El Bar de Las Grandes Esperanzas

J. R. Moehringer grew up captivated by the voice of his father, a New York City disc jockey who vanished before J. R. spoke his first word. Though J. R.'s mother was his world, he craved something more. He approaches the bar on the corner. There he meets J. R.'s uncle Charlie, a Humphrey Bogart look-alike; Colt, a Yogi Bear sound-alike; and Joey D, a softhearted rawler - took J. R. to the beach, to ballgames, and, ultimately, into their circle. They taught J. R., tended him, and provided a kind of fathering by committee. Torn between the stirring example of his mother and the lurid romance of the bar, J. R. tried to forge a self somewhere in the center. But when it was time for J. R. to leave home, the bar became an increasingly seductive sanctuary, a place to return and regroup during his picaresque journeys. Time and again the bar offered shelter from failure, rejection, heartbreak - and, eventually, reality.