A Masshole in Full

The only person you won’t hear Robbie Concannon stories from, it seems, is Robbie Concannon. A lot of this has to do with the fact that he rarely stays put long enough to be introspective. He’s antsy and hyperactive; his mother says he hasn’t sat still for an entire meal in his life. He makes about 100 phone calls a day, and they all last 20 seconds. To learn about Robbie, you have to talk to others.

When I asked Charlestonians to tell me their favorite Robbie Concannon story, I figured I’d hear stories of outlandish behavior that would reveal some conflict between the Boston wild man and this well-mannered city of belles. But what I heard surprised me. There were plenty of crazy Coocs tales, to be sure, but ultimately it was the subtler side of the classic Boston guy that won over his adopted hometown, it seems. “When he walks into a room, he’s going to know everyone by the time he leaves,” says David Plyler, who lived with Robbie for a couple of years (and who, according to Robbie, “dresses like a typical Charleston fuck”). “And if he doesn’t like you, he’s going to let you know. People liked that because he was so different.”

When Robbie was still playing hockey, there was a 15-year-old girl named Mandy Hill who absolutely loved him. She’d wait for him at his car after every home game to say hello. One night, she wasn’t there, and Robbie was worried. It turned out that earlier that day she’d been killed in a car accident. Robbie called her father and asked if there was anything he could do. The answer was yes: He wanted Mandy to be buried in Robbie’s jersey. Minor-leaguers don’t have extra uniforms, and so Robbie wore another number for a few games. In Charleston, this is everyone’s favorite Robbie Concannon story. When I talked about it with Robbie, his eyes welled up. Hockey had given him a great gift: a community who loved him for being him.

Late on my first night in Charleston, Robbie drove me across the city’s majestic new Cooper River bridge in the rain. He told me that his life was now centered on taking advantage of the opportunities he’d found here. He said he thought a lot about his father, who died two years ago, and of Mark Bavis, the guy who had talked him into coming to Charleston, and who had been on the second plane to hit the twin towers on September 11. He told me how, for the past year, he’s been going to church. He goes on Wednesdays, he said, because he can think clearer when it’s less crowded. “I want to be a better person,” he said as the rain beat down outside, making the night seem even darker. “I don’t want to be as fired up as I am. I don’t want to punch people in the park.” He went on. “It’s taken me forever, but I’m almost through with this book I saw on TV. It’s called Choosing Civility.”

Trio Club is on Marion Square, a large park that’s kind of like Charleston’s version of Boston Common. The club has two levels—first floor has live music, second floor has a DJ—and in a city that takes its nightlife seriously, it’s routinely described as the bar. A year ago, Robbie bought a half-ownership stake. After retiring from hockey in 2003, he’d bounced around for a little bit, struggling with that athlete’s transition when the limelight fades, when he has to stop staying out late with the boys and instead has to get up with the men. Robbie was a fireman for six months, but quit because he was going nuts sitting around waiting for action. Then he got into real estate and did well enough (despite showing houses in sweatpants and a T-shirt) to buy and renovate an elegant two-bedroom loft overlooking fashionable King Street. But since the market tanked, he’s been focusing on his bar. He’d been a bartender at Trio for a while, and when he inquired about acquiring a piece of it, the owner, Andy Selent, was skeptical. “People would say to me, ‘Coocs is a good hockey player and he knows everyone, but what does he know about running a business?'” says Selent. “Since he took over, business has been up 50 percent. Now I just stay out of his way.”

Watching Robbie behind the bar, you see him in his element. Bartending is a series of micro-encounters, which fits his attention span perfectly. He’ll bust balls, serve drinks like a maniac, down leftover Red Bull, go and go and go. He’s been known to vacuum the club in his underwear, or take a ladder out to the middle of the packed dance floor and start changing the light bulbs.

He’s also become legendary for his tactics in dealing with the drunken “birdbrains who think they’re hot shit,” as he says. If there’s trouble, he’ll hop over the bar and pull his go-to move, grabbing the guy and ripping the pocket right off his dress shirt. “You wouldn’t believe how perfectly it comes off,” says Patrick Sullivan, who’s tended bar with Robbie for years. “He should have them hanging on his wall like a hunter has horns.”

If some bigshot comes in and runs up a $250 bar tab and then leaves a $10 tip, Robbie will follow him outside and return the tip, in his face. For Charlestonians, this is Coocs at his most endearing. “In his world, he’s the police for the bad guys,” said Brian King, who works in a clothing store on King Street where Robbie goes to rib the seersucker set. (King, incidentally, wants it noted for the record that he lived with Ken Kesey and the Grateful Dead in Oregon in the summer of ’68, and says Robbie definitely stacks up against the big personalities he’s known in his life.)

Chantel Fitzsimmons, the wife of one of Robbie’s former teammates, Jason Fitzsimmons, gets emotional remembering how she was at the bar once and some guy was messing with her. Robbie jumped over, and this time ripped the man’s whole shirt clean off. “It made my heart swell, just knowing he had my back,” she says.

This is a piece of Robbie that’s always been there, though perhaps it was obscured by his antics. When he was growing up, he was often the smallest kid, the last picked for the game. His mother says he was very, very sensitive. So he forged a reputation in the only way he could: He became a scrapper, someone who wouldn’t back down, who always stood up for himself and took care of his friends. Even when he was drinking, he’d brawl all night, spend the early morning in the ER getting stitches, then go straight to the North End to bathe his uncle, who has cerebral palsy. (Robbie would often get naked himself, his way of trying to keep things from getting awkward.) In Charleston, it seems fair to say, he’s felt free to fully be himself, maybe in ways he wouldn’t or couldn’t back home.

“When people think about Robbie, it’s just this crazy, crazy guy. But deep down, he does it because he just wants everyone to be happy,” says his sister-in-law, Holly Concannon. “The day of my father’s funeral, it must have snowed 10 inches. After the funeral, Robbie drove my mother and me home. And he starts doing doughnuts in the parking lot. Here’s my mother, who just buried her husband, and she’s dying laughing.”

I spent three days with Robbie in Charleston, and it went by in a blur. The city was hosting one of its best-known events, the annual Cooper River Bridge Run, a six-mile road race that this year drew more than 30,000 runners (the Boston Marathon, by comparison, has about 20,000), which meant it was a zoo at Trio Club. As I watched Robbie tend his bar, I tried to put my finger on how this crazy kid had changed, and how he hadn’t. Whether Robbie has mellowed with age is a topic of profound debate among his friends. “He hasn’t walked into my house naked in a couple of years, so I guess that’s a start,” says his old roommate, Brett Marietti.

Robbie has a live-in girlfriend now—which is a big step for him. Her name is Keri, and they seem to work well together. She’s from a farm in California and has a good bit of the Charleston laissez faire to her. “He can be such a martyr on the smallest things,” she says, but she’s able to roll her eyes instead of going after him. And she can accept the fact that she’s never going to be the only one who sees her boyfriend naked. “He’s just so proud of himself. He’s always telling me he’s ripped up like a fat girl’s phone number.” Whether Keri can finally settle Robbie down is yet to be determined. “He gets up every day, throws on his sweatpants, and goes around and acts up,” says Jason Fitzsimmons. “He’ll always be a kid.” But I’m not so sure.

It was 6 a.m. on a Sunday when Robbie stuck his head into the guest bedroom and told me it was time to wake up. He had been at the bar until after 4, and had slept about three hours the entire weekend, but he refused to let me take a cab to the airport.

As we drove, I didn’t have anything left to ask him. So I told him something that had been working its way through my head all weekend. “When the people of Charleston think of Boston, there’s a good chance they’ll think of you,” I said to him. He kind of nodded his head. “And that makes me proud,” I said.

He thanked me, and then he changed the subject. Because Robbie Concannon is no good at telling Robbie Concannon stories.

 
Billy Baker lives in Cambridge. His story about an MIT scientist’s search for the Loch Ness monster appeared in the December issue.