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Encounters: It's last call at El Diablo's

By Ben Montgomery, Times Staff Writer
In print: Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Scott Lambert takes in the scene during a party at the bar in his Seminole Heights home. The regulars said their goodbyes.
	[KATHLEEN FLYNN | Times]

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A tour of duty in Kosovo means it's last call at El Diablo's

TAMPA — Scott Lambert built his bar with nails and sweat and his wife's blessing. He painted the walls hell-fire red and the bar top midnight black and he lined the shelves with spirits. This all happened back in 2000, when Scott and Danielle O'Connor left Cape Cod and moved into an old bungalow in Seminole Heights.

And now we join them, on a Saturday evening, as the cerveza sweats and the regulars say their goodbyes to Scott, 34, who is going away for a while, and to his bar, which is closing until he returns.

"This place is always real," says Wendy Hathaway, 34, a friend. "You can't come here and pretend. You cannot be ambivalent here.

"It is real, and now that he's leaving, it's bizarre real."

• • •

The space is small, 5 feet by 6 feet maybe, just off the kitchen. When they moved here so Danielle could chase a doctorate in anthropology, the nook was occupied by a black leather bench and the walls were covered in tiles depicting mushrooms. They used the little room for storage at first.

Always, though, it had potential. When the timing was right, Scott went to work on his bar.

He called it El Diablo's.

The regulars were anthropology students from the University of South Florida. As Scott and Danielle grew roots, the crowd at El Diablo's expanded to neighbors and friends.

They sipped tequila, swatted mosquitoes and argued. No topic was off limits. Sex. Money. War.

"It was always a space where we could expose each other mentally," says Jason Lindo, 34, who helped build the bar. "It's lowbrow intellectualism. I've always thought of it as Pabst Blue Ribbon exchange of thought."

Scott rigged speakers to stream Bob Marley and Led Zeppelin. The walls grew cluttered with ephemera of times good and trying. Photos in this corner. An Afghan flag above. Bumper stickers:

"Mind if I do a J?"

"American Errorist"

And look there, a silver pastie that Scott's friend Paul Truland stole from a stripper at Club Wild on Hillsborough Avenue.

"I have quick hands," Paul explains. "I'm a goalie."

On this Saturday night, El Diablo's is overrun with kids. Kids sitting, kids squalling, kids raiding carrots from the vegetable tray and planting a garden in the sandbox. Scott and Danielle have two of their own.

"When we started out," says Wendy, "we were all young and single. Now we're married, and married again, and we have kids. … The common denominator is this little bar."

"It's kind of a place," says Jason, "where you can measure the transitions in life."

• • •

The sun is gone and the kids have found beds. The crowd has dwindled. Danielle leans in close to Scott. This was everybody's place, but it was also just theirs, late nights. That changes tonight.

When Scott was a young man, he drank a lot. Sometimes he fought when he drank. And he was a good fighter. "I was the big Irish kid who sometimes got lucky," he shrugs.

This is important because it landed him in trouble and his way out was to join the Army National Guard.

As years passed, Scott changed. He hung a plywood peace sign from his porch, drove a Volkswagen van, chased his daughters around Chuck E. Cheese.

Now his time has come. He switched to the Army Reserve last fall. He's been ordered to Kosovo. Going means leaving his family behind for a year, maybe longer. He wonders if his daughters will recognize him when he returns.

The crowd at El Diablo's urged Scott to go AWOL, but he made a commitment politics can't break.

Scott unscrews a cap. Another swirl of Captain Morgan, a splash of Diet Coke. Crosby, Stills and Nash sing Southern Cross. Last call at El Diablo's until he returns.

He takes a towel and wipes the bar dry, then slides the windows closed. He leaves his fingerprints on the glass.

Ben Montgomery can be reached at bmontgomery@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8650.