you never know with a dive bar), but we do have a fully functional and free Galaga, Scrabble, Cribbage, Connect Four, and lots of cards.  But we’re here now, and would love it if you came here too.

We have everything from Schlitz to Glenlivet.  We take everything but American Express.  We are a private club because we have to be, so visit our website at www.thepinhook.com and print out a membership or get one here.

Here’s the Troika Schedule:

Thursady:
11:15 – Future Islands
10:30 – Screaming Females
9:45 – Juan Huevos
9:00 – Dylan Gilbert
DJ Alex Kotch

Saturday:
11:00 – I Was Totally Destroying It
10:15 – The Travesties
9:30 – The Pneurotics
8:45 – Resist Not

Thanks guys.  While we don’t normally charge covers, Troika will be $5 a pop.

Love,
The Pinhookers

The plumber…

The plumber that is here right now is amazing. He just did the unthinkable, and all systems are now on go. Nick almost broke his thumb. A small price to pay… Thanks Gene. I just wanted to immortalize you.

News from the ‘hook.

It has been awhile since we’ve blogged, but that’s because we went on a week long expense paid vacation to Guatemala and didn’t really have time to deal with The Pinhook in all of its glory.

Sike. We’ve been a mite busy painting, buying mismatched furniture, hounding permit people, painting, building the floor, hauling out scrap materials, and painting. Nick Hawthorn Johnson let us borrow his paint sprayer, which in turn allowed us to paint the entire bar in less than 4 days. It’s now a rich, shocking and otherwise loud fire-engine red, cut by a deep gray brown for trim and pillars. It looks like… it looks like the most ecstatic hi-five you’ve ever experienced. We got the paint from Paul at the Common Ground paint store on 324 Geer Street. It’s a really great place to grab paint that’s non-toxic so that you don’t die while breathing, and/or painting. Note to self. Aesthetics – usually not worth dying for. We got so into painting that Liz turned to me after the perfect paint job and in utter seriousness said, “Kym, we work really well together. We should totally start some kind of business.” I guess non-toxic paint fumes can still get you high.

Dave Rogers is really kickin’ toot on the bar. He’s welding several miscellaneous metal shards together. In the pictos below you can see some of the progress. It’s art people, it takes time. You can also see outt’s collage comin’ along nicely as well.

There are several more characters that we’ve worked with too. My personal goal of getting pictures with everyone of them has not been achieved. People like Garry from Modern Metal Studios – our awesome sign designer that has amazing hair, Amhad of Graduate Painting- the guy that painted our facade with a paint brush old school style, Nancy – the woman that we bought the couch we appropriately named Nancy from… And by the way she has an old Buffalo Bus from the 70’s with bunks that was used by her gospel group for touring (ahem trekky kids, need another fly ride?) and that guy from guitar center. I’ll tell that story in person.

We did want to do a blog entry about the multiple injuries that we’ve all incurred while working on this project and the few times that each of us have almost bit it, quite literally, during this venture, but it ain’t over yet so we best not be jinxing ourselves.

Aside from spending the last few days in respirator masks feeling like we just crawled out of some bad B-Movie you’d watch at Eric Ward’s house, there are two bits of news I’d like to share with you.

1. Rochelle Woodward from Row Design Studios(WWW.ROWDESIGNSTUDIOS.COM) has almost completed our website. Lookie here: www.thepinhook.com

2. We’re having a “so you said you wanted to help and you really meant you’d like to work a little and party a little more” gathering on Thursday at 7pm at The Pinhook. We’ll provide beer. RSVP using a comment or by emailing us at thepinhook (at) gmail.com and let us know iffin you’re coming so we can have enough cheap/amazing booze for us all.

yours,
kym and co

So What’s in God’s Name is a Pinhook Anyway?

In the long, obscene, and brutal discussions that we had between January and July about what the hell we were going to name our bar, we did some heavy research into the greasy, forgotten corners of Durham’s history. the word “Pinhook” came up in a few places, mostly referring to an old “grog shop.” I’m not sure, but I think grog referred to any alcoholic beverage that came in a big earthenware jug marked “XXX”, and consumed by comical, old-style hobos as they rode the rails with a cadre of bright pink elephants.

Anyway, since we are opening our own drink-selling establishment, we thought The Pinhook would be a very appropriate name.

It turned out to be more terrifyingly appropriate than we could have ever imagined.

A few weeks ago, my friend Jessica (an archivist at UNC) told me that Pinhook did not refer to the grog shop itself, but the settlement where the grog shop was located. There was an entire neighborhood called Pinhook.

The name came from an old term for a small-time tobacco hustler. Pinhookers would buy up leftover tobacco at the end of auctions, repackage it, and sell it for a small profit. It was a pretty crass way to make a living, but it was enough to keep a few people in “grog”. Pinhookers were not people who rode around in private train cars saying “fuck off” to members of the Rockefeller family, is basically what I’m saying.

If the Pinhook settlement was anything, it was raw. The dudes were harsh and grizzled, stoney-eyed men who drank rye whiskey out of their hats and pummeled each other with railroad ties. The women were all over six-feet tall, and even though a lot of them were prostitutes, they took shit from no man. This kind of woman could beat Sylvester Stallone at arm wrestling. (Have you seen that movie Over the Top? I haven’t, but I hear it’s pretty good.)

But Pinhook was also fun, as evidenced by the crowds of 19th-century UNC students who would roll in on the weekends to get their swerve on, and maybe gamble away the money their father made by inventing the Marvelous Automated Butter Churn. Can you imagine that? UNC students coming to Durham to hang out? Craaaazy!

The best story I heard about the settlement came from John Schelp of the Old West Durham Neighborhood Association. Apparently the area acheived widespread fame when a man and a women, both naked as babes, embarked on a curious footrace through the Pinhook streets. The prize? A jug of whiskey!

Maybe it was a jug of grog. The answer is lost to the mists of time.

Anyway, that’s why we’re calling our bar the Pinhook. Thanks to John Schelp of the Old West Durham Neighborhood Association, Gary Kueber of Endangered Durham, and Jessica Sedgwick of the UNC library system for their pro-bono educational efforts.

-Nick W.

2×4’s Aren’t sexist, so why are you?

It could be the flashy monochrome atmosphere, the high stacks of materials that promise heavy lifting, or the incessant reminders to negligent parents that children can get hurt in a hardware store that make each trip to Home Depot more and more agitating.  It’s possible that it’s the drive in the middle of a hot humid summer day that makes those trips at times abhorable.  Most likely, though, it’s the attention that Liz and I get when we’re loading sheets of plywood and 2×4’s.  People stop what they’re doing, even if they’re doing nothing, and ask at the end of a load if we need any help, even if we’re half way through.  I wonder if they think about how we got the first half in the truck before they ask stupid questions.

By necessity, Nick, Liz and I have learned how to do a lot of things.  If your door ever needs framing, call Liz.  If your floor ever needs framing, call Nick.  If you ever need to haggle your AC repair man, you can call me.  I’ll let the pictures speak for now.  We’re in “the process” right now.  We’re working on setting up an awesome PA system with our friend Phil and we are getting a sign made by this hottie metal worker with amazing hair.  It’s late, lets let the captions tell the story…

Our friends the plumbers.

Liz on stage.

working hard.

nick at work

our floors need some support

this is the guy that’s constructing our floor, and our bar. any questions?

ah! an inkling of a bar!

not he hottie with the hair, but we love tj

yea yea good.

yea dudes, we scrubbed brick

ac guy, doing something weird

we took the ringside sign!!! this is ringside now. so weird…

the office!

our favorite lamp

the sign!

outts collage step 2 or 3. it’s going to be amazing.

christy paints. thanks christy.

a before picture. the after is coming soon.

Arcade Auction

So sometimes you have to wake up at 6:30 on a Saturday morning. Other times, you have to wake up at 6:30 on a Saturday morning, drive to Winston-Salem, and storm the fucker. We at The Pinhook are very conscientious about storming the fucker.

The fucker in question was a massive arcade game and entertainment auction that our friend Kyle (of Churchkey Records) hipped us to. We were standing around in the bar one day, and somebody said, “Doggs, we don’t have any arcade games in here, and furthermore we don’t have a pinball machine, and that is a sad tragedy.” Nobody actually said this, but that was the main sentence of the situation. So we rolled out there hard and just destroyed.

By the way, Kyle also woke up at 6:30 and drove out there with us, which was an extremely solid thing to do. Kyle you are a living god.

Some observations:

1. The auction was held in a massive building the size of an airplane hanger. It was packed to bursting with arcade games, pinball machines, those creepy plastic “rides” that very stupid children sit on outside of grocery stores, those horribly frustrating claw machines filled with cheap crap, and other various amusements. There was a photobooth that we really wanted until we realized it had been gutted. There was a cigarette machine that sold for $10 – with cigarettes. I was not going to pay $10 for a useless box filled with 25 year-old Virginia Slims. Somebody threw themselves a goddamn lung party with that purchase.

I would guess that there were over 1000 items on auction, and by the end of the day EVERY SINGLE THING HAD BEEN SOLD.

2. Auctions are exciting! The auctioneers actually practice that precise speed-talking like in the movies. This one guy, who confused and angered me, just muttered a string of nonsense syllables at all times, only breaking to call out a price. He was like “Zeebabadeedeedledoobledabdabdeeba FIFTY zibbazibbaheydeeberdoober SEVENTY FIVE dabaladab…”

I got heavily into the auction process, just following the auctioneer around (he sat on a kind of royal bier, pushed around by an army of subordinates) and watching people bid on shit. The price fluctuations are totally inscrutable. Those Photo Hunt machines that sit on bar tops were selling in the range of $150 to $2700. Why?

Once you arrive at an item that you want, your heart starts thumping and shit gets seriously intense. You don’t call out your bid, you just give a nigh-imperceptible signal like a wink or a subtle nod. My proudest moment came when I wanted to bid $500 dollars on this beautiful old Galaga machine from 1981. The bidding went to $450, and after an appropriate wait, I just flashed the dude the back of my hand, fingers extended in universal sign-language for the number five. I cold won that bid. That Galaga machine is here now, blinking away happily, and my high score is 175,000, which I’m pretty sure is a world record.

The people at this thing were fucking awesome. A heady melange of corpulent gaming impresarios in electric wheelchairs and greyhound-thin carnies on amphetamines. Everybody was smoking, inside, although there were clearly marked outdoor smoking areas. We were definitely fish-out-of-water. “City-folk”, if you will.

3. So what was our take? Besides the Galaga machine, we got Ms. Pac-Man (hell of classic and necessary), and Kym like a stone-cold champion won the bidding on a pinball machine that has to be seen to be believed. It has a Roller Derby theme, it is extremely fun, and it is a loud, gaudy monument to the late 80s. The graphics depict a woman with an unbelievable ass. This ass is so well-rendered and conveyed. Everybody who sees it agrees that it is some perfect azzz.

4. The whole process took TEN FUCKING HOURS.

Anyway, that’s how it went down in that scene, and those are the fruits of our labors. Much thanks to this random guy we met named Chaz who drove our pinball machine back to Durham for us, just out of the kindness of his heart and some gas money. Dude was a saint. He will probably never read this.

Love,
Nick W.

P.S. – On the way there, Kyle and I got turned around and had to backtrack, and we accidentally stumbled upon a strip club that also has an “exotic carwash.” We both agreed that this was hilarious. I wonder if it is like Shangri-La or Brigadoon, only appearing to travelers who have lost their way. I’ll find out soon and “blog” about it.

goodbye bob…

This entry, I have to say, is to mainly post the pictures that I meant to post in the last page.  Updates are as follows:

We finally built the stage.  It’s a 5 piece wooden stage that can be torn apart when more space is needed.  That way Tooth can jam heavy on a Friday night, but on Thursday when folks want a dance party we can stack it in the corner and let Mel York, Nick, Zach from Bulls or WXDU dj a set or ten.
Blah Blah, folks are coming tomorrow to take care of some boring stuff like electric and ac stuffs.  The going date is still a month and a half from now, but we’ll see.  We are starting to paint and prime, which I think signifies the construction rather than the destruction of the crap that was already here.

Nick hasn’t yet, but plans to write a bangin summary of the arcade auction that we went to.  We are often kept busy late nights with Galaga and Mrs. Pacman.  And that’s all I have to say.  We’re working on sign permits and all of the permits you have to have to simply breathe in downtown Durham and we’re getting a lot of amazing help from groups such as Greenfire and Downtown Durham Inc.

One new step that might be appreciated (or not) is that we’ve decided to go non smoking.  This was  a pretty hard decision, as many of our good friends love to inhale the beast, but after much debate we’ve decided to make the most comfortable smokers patio outside ever, and just leave it there.  The decision is tough, but we had to weigh the benefits… Here’s to a more comfortable place to hang out in in downtown D town.

Here are just a few pics of us “working.”  It’s hard because you can’t see the progress we’ve made, but it’s ginormous.  And don’t forget the beautiful picture of Bob.  I miss you… Bob.  Till we meet at the dump again

I forgot a ton of stuff in this post, like moving the range hood, “looting” from the bar next door, and some general drinking and playing video games, but I hope the pics will speak for themselves.  Thanks friends, a ton.  Thanks for helping in every way that you do.

ox, kym

liz and BOB. yea yea, we love bob

my muffler fell off. this is sad muffler face. the guys at the dump fixed it… kind of.

dan and dave and mike and kristie our amazing friends helped steal a bar from across the street.

So you think you can start a bar…

So we’ve started a really cheesy bar blog in order to keep everyone updated on our progress, which believe it or not, we are making.  We’ve been working on tearing out walls and calling “really important people” to do “really important things.”  It’s a fairly complicated process, but at least we get to break things with sledge hammers.  Nick is actually the best with the sledge…

Liz and I have been taking amazing field trips to the Durham County Dump to hang out with our friend Bob.  Bob that runs the actual dumping site at the dump.  We’re getting a photo of him soon.  He’s from Connecticut and owns an upscale Italian restaurant in Hartford.  We’ve gotten to know him pretty well through our long days of hauling construction detritus.  His amazing accent has become a general layout for our conversations.

Here are some pics of our bangin’ “we’re not open but we wish we were” party we had awhile back.

We love you guys.

Kym

click picture to see a secret slideshow