Big John’s Sports Bar
6150 Wilcrest
Back in the late ‘90s, owing to a fire, I lived for a time in a motel near Houston’s Medical Center. One night I came “home,” and was approached in the parking lot by an enormous black guy who appeared to be about 50. I wasn’t scared of him, as he looked both friendly and kind of familiar.
This guy turned out to be none other than basketball legend and titanic fuck-up Marvin “Bad News” Barnes. Back in 1974, when he was at Providence College, the six-foot-nine Barnes was the #2 pick in the NBA draft (behind only Bill Walton). Barnes chose instead to go to the ABA. As a member of the St. Louis Spirits, he was named Rookie of the Year, despite his being one of the most ridiculously hard partiers in the history of the league. Before he washed out for good, he actually put a towel over his head and snorted cocaine on the bench. Yes, during a game.
But that was at the bitter end. For a couple of years it all worked for him…Years later, he told of once entertaining two women all night long and through the next day, right up to game time, and then casually throwing a cashmere overcoat over his basketball uniform, and showing up in the locker room like that. Late for warm-ups, naturally. And then he said, “Never fear, Marvin’s here,” and ripped off the overcoat. The coach benched him for the entire quarter, which left him only three quarters to amass the 53 points he scored that night.
He also uttered some memorable quotes. One time he came running up to his coach in a near-panic. When his coach asked him what was wrong, Barnes showed him his plane ticket, which showed that their plane was to leave Louisville in the Eastern time zone at 7:01 and arrive in St. Louis at 6:59.
“Yo, coach, ain’t no way you’re gettin’ me on no time machine,” Barnes said.
But on that night, he did want a ride in my green Aerostar, so away we went. And it was an interesting evening, to say the least. He led me to a bunch of mall parking lots, where he would meet these women in these cars, and he would come back all wild-eyed. At one point he grooved on the Mingus on the radio and sighed “Now that is some jazz,” and at another he leaned over and stuck a bony finger in my beer gut and said “You gettin’ kinda fat.” And finally he wanted to unwind, so we went to Big John’s at his insistence. He knew the owner somehow, he said.
We bellied up to the bar in the big strip mall tavern – which remains now as it was then one of the better sports bars in town. The barmaid’s accent sounded like Belfast, and Bad News and Me both ordered pints of dark beer. At that time I was a pretty swift drinker – an imperial pint could get down my neck in about five minutes with no trouble, and if I was in a contest or something, I would almost win. And I was in a frat, and I lived in England for a few years and drank in pubs weekly, I did the kibbutz thing, and drank my way across Europe two or three times in the early ‘90s. But I never saw anything like what Bad News did. He lifted that Imperial pint of beer to his lips and simply inhaled the thing as if it were a plum-sized helium balloon.
“Jaysis,” said the barmaid. “You’re not half-fast.”
“”Nother one,” he said. And he put that one away just as efficiently.
Years later I would find out that this was all after his liver transplant. And all these years later both Big John’s and Bad News Barnes are still going.
Today: Marvin Barnes passed away September 8, 2014. Big John’s did not outlast him by much, if at all. Today it’s a very similar joint called BIGGles.
Great memories of Bad News Barnes, coulda been a Barkley