'Jim had a vision': A heartfelt remembrance of Jim Collins Bar during the Lincoln Street years

By Herbert Buchsbaum

Jim Collins was a Savannah bar and institution that operated on 17 Lincoln Street from 1966 to 1982 and 109 Whitaker Street from 1983 to 2001. This reminiscence was written on the occasion of the namesake proprietor's centennial celebration, which took place on Saturday, and refers to the original, Lincoln Street incarnation. That bar was on the ground floor of a townhouse. Jim and his family lived upstairs. Jim died in 1989. His widow, Lola Collins, ran the bar until it closed in 2001.

JIM COLLINS was a gruff, taciturn man, friendly enough but he took no shit.

I knew him when his bar was on Lincoln Street. He was not only the owner, he was also the bartender, manager, waiter, busboy and janitor, which is to say it was a one-man operation.

Spelled out in little mailbox letters on the doorframe was “Jim Collins.” That was it. No neon Budweiser ad in the window. No two-for-one margarita special posted on the door. (In fact, no margaritas.) No happy hour. No sign saying "Bar."

You had to know it was there, which was part of what made it cool.

I used to go there a lot during and after college, late '70s to early '80s, often with my friend Joe. Joe didn't have to order. He'd walk in, take a stool at the bar and Jim would plunk down a can of Ballantine's ale.

On weeknights, it often seemed like Joe and I were the only ones there, or maybe there were a couple of other people. As trendy as it seems now, it was below-the-radar then, quiet and untouristy.

He served no liquor, only beer and wine, and consequently it was perfect for a casual drink and quiet conversation. It felt like a comfortable neighborhood salon. Jim would tell stories.

He'd been a lot of places, I think as a merchant marine, and seen some interesting things. He also had a natural curiosity and was game to chat about anything that interested you.

The furnishings were minimal: a few stools lining a bar and a handful of small cafe tables. He also had the best jukebox in town: Allman Brothers, R.E.M., Ray Charles, Hank Williams, Louis Armstrong, Bob Dylan, of course. Three plays for a quarter.

Joe always played "Creeque Alley" by the Mamas and the Papas, and “I’m Gonna Hire A Wino To Decorate Our Home” by David Frizzell, brother of Lefty. When Jim retired “Wino,” he gave the 45 to Joe. Joe still has it.  

Jim knew a lot about music. Once or twice I saw him take down his old metal dobro from above the bar and play. He was a reasonably accomplished player and a decent singer. As I recall, he played a mix of folky, sea-shanty stuff and country honky-tonk.

We didn't have this word then, but it was always chill to hang out there. We weren't the only ones who felt that way. Several famous musicians, including members of R.E.M., Bob Dylan and Leon Redbone, had hung out at Jim's after their Savannah shows.

A menu was posted on the wall behind the bar, but Jim would serve food when he wanted to. If he wanted to. 

"Jim, are you cooking tonight?" we'd say if we were hungry.

Sometimes it was "Sure, what do you want?" and he would disappear for a few minutes into the kitchen behind the bar.

Yes, he was also the cook. Other times it was a perfunctory shake of the head.

Everything on the menu was three dollars. A beer was three dollars. A glass of wine was three dollars. A hamburger, if he was making one, was three dollars. French fries: three dollars.

No tax. No fumbling with odd bits of change. Simple.

It tracked with Jim's no-bullshit attitude. Taking out a ten or a twenty at the end of the night, you'd wonder why the rest of the world didn't operate this way.

No cussing, no dancing. Jim's rules. Like how Sally ordered her food in "When Harry Met Sally," Jim wanted his bar how he wanted it.

Likewise, the bar was open when he felt like it. There were no posted hours. If the red light was on outside, the bar was open. If it wasn't, the door was locked.

Jim had a vision and he was a purist in some ways. If you impinged on that vision or broke any rules, you'd be out in a heartbeat. I believe he kept some kind of gun behind the bar. I never saw him kick anyone out, but Joe did.

One night some local rugby players brought in guys from a Hilton Head team. One of the visitors didn’t like Joe’s loafers and started making some remarks.

His Savannah friend grabbed him and said “Not here, man!” Too late.

Jim tossed them out, and everybody else, and closed the bar. Let's just pause for a second and appreciate how rare that is for a bar, any bar, a place where people often feel entitled to be assholes.

And then there was the time that Joe mentioned that he had first come to the bar when he was sixteen. Jim threw him out then and there for prior underage drinking, just on principle. 

Jim would not only talk to us, but he would listen to us. He was curious about our lives and how we saw things. That's not something you always find in a barkeep. We were in our young twenties, but we felt like adults when we sat down at Jim's. He never disabused us of that.

Once we even risked getting arrested to get to Jim's. I was driving my parents' car and Joe and I were getting high on the way there. When we reached the stoplight at the corner of Abercorn and Columbus, it was my turn for a hit. I fired up the bong and Joe suddenly got a funny look on his face.

"Don't look now but there's a cop in the next lane," he said. "Oh fuck," I said, coughing out smoke.

Marijuana possession was a crime in those days. The cop, in an unmarked car, started waving at us.

"There's no law that says you have to stop because some guy is waving at you," said Joe, who was well on his way to a career in the law. 

We turned onto Columbus, hoping to lose him. He followed us and started flashing his brights. "There's no law that says you have to pull over because someone is flashing their lights," Joe said.

We continued down Habersham, driving at precisely the speed limit. The cop stayed close behind, hands waving, lights flashing. Then he swerved off into a shopping center parking lot, toward a pay phone. This was, fortunately, long before cellphones.

I jammed the gas and we made it safely back to my house. We backed the car into the driveway so the license plate wouldn’t show, and prayed that the cops weren't tracing it and wouldn't be coming to knock on my parents' door.

Wiser kids would have stayed home for the night. We took Joe's car and immediately headed to Jim's. 

You could easily have a conversation with anyone at Jim's and more often than not it would be interesting. It was not a pick-up bar for sharks. Jim's rules and intolerance of bad behavior made it one of the few places in town where a woman could stop in for a drink without being hassled.

But that didn't mean it wasn't a great place to meet people. I had a major date thanks to Jim's. There was a girl who had been a year ahead of me in high school but was way out of my league. She had a slender, sexy figure, dreamy brown eyes and I thought she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen.

I spent way too much time in high school mooning over her yearbook picture. But she was part of what passed for high society at school, a cheerleader from a prominent Savannah family. I was an underclassman and, in my mind, a nobody. I couldn't have talked to her if I'd tried.

Then one night there she was having a drink at Jim's. A few years had passed since high school.

Suddenly the fact that she was a year or two older was irrelevant. Suddenly the fact that whatever social circle she traveled in at school and whatever social circle I didn't was irrelevant.

She was just as beautiful but now she seemed approachable and, being at Jim's, there was a chance that she was actually pretty cool.

I went over to say hello and we chatted a bit. You could do that at Jim's without compunction or ulterior motive. A few days later, I called her and we met for a drink, at Jim's of course.

We saw each other once again after that but it never went anywhere. Even though we now frequented the same watering hole, it turned out that we still didn't have much in common.

That was OK. I learned something about myself then, and about life. And that was thanks to Jim, and the place he had created.

Jim had some rough edges. At times, he wasn't exactly what I'd call politically correct. He was who he was. That authenticity was part of what drew people to him.

He was a no-nonsense bar owner, whose hole-in-the-wall bar never appeared on any Google map or city bus tour. He ran his bar his way, and that made it a congenial place for people who wouldn't otherwise hang out in bars.

And it made him a rare thing in the small-town Savannah of the 1970s, something he would have never thought to call himself: an icon of cool.