July 29, 1977 Nightlife: The Locker Room

 

A legendary hangout. 

July 29, 1977 

The Locker Room 

          The first time the Locker Room, 1389 Delaware Ave. just north of Gates Circle, made culinary history was the year of the Pan American Exposition. Legend has it that President McKinley’s ambulance drivers stopped by at what was then Gaughan’s (correction, it was Gohn’s) for some of the kitchen’s newly-invented roast beef on kimmelweck sandwiches.

          There’s no horse-drawn caissons double-parked at the curb for the first day of Elmer & Vi’s Famous Chili Dogs, but nevertheless there’s a lot of folks taking advantage of the fact that it’s a nice day to linger over lunch and plot out the pleasures of the weekend.

          They fill most of the tables, front and back, and line the length of the old mahogany bar. There’s enough room, however, to step up, signal a young bartender in a red and white “Locker Room A. C.” jersey and order a draft beer from five varieties on tap. For aficionados, the choice is between the Canadian and the domestic dark.

          Paul Goodlander, the tall, bearded proprietor of the place, appears presently to summon up a pitcher of draft beer and a table in the rear. The chili dog recipe, he explains, belongs to his parents and his 73-year-old father in Kenmore has guarded it jealously for ages.

          “For years, I’ve been telling him, ‘C’mon, Elmer, give me the chili dog recipe,’ but he wouldn’t reveal his secret,” says Goodlander. “He got it from the Texas Exhibition when he was down there I don’t know how many years ago.”

          Goodlander has one brought out from the kitchen and after sampling the subtle tang of the sauce, he pronounces that it’s just right. He isn’t revealing the secret recipe either.

          Food is what’s prompted many of this reporter’s stops at the Locker Room over the years. The beefs on weck are hefty, the chicken wings are ample and a friend who eats there recommends the seafood special and its tasty bonus, the onion rings.

          The onion rings, Goodlander says, are one of the things he gets in his twice-weekly runs to the Bailey-Clinton wholesale food terminal. He starts those days at 4:30 a.m., same time his staff is locking up the Locker Room for the night.

          Over recent seasons, Goodlander’s been busy with alterations to the place as well. Now it’s longer – the wall which once separated the back room from the bar is gone, as are the old booths back there. And it’s wider. The liquor store that used to be next door has moved down the block, leaving room for a looping extension of the bar and more tables.

          The latest additions are a backroom trophy case and new air conditioning, which went in right before the heat wave hit.

          “I just got this sucker,” Goodlander says proudly, pointing to the galvanized ductwork. “Full central air. Fifteen tons B.T.U.”

          Unchanged are the full-length metal lockers in the wall and the general sports atmosphere. Tucked away in the back is a seven-foot TV screen, which is brought out for Monday night football and major hockey games.

          A newspaper clipping in the sports montage across the bar attests to how avid the crowd is here. The Locker Room used to send parties of 200 to every Bills home game, but the economics of pre-season ticket buying now has made that excursion only an occasional thing these days.

          Spectating is only part of the sports story here, however. The Locker Room holds membership in the Amateur Athletic Union and serves as a rallying point for all sorts of amateur competitors. Earlier this year, the place sponsored a four-mile run. The finish line is still visible out front.

          In winter, there’s basketball, women’s volleyball and bowling. Among the Locker Room teams are two rosters of deaf bowlers from St. Mary’s School for the Deaf.

          The staff bowlers, wearing canary yellow bowling shirts inscribed in Polish, augment their spotty prowess with the pins buy buying rounds of refreshments and bringing homemade beef on weck for their opponents.

          Summer is when Locker Room sports are at their peak. A powerhouse in the city’s bar and muni softball leagues, three of its teams are leading their respective divisions. One of the women’s teams is second to an outfit called the Direct Educators, a championship Locker Room team itself last year.

          Goodlander plays first base for Locker Room Three, which includes the bartenders and cooks. It’s tied for first in its division.

          “I’m having an off-year,” he admits. “I’m only hitting about .450.”

          Goodlander supports all sorts of sports activities. The PAL and CYO are two. As we talk, he gives a promise to someone from the 24-hour world record relay run scheduled for today at Nichols School track. Sure, he says, he’ll run for an hour.

          He was a varsity athlete himself. First in track, soccer and wrestling in high school, then in soccer and wrestling at Buffalo State College.

          After working at Mulligan’s on Allen Street and the Masthead on Grant Street, he went in with old housemate Bobby Hens (now proprietor of the Outside Inn in Angola) when Hens and Kevin Brinkworth bought the place in 1972. Goodlander progressed from bartender to assistant manager to manager and took over the place over two years ago.

          His days as a bachelor end in about a month. A sign on the wall proclaims his stage party next weekend. He’s marrying a gym teacher for Park School. He met her while she was playing softball for one of the Locker Room’s teams.

          “I’m in love,” he confesses.

          Men’s and women’s teams alike follow up their successes on the field by descending loudly on the place to party at the bar. They get a $2 team special on pitchers of beer or can opt to buy it by the case. It’s no surprise that the beer-to-liquor ratio here is five to two.

          The Locker Room isn’t all athletic types, however. There’s a hard core of neighborhood regulars who’ve stayed loyal through the transition (“We were afraid you’d *** it all up,” one 78-year-old told Goodlander.), plus telephone repairmen, Millard Fillmore Hospital staffers and students from Canisius College, who chose the Locker Room for last year’s senior party.

          The clubbiness of lunchtime, however, evaporates when the place is in full weekend roar. Happily, there’s usually a stray space in one of the two gas station parking lots. Reaching the bar is a little more difficult.

          The place is packed except for a few open tables at the rear. The music is loud rock ‘n roll. The tables have been cleared from the new addition to allow more standing room. The crowd is undergraduate collegian and the T-shirts say things like Daytona Beach and Jackson Hole, Wyo., and Cornell Football.

          A middle-aged man, perhaps a regular, looks stunned at all this, but despite the crush, the mixed drinks are up to Goodlander’s standards – a full shot of liquor and less than a dollar apiece.

          “When I started here,” Goodlander had remarked, “all we needed on a Friday night was two bartenders, a waitress and a cook. Now there’s four or five bartenders, four floor men – two of them at the door – and a runner. There’s like a whole new crowd coming in here. I’ve got nephews going to Canisius College now and they’re coming in with friends of theirs. When they were in high school, they couldn’t wait till they turned 18 so they could come in this place.”

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IN THE PHOTOS: The Locker Room in its glory days. Paul Goodlander pouring a full shot. The proposed redevelopment. 

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FOOTNOTE: Paul Goodlander moved to Sarasota, Fla., in 1986, became a physical therapist and started a program in 1997 called Florida Adaptive Golf, which helped physically and mentally challenged people discover the joys of the game. An article about the program in 2004 in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune described him as “a grinning bear of a man whose enthusiasm rubs off from the first handshake.”  He was 65 when he died in 2014.

          The Locker Room hung up its sneakers sometime in the ‘90s, if I’m not mistaken, and then went through a couple incarnations as dance clubs called Lotis and Blush. Developer Carl Paladino’s company bought the property, including the corner gas station, and since 2019 has been proposing to duplicate what the company did at the corner of Elmwood and West Delavan, which also had a gas station – ground floor retail and apartments upstairs. The Locker Room building would be preserved.