The subject of drinking came up the other day while we were drinking. That, as many of you know, is usually how the subject comes up, but feelings were particularly impassioned during this cocktail party.
The conversation began with what we all agreed was the outrageous cost of alcohol at bars and restaurants, but the target of our absorbing back and forth morphed as we worked our way through a round of Manhattans. The repartee segued from our favorite San Francisco pubs to top bartenders to the best bar owners and, eventually, to the most attractive mixologists. The upshot of all this, we concluded, was that drinkers had more panache and boozing and its close companion carousing were more rewarding in the old days.
Some of you older folks might say, with some truthfulness, that everything was better in the old days. But which “old days” are we talking about? Our group generally meant the 1980s and 90s, but, lets face it, the Gen Xers in our group were really just carrying on a long established tradition. People my father’s age were the real connoisseurs of saloon society. They drank with a joie de vivre that honored the taverns where they partook, the purveyors of the spirits they consumed and the tipplers with whom they imbibed. They also looked out for their own.
Take Glenn Dorenbush. He was a friend of my father’s from the 1960s until his death at age 64 in 1996. Dorenbush was a publicist who wore a blue blazer every day, rarely said a word and sat or stood at the end of one of several bars in San Francisco all day, every day. He wasn’t a shining star, or really influential at all, but he was loved, honored and protected by his peers — and by that I mean his fellow inebriates.
I knew Dorenbush through my father, who took me around to his favorite haunts after I turned 21 and, thanks to a fake ID, quite a few times before then.
I found it odd that Dorenbush, who was humble and amiable but otherwise unremarkable, was so popular.
Dorenbush, it turns out, had that certain je ne sais quoi that bar patrons had during those times, and he had a wicked and cynical sense of humor, also a valued commodity in drinking circles. Both came out when he told his bar patron friends — who were the only family he had — that he wanted his ashes flushed down the toilets of his favorite bars when he died.
Dorenbush ended up living longer than anyone expected, but, as fate would have it, he eventually succumbed to liver failure in 1996. His death left his fellow boozers with a ridiculous problem, which I wrote about in the San Francisco Chronicle. I’m reprinting that story here, with a few minor edits, because it harkens back to what was once a glorious, free-wheeling and amusing drinking culture in San Francisco. It also bolsters our argument that drinking was better in the old days:
Last Call for Barfly Glenn Dorenbush
When Glenn Dorenbush, the unofficial arbiter of San Francisco saloon society, died his cronies ended up with eight pounds of his ashes and an interesting predicament.
The quiet, amiable eccentric had no money and left no will when he checked out, but he had made it clear to those who knew him best what he wanted done with his remains. The courtly tippler, who rarely uttered a word yet was strangely charismatic, wanted his ashes flushed down the toilets of his favorite bars. It was his unique way of paying tribute to the establishments where he spent most of his adult life.
Dorenbush never held a conventional job after he came to San Francisco from Michigan at the age of 29. What he did was hang out in bars. Chronicle columnists Herb Caen and Charles McCabe loved to pick his brain for saloon society tips, so the bars where Dorenbush went always seemed to get a lot of ink and, as a result, a lot of customers.
Many of these barroom habitues knew Dorenbush and consequently knew about his final request, which became the subject of much speculation when he died on August 12, 1996 at age 64 of cirrhosis of the liver and other ailments. The peculiar request left his bibulous buddies with a personal and ethical dilemma. It is technically illegal in California to sprinkle cremated remains down the can, not to mention bad for the plumbing.
“It's a bit of a moral and legal dilemma for all concerned,” said Ed Moose, proprietor of Moose's, the popular Washington Square restaurant and Dorenbush hangout. “There's been a lot of talk between his friends and associates about how to honor his wishes while following the laws and propriety. All I can say is the right thing will be done.”
Dorenbush may have thought a trip down the bidet was a jolly good way to bid the world adieu. But it was one thing for him to consign his own ashes to the sewer while boozing it up at a local tavern and another thing for his friends to actually dump his remains down the john.
“He was obviously not a very religious guy, but he had a great sense of humor,” said Bob McCambridge, a bartender who said Dorenbush told people all over North Beach to “just flush me down.”
“Personally I'm in kind of a dilemma about it. Is it sacrilegious? It's something I have to ponder.”
Odd ash disposal requests like this one are cropping up more often, especially in California where the cremation rate is at an all-time high. Forty-one percent of Californians who die are cremated -- almost twice the national average of 21 percent.
The silty cinders of the deceased have been shot out of rifles, dumped from airplanes, sealed in the gas tanks of motorcycles, sprinkled on baseball fields and golf courses and scattered around amusement parks.
The sheer volume of this residue, and the potential for abuse, has prompted the state to require scatterings to be three miles out at sea or in a designated cemetery. Those who dump ashes for a living must also be licensed.
The long hand of the law could reach out to stop the proceedings, said Peter Brightbill, chief of cemetery and funeral programs at the state Department of Consumer Affairs. He said scattering remains on public land, presumably including toilets, is considered littering. Brightbill said, however, that the laws are primarily to prevent the dumping of cremated remains from turning into big business.
A case in point is B.J. Elkin, an Amador County pilot who was convicted of fraud in 1985 for dumping the remains of 5,000 people in huge piles on his property when he was supposed to have scattered them over the ocean. Prosecutors said he made millions of dollars running the ash disposal business.
Others have parlayed the cremation trend into potentially profitable enterprises. A Mill Valley couple, for instance, sold tombstone-shaped monuments made out of pressed “cremains.”
Hunters have even had their remains packed into shotgun shells and fired into their favorite prey, and a Los Angeles-area motorcyclist had his ashes sealed in the gas tank of his favorite Harley.
Not all scatterings, however, go as well as planned.
Several years ago, after a tearful ceremony, relatives of a cremated man attempted to hurl their loved one’s remains out of an airplane over the Pacific Ocean, but the ashes blew back inside. “It blew around the airplane pretty good,” said Peter Breinig, the pilot and a former owner of Commodore Seaplanes, of Mill Valley. “We had to vacuum the airplane out.”
The metal container carrying the remains of folk singer Woody Guthrie had to be punctured with a beer-can opener during a ceremony off Coney Island in 1967, but the contents wouldn't pour, so Guthrie's son Arlo hurled the whole container into the water.
Humorist Robert Benchley's ashes simply disappeared after his death in 1945. His widow didn't find that out until she had driven miles for a solemn scattering ceremony in Nantucket, Mass., only to find an empty container. “I can hear him laughing now,” she said.
No records exist of mourners flushing their dear departeds down the crapper, so there really was no protocol for Dorenbush’s troubled friends. Dorenbush, of course, couldn't have cared less about the whole issue. Those who knew him best claimed he wanted to be flushed down the toilet mainly because he didn't want to be a burden.
In the end, an exclusive group of his friends, including writers, lawyers, businessmen and sports executives, agreed to scatter some ashes on a beach in Puerto Vallarta where he loved to vacation and some more in the ocean off Stinson Beach.
The rest, according to an agreement that was kept quiet until long after the fact, went down the latrines at several undisclosed locations, probably including known Dorenbush hangouts such as Perry's and the Bus Stop on Union Street, the Washington Square Bar & Grill, Moose's, Gino & Carlo and Tony Niks in North Beach, the Horseshoe Tavern on Chestnut Street and the Buena Vista Cafe on Hyde Street.
It is, they say, the testament of a man who never harmed a soul and was loyal until his last drink.
Great article.
Glenn was a legend. He survived on a case of Bud a day and soup. A true S.F. original.