G&S Lounge By Moira Muldoon Special to the American-Statesman Thursday, September 26, 2002 Before I left the ranks of the work force to become a graduate student/bar columnist, I held the lofty and much-envied-by-every-15-year-old-boy position of senior editor at a video game magazine. People paid me to fly all over the world, check out early versions of Quake II and write about it. It was fun, but it was an odd job for me, given that I don't much like video games. 
Except Ms. Pac-Man. Ms. Pac-Man, so much cooler than her male counterpart, was the one game I'd play happily for entire half-hours at a time. I have no idea why the bow-headed little chomper was so appealing, but I was delighted to recently discover a table version of Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga at the G&S Lounge.
The G&S is very much a grungy South Austin hangout bar. The ceilings are low. The flooring's cheap. Air hockey, Foosball, darts, pool (50 cents a game!), Ms. Pac-Man (ditto) -- it's got pretty much everything your playful heart could desire. And cheap beer. Really cheap beer, as in $2 for most bottles, domestic and import. (A large German beer that had to be uncorked, rather than opened, cost an exorbitant $3.) In the back room, the positioning of the games and pool tables is haphazard at best, like someone moved them there for storage and never returned. Two air hockey tables push up against each other. Pool tables lie at odd angles. Two Golden Tee arcade games crowd side by side. A dartboard hangs on the wall. The bar in this back room waits for drinks to slip across it, but no one ever seems to man it. Actually I've never seen more than one bartender work at the G&S, and it's always the same guy -- Jimmy, the owner. Boxes and boxes of beer are stored by the passageway between the main and back rooms, not far from a disorderly stack of TVs in the main room that looks like an angry art installation. This room contains the active bar, a couple more pool tables, the aforementioned Ms. Pac-Man and the aforementioned TVs -- lots of folks come in to watch sporting events. Adding to the hardware is a pair of closed circuit monitors displaying what the security cameras are recording -- though the street outside has been quiet when I've been in. I've heard people complain about the service at the G&S, referring to Jimmy more than once as the Soup Nazi of bartenders. I've been told it's best to have your money ready and know exactly what you want to drink, otherwise Jimmy might get irritated, and if you irritate him you might not be welcome in the bar. Jimmy himself told me that everyone is welcome in the bar, that he simply cuts people off who need to be cut off, pointing out that there's a police station across the street. The couple of times I went in, Jimmy was nothing but, well, not courteous exactly, but certainly not rude, even though I took at least 15 seconds to choose what kind of beer I wanted. (And he wasn't being nice because I write this column -- he didn't know who I was. In fact, when I called him after I visited the bar, he was clearly irritated at having to talk to me.) The G&S Lounge, more than anything, is a local dive with cheap beer. Patrons may have tattooed calves or wear UT ball caps, but they likely live in the neighborhood. Myself, I live in North Austin; the G&S is an awfully long haul for a game of pool -- or even a round of Ms. Pac-Man. Contact Moira Muldoon at bargirl@covad.net | ||||
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