Sammy’s is a dingy, crowded place. Known for its raucous parties and professional variety shows. From 8 in the morning until 4 the next morning Sammy’s is an alcoholic haven for the derelicts. Bowery characters [eccentrics who had achieved local notoriety for flamboyant drinking and storytelling] acquired a professional venue at Sammy’s Bowery Follies. Drunks and swells, drifters and celebrities, the rich and the forgotten.

Now looka here, I did not say I was a millionaire,
But I said I have spent more money than a millionaire!
‘Cause if I had’ve kept all my money that I’d already spent,
I would’ve been a millionaire a long time ago.

you’ve got to fuck a great many women
beautiful women
and write a few decent love poems.

and don’t worry about age
and/or freshly-arrived talents.

just drink more beer
more and more beer

and attend the racetrack at least once a

week

and win
if possible

learning to win is hard -
any slob can be a good loser.

and don’t forget your Brahms
and your Bach and your
beer.

don’t overexercise.

sleep until noon.

avoid paying credit cards
or paying for anything on
time.

remember that there isn’t a piece of ass
in this world over $50
(in 1977).

and if you have the ability to love
love yourself first
but always be aware of the possibility of
total defeat
whether the reason for that defeat
seems right or wrong -

an early taste of death is not necessarily
a bad thing.

stay out of churches and bars and museums,
and like the spider be
patient -
time is everybody’s cross,
plus
exile
defeat
treachery

all that dross.

stay with the beer.

beer is continuous blood.

a continuous lover.

get a large typewriter
and as the footsteps go up and down
outside your window

hit that thing
hit it hard

make it a heavyweight fight

make it the bull when he first charges in

and remember the old dogs
who fought so well:
Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.

If you think they didn’t go crazy
in tiny rooms
just like you’re doing now

without women
without food
without hope

then you’re not ready.

drink more beer.
there’s time.
and if there’s not
that’s all right
too.

“All my life, I seemed always to be looking for something – never knowing what it was – but always there was the sense that I couldn’t and shouldn’t be confined.”

The Barstool Romantic on Facebook.

“The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”

Christopher McCandless