Excerpts From A Life Bio
I first met Joe in 1970 at the Fountain Lounge Bar on Joy Rd in
Detroit. Joe Goleski or as Jean the bar owner pegged him-Cigar Joe-for
the cheap, crooked, little, extremely rank smelling cigar stuck in his
mouth as he hunched over the green felt pool table surveying the field
of colored balls - calculating his next shot.
I started hangin’ out there occasionally around 1965,‘66 a year or two after getting hired in at the Michigan Consolidated Gas Co as a staff photographer in 1965. The Go-Go-Girl craze started to become more popular in Detroit and neighboring areas and Jean also had a few girls dancing there. And there was also a pool table. Not a “regulation” size table of 9 ft long but a “bar” size table of about 5 – 6 ft long. They were small because the bar owners just didn’t have the room for the bigger tables. Even though these tables were popular with customers (which for some were the best reason to go to any particular bar) they still took up valuable space for sit-down drinkin’ tables and chairs. But the owners still made money from the pool games which cost $.50 – $1 .00 per via the coin slot on the side of the table.
So by the time I started to hang out at bars in 1965 at the tender
age of 25 with a steady paycheck as hot shot gas co photog, a pretty
slick 1961 Chevy Impala and a “rocket in my pocket”, most every joint in
town had Go-Go Girls and a pool table. It wouldn’t be for a couple or 3
three years before the California topless thing migrated East to
Detroit. Jean never did go topless at her place. Just pool and Go-Go.
“This is Ames Mister.” And no gambling on games. We played for $1 drinks
and she kept a log of who was owed drinks. She collected the money. Her
two sons worked the bar for her after her husband got sick and died and
she wanted more time off. Rich and Gregg were 
The red neon sign a-top a tall pole outside the door blazed with a depiction of a fountain that splayed blue neon sprays of water in a blinking fashion and scripted letters spelling out the name THE FOUNTAIN LOUNGE•COOL INSIDE•TV. The fountain inside was actually a large bird bath type that dribbled water up and out the top center pipe a couple inches before splashing down into the basin full of decorative rocks and sea shells – all lit from the ceiling with colored lights of red, yellow, green and blue. The water re-circulation pumps electrical cord ran out the bottom and was duck taped to the carpet on its way to the wall plug.
By the way – I’ve seen that carpet at closing time with the lights turned up. Not a pretty sight of unbelievable scum and scuz and crud and all matter of body droppings and shit dragged in from the street of grease and gum and cigarette remains and mustard and food droppings from plates enjoyed at the bar with beer, potato bits from bags of chips, French fries and hamburger grease and tobacco ashes and sinus spittle and female makeup bits of lipstick and powder and nail polish and all kinds of shit aforementioned dragged in on the soles of boots from the parking lot of animal turds out there and hair of all species and more grease and oil and dead grass and weeds and fresh and fossilized remains of worms, birds , cats and snakes and more spit and nasal oysters and puke all picked up on the sole treads of shoes and boots and deposited on the carpet and ground in to the rest of all of it already there. Not a pretty sight at all.
The fountain itself was at the front of the bar-room to the left of the front door and up two steps in the center of a circular area ringed with a semi -circle of black vinyl covered bench with a few tables placed intermittently along it. The bar counter ran from there and along the left wall for 40-45 ft with stools for 15 customers. The pool table area at end took up about 12 sq ft in the corner.
Opposite was a piano bar with stools half-circled around it. Shorty Long, a short stocky black guy used to sing and play on the weekends before the girls came along – then the top of the bar became a stage for them. 0l Shorty played a dangerous game in that neighborhood – he always seemed to have a couple of very flashy blond white chicks hangin around him there – he flaunted it and then one day I heard something about him and a gun shot and the Belle Ilse bridge - all in the same sentence?? Never saw him again. His job there was gone anyway – the Go-Go took over for most of the week.
When we weren’t shooting pool Joe and I used to sit at a table in front of the stage and make lewd and lascivious comments to each other about whoever was dancing up on stage in lewd and lascivious ways. A couple of giggly boys we were half juiced up on Budweiser and me sometimes on shots of peppermint schnapps also. They couldn’t hear us but they could tell we were talking about them – staring daggers at us promising, telepathically, to stab us at the end of the dance.
