Miss Lillian turns 50

There’s this special, little place right in the heart of downtown Gainesville called Lillian’s Music Store.

It’s an odd name for a bar that no longer features live music as frequently as it once did.  Legend has it that, over fifty years ago, stood a music store where one could buy sheet music, instruments and the like.

I say fifty years ago because this year, Lillian’s Music Store celebrates its 50th anniversary as a bar, an impressive run in an industry that chews up places and spits them out, never to be heard from again.

But not Lillian’s.  Lillian’s Music Store has stood the test of time and still goes strong.  I know this because I was just there.  I know this because I worked there for six years in the 1990s, putting myself through college and graduate school with the money I’d earned, unsuspectingly falling in love with an industry with which I am still involved so many years later.

I made friendships at Lillian’s that last to this day, some of the best friends I’ve ever had and some of the best times I’ve ever had.

Working there in my early 20s, when there were still bangers for registers, when there was no such thing as a P.O.S. or an internet to process credit card payments, only knuckle busters.  When there were only a handful of flavored vodkas and no such thing as energy drinks to mix them with, when people only drank tequila in shots or margaritas (not skinny ones) and certainly not on the rocks or with soda water.  There were no seltzers or ciders or sours or IPAs.  Nobody knew what a microbrew was.  Beers were either domestic or imported and that was that. 

As you can see, a lot has changed since 1990.  But much remains the same.  Within Lillian’s walls, I learned to love the science of the industry, not only the chemistry involved in constructing the proper cocktail but also the psychology of the human dynamic.

I went from being a shy kid with no money to speak of to a confident young man with cash in his pocket, this newfound ability to talk to the opposite sex all the while being recognized about town.  I was okay with the change.

I worked at Lillian’s when the bar had live music six nights a week, when we experimented with comedy nights, jam nights, and this new phenomenon called karaoke that no one had really heard of.  I worked there through a change in ownership, going from multiple hands-off owners who wanted the celebrity of bar ownership but weren’t serious about running a business, to a single owner, a far shrewder businessman who invested in it and began to hold his employees accountable for their actions.  I learned the importance of regular customers and the relationships one could establish with them.  I learned how to work high volume shifts on home football game weekends where customer after customer shouted your name always keeping you a few drinks behind pace, to slower shifts where you must engage in conversations with customers who have nothing but a sob story to share, but that was your job.  To be a good bartender, you better be ready for both at a moment’s notice.

And I learned how to work behind a bar from two of the most iconic, contrasting and complementary figures in Gainesville’s service industry history, one front man who dazzled with his wit and the other, more reserved, a rock who always had the bar’s back and ran things by the book.  One retired long ago, never looking back, rarely stepping foot inside the place again, the other now a minority owner gets in and out as he can.  The industry giveth and it taketh away, but the bar lives on, as does its interminable spirit.

Lillian’s Music Store is proof that no matter how popular a bartender is, no one person is bigger than the bar.  It will always survive when they move on, largely because so many people have cared for it, watered it, nourished its spirit.  I learned that invaluable lesson a long time ago, a lesson in humility and gratitude.

Lillian’s is its own animal, with funky wallpaper, a beautiful back bar, a tin ceiling, and two wooden front doors that welcome you into its world, all smoky inside from ventilators that work overtime rather fruitlessly, so much so that your tip money smelled like cigarette smoke as you counted your twenties at the end of a shift.  There is a tiny back room to store the booze and an office so small that it can barely fit the big fella inside it.  There’s a barber’s chair, a love booth adorned with stained glass and a floor with enough seating to either be in with the crowd or secluded if you care to be.  The millions who have passed through those doors over the past fifty years, have made friends, fallen in love or have sadly passed on, all of them recognizing Lillian’s as a one-of-a-kind establishment with a special history and memories far too numerous to count.

I am beyond grateful for the time I spent there and for how it ultimately shaped my life for the better, as I find myself still in love with the industry and thriving in it thirty-five years later, thanks largely to what I learned within the very confines of Lillian’s Music Store. Who would have ever guessed?

My dearest Miss Lillian, thank you for all you’ve done for me without even knowing you did it.  I wish you the happiest of birthdays.  Here’s to many, many more to come.

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