Tag Archive for 'bartenders'

AutoBARography 9: Bohos Against The Mob

Published on March 24, 2011 in archives. 0 Comments Tags: art galleries, bartenders, gambino, gandhi, genovese, gigante, little italy, MAFIA, SOHO, spring street bar, woodrow wilson scholarship.

SHAKEDOWN WARS
Part 1

FLASHBACK: One Million B.C. A tribe of starving Neanderthals is grunting in a cave, gnawing at whitened bones, fighting off shrieking pterodactyls. Suddenly, a herd of deer wanders by. It’s a new species, never saw them around here before. Bleating fawns wobble from nursing does to nibble the sweet grass by the water hole. Look at all this soft, yielding prey. The cave men blink at their good fortune, then attack with gleeful cries.

FLASH FORWARD: Soho,1974. Gray cast iron buildings, home to warehouses and small industry. In sweatshops immigrant ladies hunch in clouds of dust, stitching piece work to the roar of sewing machines. Skeletal Chinese, gasping in metallic fumes, turn out miniature bronze Empire State Buildings for a bowl of noodles and a pellet of opium.

A few blocks away In Little Italy minor mobsters grunt and squabble in their social clubs. Soho is a place to extort from sweatshops, sell swag, run crap games and dump bodies. A risky living.

Suddenly, the sweatshops are transformed into artist’s lofts. Guys from the midwest splatter paint or weld pieces of scrap metal into odd shapes. The novelty factories become galleries selling those splats and welds.

The neighborhood dives are hangouts for the midwestern guys and the art crowd that lives off them. There’s a lot of drinking and bloodless brawling. New, glossy restaurants offer brunch to the weekend art lovers. A theater group grows on Wooster Street. A jazz joint on Green Street. Famous galleries open Soho branches. Cool clothing stores, gourmet shops and real estate agents appear. Europeans with ski tans drink Chablis in the afternoon.

Soho has gone from B&W to Disney color. Bambi Bohos wobble by on their way to the bank. They’re a new species. Soft, yielding prey. The mobsters blink at their good fortune, then attack.

Years later I will hear a wiseguy’s wistful reminiscence of the shakedown racket.

“You didn’t have to steal nothin’ or smack nobody around. You just sat in the club and the money came pourin’ in.”

It’s a Gigante operation. Very suave. An affable young man in a business suit offers a business card for “Sentry Security.” You pay a monthly fee plus a cash “surcharge” for extra services. For those who are slow to sign on a scowling man appears in the salesman’s wake. He sits at the bar scaring the customers until the owners get the message.

A Frenchman named Jean-Jacques, whose restaurant is a favorite with the fast-forming Soho elite, calls the police. When they are enigmatic he tries the FBI. They descend in force, but the young salesman is gone and no one else in the neighborhood wants to talk. A week later a carload of mice turn up in Jean-Jacques’ kitchen. A few nights after that an exiting patron is jostled and threatened on the sidewalk. Then, on a busy Saturday night the restaurant’s front window is blown out. Several people are injured by flying glass. Soon afterward the FBI removes its mikes and cameras.

I’m working at the Spring Street Bar. The place is three deep, day and night, six days a week. (Tuesday is always slow.) They rush the bar like it’s the Fountain of Youth. One of my bosses, B… is an architect with a red beard, a rock climber who has never been seen in public without a Heineken. The other, J… is a former Woodrow Wilson scholar with a thick black beard who reads a book a day and does everything to avoid sleeping. His wife paints pictures of cats with huge eyes. They sit at the bar, drinking pitchers of Commemorativo Margaritas with no apparent effect.

The partners look down on the restaurant business with aristocratic disdain. It’s fun to work for them because they hate the customers and are always cutting someone off, throwing someone out or tearing up a check with a “get out of my restaurant and don’t come back.”

The Mob controls every aspect of restaurant supply. It sets prices and decides which family will service each restaurant. My bosses bridle under its monopoly. They are dangerously snide to the seafood man whose company is in the Genovese-controlled Fulton Fish Market, snub the table-cloth, cutlery, toilet paper guy who represents the notorious Matty “The Horse” Ianello and insult Sam, the garbage man who works for the Gambino branch of the private carting cartel.

“Garbage is a good metaphor for what you people are,” B… says to him one night.

Sam is offended. “I’m a human being…”

“That’s stretching the definition.”

Sam takes a step toward B… “You pickin’ a fight ?”

“I don’t engage in physical violence,” says B…”I’m a Gandhian pacifist.”

Sam doesn’t get it. He looks at me. I shrug like I don’t get it either. “Sanitation Department won’t collect from businesses,” Sam says. “Somebody’s gotta get the garbage off the street…It’s a public service.”

“You could do a real public service by jumping into the landfill with the rest of the garbage,” B… says.

At 4 am Sam catches up to me in Dave’s Diner on Canal Street. “So who’s your boss with?” he asks.

“He’s not with anybody.”

“He’s tryin’ to get me to take a swing at him so he can get me off the route and go with his guy, right?”

“This is his first restaurant,” I say. “He doesn’t know that Soho is cut into territories.”

Sam still doesn’t buy it. “He wouldn’t talk that way to me if he didn’t have somebody behind him.”

I want to tell him that Mob logic doesn’t apply to my bosses. “There’s nobody behind him,” is all I can say.

Sam gets stubborn. “He wouldn’t let you in on it, anyway. It’s a power play. Some big shot is backin’ him for sure…”

I’m not around when the amiable salesman from “Sentry Security” shows up, but I hear all about it when I come to work that night. The guy went into his spiel and J…cut him off.

“We don’t need you. Our bartenders protect the place…So get out of my restaurant, I know who you are.”

I am about to tender my resignation when a scowling man slides into a stool at the end of the bar. It’s a busy Thursday, people shoving and breathing down each other’s necks. But he puts up a force field and nobody intrudes on his space. He’s one of those little guys who doesn’t look like much at first glance. Lucky for me I’ve been decked by midgets; I’m not lulled. His ruby pinky ring glitters when he lights his Chesterfield with a gold Dunhill. He holds his outsized hands in front of him like paws. His knuckles are pounded smooth from the hundreds of jaws he’s broken–mine about to be next. I avoid eye contact, wary of the trick question “what are you lookin’ at?” for which there is no safe answer.

He orders a Dewars and milk, a throwback to Prohibition when steady drinkers took the antidote with the poison. As the hours go by the customers recede like low tide. By midnight when it’s usually frantic the joint is dead calm. Only a few regulars at the other end of the bar are watching with horrified fascination.

Finally, B… can stand it no longer.

“Cut him off,” he says.

“He’s just here to intimidate people,” I say. “If you leave him alone he’ll go by himself…”

“You can blame it on me,” B…says. “Tell him I say he’s scaring the customers.”

The scowling man waggles his glass as I walk down to the end of the bar. “You run outta milk?”

“Boss says I can’t serve you,” I say.

He looks at me in puzzlement and I realize no one has ever said that to him before. “Whaddya mean?”

My mouth goes dry. “He says you’re scaring the customers.”

He looks around. “I don’t see no customers.”

I have to lick my lips to get a word out. “That’s ’cause you scared ‘em all away.”

He slides his glass to the edge of the bar. “Dewars and milk.”

He walks on the balls of his feet like a boxer. B…looks down at him without flinching as he asks the trick question:

“What’s your problem?”

“You’re spoiling our fun,” says B…

The scowling man steps into punching range.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

B… stands his ground. “You have bad karma. You’re making everybody nervous.”

“You want me to go?” The man shoves him. “Throw me out…”

B… doesn’t stagger as far as expected. So the man shoves him harder against the bar. “C’mon tough guy, let’s see what you got.”

“I don’t use physical violence,” B… says.” I’m a Gandhian pacifist.”

“Then how you gonna get me to leave?”

“I expect you to do the right thing.”

The scowling man turns and challenges me.

“You a pacifist?”

“I’m a punk,” I say.

“Then gimme a Dewars and milk.”

B…moves in front of him and warns me with a wink: “If you serve him you’re fired.”

The man kicks B…’s legs out from under him. B…falls forward, his head thumping against the bar. He drops to his knees, blood pouring out of his nose.

“Now you’ve gone too far,” he says..

Once these gorillas get wound up there’s no stopping them. The next step is a hard kick to the ribs and then a few stomps to the head. Scared as I am, I can’t let that happen.

“Wait a second,” I say. My arms buckle and I barely make it over the bar.

“Wait for you to piss your pants?” the scowling man says.

B… searches through a puddle of blood for his glasses. “Don’t you know when you’re not wanted?” he says.

The scowling man stops and squints at me. “What the fuck are you guys up to, anyway?” He backs out of the door, as if he’s afraid we’re going to start shooting.

B…feels along the bar for his Heineken.

“Well I guess we told him,” he says.

By closing B…has ingested every painkiller–legal and illegal–in the pharmacopeia. I’m heading down West Broadway toward Dave’s when the scowling man gets out of an El Dorado. “Hey you, wait up, I wanna ask you something.”

Every atom in my body is screaming: RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! Instead, I fold my arms and lean against a lamppost.

He is fooled by the casual pose.

“Tough guy, your boss. By not fightin’ back he puts the onus on me.”

“He’s a Gandhian pacifist,” I say.

“He told me to do the right thing. What did he mean? What am I supposed to do?”

It’s a linguistic impasse. “Do the right thing” means something very different in Little Italy.

“Nothing,” I say. “Forget about it.”

“Forget about it “means something very different as well.

“Look, I don’t wanna step on nobody’s toes,” he says. “If somebody’s protectin’ the join then fine with me. I just work here, know what I mean?”

“I know what you mean.”

He moves in and drops his voice, getting positively collegial. “Somebody’s makin’ a move here, right? Who’s your boss with?”

I shake my head. Suddenly my voice is hoarse and confidential. “He’s not with nobody,” I say. “Forget about it. “

The scowling man nods with a knowing look. ” Yeah…That’s what I thought you’d say.”

AutoBARography 5: A HIPSTER’S THANKSGIVING

Published on November 24, 2010 in archives. 0 Comments Tags: ANGEL DUST, BARCARDI RUM, bartenders, CHRISTMAS, cocktails, HOLDIDAYS, MERCE CUNNINGHAM, RAUSHENBERG, REMY MARTIN, RICHARD SERRRA, SOHO, SPRING STREEET BAR, THANKSGIVING.

Reprint from Nov. 2008

Soho, 1974 BC, Before Coach…(Prada and Gucci.) Old cast iron buildings, half sweatshops, half artists’ lofts. $500 a month gets you 5000 feet of raw space.

Spring Street Bar, the hippest place in the city, just ask us. On a good night you can see Johns and Cage, Raushenberg and Cunningham. Richie Serra comes in to punch people out, Andy Warhol shows up with his entourage after a Castelli opening. John and Yoko nurse beers. There has even been a “Clyde” Frazier citing.

But on Thanksgiving everyone dutifully turns into good little bourgeois and eats turkey en famille. Restaurants offer special menus, but only tourists and those with parents in elder care show up.

It’s the slowest and most hazardous day in the bar business. There’s no money to be made and you risk mutilation at the hands of some resentful reject who is drawn in by the lights. There had been a bit of a rush around noon as the locals fortified themselves for dreaded dinners. But now at 3:30 it’s dead. I’m using a lemon to show Mei, the Chinese busboy, how to throw a knuckleball when a guy in a green car coat slides in at the end of the bar.

He answers before I can ask. “Any kinda beer.”

People who don’t care what they drink just want to get loaded fast and act out their drama. This guy is white and blotchy with a sloppy red comb- over that starts under his ear and hardly covers his freckled bald spot. He’s got a blunt chin and a fighter’s caved-in nose. His watery blue eyes seem focused somewhere else even when they’re looking right at you. He’s the kind of holiday wacko who sets the alarms off , but for some reason I’m not concerned. He raises his glass. “Cheers, fellow outcast…”

I never speak to customers, even regulars. “No confessions please,” is the standard line. But the holiday has loosened my defenses. I pour myself a Remy.

“Cheers.”

He chainsmokes and stares into his beer while I chug Brandy Alexanders at the service end. When I go to empty his ashtray he puts down a fifty.

“Is there a magic cocktail that’ll put me in a festive mood?”

“Nothing that works on a holiday,” I say. “Holidays are God’s way of telling us we’re having too much fun.”

It’s a half-smart gloss on the cliche mantra of the decade: “Cocaine is God’s way of telling us we have too much money.” But he looks up at me like it’s the Sermon on the Mount.

“That’s really true, man,” he says. “Christmas is a total ordeal, too. Nobody ever gets what they want…”

“Because what they want can’t be bought in department stores,” I say. “Like the song says: All I want for Christmas/Is my two front teeth. But they’re lost forever like your youth and your innocence…”

He slaps the bar “That’s so profoundly true, Man. Christmas in a nutshell. But look at New Year’s. It starts out so great, but ends in disappointment.”

He wants a guru. Not usually my thing, but for some reason I rise to the bait. “That’s because people aspire to an ecstasy that is only available to the insane.”

“Then let’s get crazy,” he says. “Let’s have a double Bacardi 151.”

It’s the strongest booze in the house, 75% alcohol. I never touch it, but now I’m filling two rocks glasses. My new best friend throws down his drink with a practiced flip and waits for me. I follow suit. The rum burns a flaming trail of lava from my throat to my rectum.

“There’s three houses I”m not welcome in,” my pal says. “My parents, my ex wife and my girlfriend who just threw me out because I’m always stoned. How about you?”

Sirens wail in the distance. Everything here is totally under control.

“I’m past unwelcome,” I say. “I’m not even an afterthought. I’m only here today because they need somebody to turn off the lights.”

He gets up quickly, knocking over his stool. Through the mist I think I see him smiling.

“Man, you’re in worse shape than me,” he says. He pushes a hundred at me. “Thanks, you really cheered me up.”

“Any time,” I think I say.

I watch him go out and turn the corner. A hundred and fifty bucks is more than I make on a good night. “Nice guy,” I say to someone.

There’s a plate at the end of the bar. Turkey breast and glazed ham with pineapple…Brussel sprouts… Sweet potatoes with marshmallows…

“Thanks, maybe later,” I say.

Mei is at the bar, tugging my arm. “Come outside…”

A cold gust brings the smell of burning rubber. My friend is shivering in a storefront across the street with Jimmy the Irish cook. He offers me a thin, tightly rolled joint.

“Here, man, Happy Thanksgiving.”

I’m not a big reefer man, but I take a toke to be sociable. It’s harsh and unfamiliar, but I’m not a big reefer man so I take another when it comes around.

There’s a lot of hugging and hand clasping.

“You guys got me through,”my friend says. “I love you guys.”

Back in the bar, Mei’s face is very big.

“He your brother?” he asks. “He looks like you.”

“You think all white people look alike,” I say. “You guys…one billion twin brothers.”

“And you, two hundred fifty million,” he says. “So we going to crush you…”

And that’s the funniest thing we’ve both ever heard…

How did I get into Van Gogh’s yellow room? It feels so good to wash my face with soapy dish suds.

I realize I’ve turned myself inside out and got stuck into my brain.

“I have to get out of my head,” I say.

I ride my tricycle down the long, dark foyer. Can’t ride your bike in the house, grandma says.

In the bedroom I open the closet door. My mother is hiding behind the dresses, holding a handkerchief to her mouth, tears pouring out of her eyes.

The radio says it’ll go below zero today. I’m waiting for the 41 Flatbush Avenue bus. There’s nobody at the stop, which means I just missed it. The wind goes through my black leather jacket. My feet are so cold they’re burning.

“Hey, you okay?”

“I’m waiting for the pus,” I say. “That’s funny, huh ’cause that’s what I really am waiting for.”

My feet are sliding along the cold ground. In the sudden warmth of a car, the rum burns a lava trail from my rectum back to my throat…

“He’s puking…”

My head is in the cold air. Yellow vomit runs down the side of the car.

“We found you in the schoolyard in Thompson Street.”

It’s the owner. They had called him when I bolted out of the bar, screaming “I have to get out of my brain!” I had walked across the street to the schoolyard and had been there for hours.

“That guy slipped you a joint laced with PCP,” he says.” Mei freaked out. They had to give him Thorazine in Bellevue. Jimmy ran his car into a lamppost, but he’s okay.”

Mei was too humiliated to return to work. But I heard he had stopped losing all his money at fan tan games in Chinatown and bought into a takeout in Jackson Heights. Jimmy joined AA and went back to Dublin.

I ended up with pleurisy and had to wear a belt around my chest for two weeks. In the doctor’s mirror I saw the booze flush starting to spread through my cheeks.

“I can’t live this way anymore,” I said to someone.

When I was better I made the rounds looking for the guy. I had bloody fantasies of beating him with a bar stool. Never found him. For years his face was fresh in my memory. I knew that if I ever saw him again I would easily summon that vengeful rage that still festered.

But then, his face began to fade. The rage subsided.

Now I think he might have been sent to make sure Mei stopped gambling. Jimmy took the pledge and I never spent Thanksgiving alone again.

AutoBARography 7: MY SHORT CAREER AS A GAY BARTENDER/PART FIVE

Published on July 2, 2009 in archives. 85 Comments Tags: , 1970'S, bartenders, bianca jagger, buster bailey, cocaine, cocktails, disco, drugs, Gay lifestyle, gene krupa, hotel diplomat, le jardin, metropole, Pippin, red allen, roy cohen, sal mineo, stinger, tequilla sunrise.

THE END OF A PERFECT EVENING

It’s 1973 and nobody goes home until they run out of money, drugs or hope. At 3:45 am Le jardin in the Hotel Diplomat on Times Square, is so crowded that short people are having trample anxiety. The dance floor is too jammed to do anything but bump and grind. The DJ has forsworn elegant variation and is blasting one jump tune after another. Drunks pass out and are held up by the crowd. People hang over the ledges of the roof garden nine stories up, flashing boobs, dropping pants. Behind the bar I’m confronted by a wall of clutching hands. In my dive joint experience, a four deep bar at last call means one shove too many, an elbow, an angry word and suddenly an ugly brawl, which the bartenders, in those pre-bouncer days, are required to break up. But we are in Disco Eden, before the fall, and good spirits prevail. There is a lot of pushing, groping, giggling, waving money, making friends. Not a cross word or a clenched fist in the crowd.

Sal Mineo is surrounded by devotees, talking theater. Jill Haworth sits outside the charmed circle, the beard that’s no longer needed.

Roy Cohn is leading his muscle boys in a spirited rendition of “God Bless America.” He glares at me. “Don’t you know the words?”

Ira slips under the bar and lifts the drawer to remove the stacks of 50′s and 100′s. My paranoia flares.

“Can you put a slip in saying how much money you took out?” I say. “I don’t want to be short in the total.”

Ira grabs a fistful of 20′s. “Now who would ever accuse a bartender of stealing? Don’t worry, a man comes in and re rings the tapes for Uncle Sam every morning.”

An hour before the tip cup had runneth over, bills sprouting like a bonsai. Now it’s almost empty. Has Jimmy been skimming? I check the cup. The singles, fives and tens have been “married” into a thick stack of twenties. Jimmy gives me a thumbs up and I feel a twinge of guilt for my suspicion.

People are screeching in desperation. “I didn’t hear you give last call.”

Bianca Jagger squeezes through the crowd and holds out her glass. She’s been drinking Cinzano, but now says: “Can you make me something better?”

If I get the drink right I’m in. I decide on a stinger, Remy and white Creme de Menthe, shaken over ice. She takes a sip…”Delicious…” Before I can ask “are you Bianca…?” her German friend pushes her aside…”And a Tequila Sunrise, extra grenadine…”

Suddenly, the music stops. Everyone is frozen in the silence for a moment. Then, they charge John Addison, pleading for one more dance. He shakes his head, sternly. “There’s a cop in here somewhere, checking his watch, who would love to lift our license if we serve a drink at 4:01.”

As senior man, Jimmy divides the tips. I get fourteen nice crisp twenties, the most I’ve ever made. That’s almost half my child support. I’m jubilant.

“Hold out your thumbs,” Jimmy says. He sprinkles cocaine on both my thumbnails. “Blast off…” This is not a good idea, but I have to show solidarity. I jam my thumbs into my nostrils and take a huge snort. The coke races like a burning fuse. I can feel the brain cells flaring like emulsifying film.

Jimmy holds his thumbs out. “Do me…”

The coke makes me edgy and talky. I’m wiping the bar, cleaning the ashtrays. Jimmy shows up with two shots of 151. “Going off drink…”

We click glasses and throw down. I am immediately on fire from my throat to my scrotum.

“C’mon boys, leave some for the customers.” It’s Addison. I can’t place the accent. “Are you Australian?” I ask.

“No, are you a fucking college graduate?” he says.

On the way out I get the wobbles. The Pippin gypsies are pushing into the elevator singing: “Gay Gay Gay/Is There Any Other Way?”

“I’ll take the stairs,” I say.

I descend into the seven circles of Disco Inferno. Every landing a different sexual permutation, a different piece of paraphernalia. Clinging to the banister I stagger through smoke and over writhing bodies. People are moaning, screaming with laughter. Somebody grabs my ankle.

Finally, the fresh air of Times Square. I cram the tip money deep into my sock and leave a twenty in my pocket to satisfy any mugger I might encounter. It’s a few blocks to the subway and then to an unmade bed in a sweltering apartment where I’ll lie in wakeful torment. Suddenly, death seems a viable alternative.

A redhead in white short shorts, black boots and a halter top runs across the street and right by me to Jimmy.. A big kiss.

“This is Adrian,” he says. “She dances at Robbie’s Mardi Gras.”

“Robbie’s Mardi Gras used to be the Metropole,” I say. “A Dixieland club. You could see the greatest musicians playing on the bar—Gene Krupa, Red Allen, Buster Bailey, Marty Napoleon…” The coke is talking, but I can’t shut it up. “I used to stand out there in the freezing cold to watch these guys–Max Kaminsky, Pee Wee Irwin and Pee Wee Russell who wasn’t really that short…”

A stretch limo glides up and Bianca’s German rolls down the window. “Get in tarbender,” he says.

The limo is crammed. Bianca is sharing the jump seat with two skinny blondes who are dressed like twins. She smiles an invitation. Is that Addison in the front seat?

“We’re going to 228 and then I’m preparing omelets for anyone who is still breathing,” the German guy says.

228 is an after-hours club in the Village. It’s in an old sweatshop with blackened windows where you can lose days at a time.

I can’t go.

“The Loew’s 83rd. Street had a kiddie matinee at 11 today,” I say. “They show cartoons and the Seven Voyages of Sinbad. Sometimes they even have a clown…” The coke is broadcasting again. “I take my son, you know. He gets really mad when I fall asleep and keeps poking me–’wake up, dad, wake up–so I should try to get a few hours…”

The limo rolls away, but I’m still talking…”Although I’ll have to take six Advil and then I’ll be groggy all day and he’s going to want to fly a kite…”

I never worked at Le jardin again.

The Disco scene was too good to last. Everybody got too high too often. They lost control, talked too much, did too much and ended up dead. Everybody got too rich and drew too much sinister attention. The wiseguys who ran the gay bar scene in the Village branched out into the clubs. Addison had to seek police protection from a very tough guy from Brooklyn, who later became a big TV star. The IRS locked up all the major club owners for tax evasion. The wild sex turned lethal in the 80′s when the AIDS epidemic hit. Life became dangerous for the hard partyers. Sal Mineo was stabbed to death outside his West Hollywood apartment. Roy Cohn died of AIDS, denying to his last breath that he had it. John Addison also died of AIDS. By the late ’80′s Disco was dead. Only the music lived on.

It wasn’t all bad. Jimmy gained 50 pounds, married a model and became a movie producer.

And Bianca Jagger must be a grandma by now. If that was Bianca Jagger.

AutoBARography 7: MY SHORT CAREER AS A GAY BARTENDER/PART ONE

Published on May 20, 2009 in archives. 0 Comments Tags: 1973, bars, bartenders, cocktails, diana ross, hookers, hotel diplolmat, junkies, le jardin, MAFIA, New York, rats, seagrams, Seventies, socialist party, the supremes, Times Square, vice squad.

THE HOTTEST SPOT IN TOWN

July ’73, Times Square, New York…There’s a recession on, but you can’t tell by me. I’ve got a bar job– twenty-seven bucks a night and all the goldfish I can eat. It’s at the Hotel Diplomat, an SRO on 43rd. St. and Sixth Ave. We call it “the Roach Motel” because once you check in you don’t check out. Half the tenants are seniors, shuffling around the mahogany chairs and sputtering lamps in the lobby until they find a spot on a lumpy sofa where they can lean on their walkers, muttering to the ghosts in the gloom. They stop breathing in rooms filled with fifty years of clutter, and lie forgotten until their stench signals their demise. The stronger ones make it to the hospital, bounced down the steps on a gurney, heads turning for one last dazed look around before they vanish into the ambulance of no return.

Hookers live in rooms rented by their pimps, who hang out in a bar off the lobby. They are hustled out, handcuffed and hysterical, by Vice Squad cops. New girls immediately take their places like there’s a waiting list. The seniors lean on their walkers and watch as they lead raucous sailors, nervous high school kids or furtive men in suits across the lobby.

Slouchy guys mutter in the phone booths by the elevators. Some of them are found with the needles still in their arms. Alerted by a trail of blood under the doors the maids enter to find the others tied, gagged and slashed in ransacked rooms. The seniors hobble down the hall as EMS workers wheel the bodies out, wrapped in their bloody sheets.

Rats the size of anteaters raid the liquor room, ripping open the bags of pretzels, unscrewing the tops of the maraschino cherry jars. We shout and sing to get them to scatter before we enter, but there are a few practical jokers in the pack. You don’t know what terror is until you’ve been startled by a giant rodent covered in Red Dye No. 2.

The Diplomat was once the hotel of the soft Left. The Socialist Party had its meetings and dances in its three ballrooms. Now promoters rent the spaces for dances and special events. Friday, Saturday and Sunday night the Crystal Room, so named for its chandeliers, is taken over by Alfredo, a twitchy middle-aged Neapolitan and Gerry, his blonde Brooklyn girlfriend. They put on dances for Italian immigrants. They charge ten dollars at the door and the hotel gets the bar. The room has a capacity of seven hundred and fifty. Every night begins with Alfredo pacing nervously as a few people straggle in. But by ten o’clock the place is jammed.

Three of us work a ninety foot bar. It’s Paul, a retired mailman from Harlem, Al, an angry butcher at Gristedes, who sells swag steaks out of the trunk of his car and me, a recently separated hack writer with a six year old son. We each have a bottle of Seagrams Seven, Highland Dew scotch, Gordon’s gin and Wolfschmidt’s vodka–and a soda gun. Seven and Seven is the cocktail du soir; we go through at least three cases of Seagrams a night. All drinks are $1.25 and served in plastic cups. No bottled beer; quarrels often erupt and the management doesn’t want any throwable glassware available.

The customers rush the bar, hundreds of them, shouting and shoving and clamoring for drinks for like they’ve been crawling on the Sahara for weeks. They pay in small change. “These greaseballs don’t go for spit,” Al says. By midnight, we have so many nickels in the register that Lester, the night manager dumps them in a huge sack. A quarter is considered a big tip and is presented with much pomp and ceremony. A few of the guys proffer a buck like it’s the papal crown on a plush pillow, but then they want free drinks for the friends and any stray girl who happens by. We do the math and figure that with people coming and going Alfredo is grossing ten thousand cash a night on Friday and Saturday and about five on Sunday– twenty-five G’s for low. Figuring an average crowd of twelve hundred, averaging three drinks at $1.25 per, that’s about $4500 for the hotel. For very low. “Everybody’s makin’ money and we get screwed,” Al says. We decide to charge the customers and steal from the till.

A quintet plays Top 40 and traditional Italian. Vito, the vocalist, a short kid with a gimpy leg and coke bottle glasses, is the ideal cover singer, doing Marvin Gay, Frankie Valli or Domenico Madugno with equal fidelity . Gerry rakes the dance floor with disco lighting, flashing, strobing, changing color, sweeping the room like a prison spotlight. The dancers do the same steps to a proto party list, going from Swear to God to Let’s Get It On to Volare.

There is a hard core of about a hundred regulars who show up every week. Among the men, an older group, smooth-shaven and slick-haired in wide-shouldered suits clusters at one end of the bar. They own pizza parlors all over Brooklyn and Staten Island, Vito explains. Another faction, young and modish in jeans and leather vests over sleeveless tees comes to my end. They work in “debt collection, you know what I mean?” Vito says flicking his nose. The two groups greet each other guardedly and never mix.

The females are either overdressed, heavily made up and deliriously sexy, at least to me, or mousy and awkward and giggling with each other. They arrive in groups like a bus tour and dance together for the first hour until the men join in. Everyone usually pairs off, but one night I spot a melancholy lady staring at me as she knocks back Seven and Sevens. At closing an invitation to coffee leads to a lurching clinch in the lobby and more stumbled kisses on the subway steps. But she sobers up on the long ride out to Brooklyn and by the time we get to Bensonhurst it’s life story time with lots of names and places, weddings, spiteful cousins, he saids, she saids… I find out she lives on 18th. Avenue with her parents and her “fiance” is a few doors down and I’m out of there. The next week she’s at the bar with one of the “debt collectors,” giving me a complicit smile like we’re having a mad affair.

The ’60′s had been a stressful time, what with psychedelics, army physicals and the shock of parenthood. Now, in the ’70′s I wake up broke, rejected and full of guilt on a mattress on the dusty floor of an empty apartment. But I’m not in school, I’m not in the army, I’m not married and I’m up for a job writing porno novels at ten dollars a page. Life is good.

One night I come to work to find a line a gleaming limos in front of the hotel.

“We doing weddings now?” I ask Lester.

“They’re havin’ a big party at Le Jardin tonight.”

He’s a black dude who’s been at the Diplomat for forty years, working his way up from porter. You’d think he had seen everything, but he shakes his head in amazement.

“They had Diana Ross and the Supremes up there the other night. They get just about everybody…”

I remember a few weeks ago when the place opened. “They got a fag joint on the roof,” Al had said.

Vito had gone up there one night and come back with a dismal report. “No live music…They got a DJ like on the radio. Two turntables goin’ back and forth…” He looked at me helplessly. “Everybody’s gonna do this now. We’re dead…”

It’s the beauty of narcissism. A seismic cultural phenomenon was erupting right under my nose and I didn’t even notice it.

For the first time I notice that the lobby has a new population. Young, stylish, flamboyant, pushing the seniors off their perches, interfering with the orderly process of prostitution, even sending the dope dealers into temporary retreat. They jam into the only elevator that goes to the roof, making so many trips that the motor burns out and they have to take the stairs.

“They wait on line like they’re givin’ out twenty dollar bills,” Lester says. “You oughta go up there. They got everything goin’ on…”

TO BE CONTINUED

AutoBARography 6: A CHRISTMAS PAST

Published on December 16, 2008 in archives. 0 Comments Tags: , bars, bartenders, christmas eve, egg nog, fifth avenue, global warming, HENRY KISSINGER, masrisol, new york city, pousse cafe, richard nixon, rockefeller center, SOHO, spring street bar, VIETNAM.

New York City, Christmas Eve, 1973…Global warming hadn’t become an A-list cause. Ozone layer sounded like something you inhaled at a party.

In Washington, the hottest present was a bootleg White House tape of President Nixon drunkenly ranting about the Watergate investigation to Attorney General John Mitchell. It was played at office parties all over town.

On Dec. 16, with the help of an Eagle Scout and a Brownie, Nixon, planted a 45 foot Colorado spruce, which was to be the first live White House Christmas tree. A few days earlier the North Vietnamese had rebuffed Kissinger’s peace plan. That day the Arab oil producers had announced they were lifting their oil embargo against every country but the US and Netherlands, who they said were being punished for giving aid to the Israelis during the recent October War with Egypt. As he delivered his greetings to the nation, promising to “maintain the integrity of the White House,” Nixon knew that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were running an espionage operation against the White House. Not only were the Democrats crying out for his impeachment, but his own military commanders were spying on him.

It had been a cruel month. On December 17, ice storms had delayed the opening of the Stock Exchange. Christmas Eve, a blizzard was dumping 30 inches of snow on Buffalo. In the city , a dark cloud settled like a wet blanket over the stars. Fluttering shreds of wrapping paper clung to my legs as I walked to the subway. Twin brothers in Santa hats marched outside the 72nd. St. station carrying signs reading “USEFUL IDIOTS FOR THE CIA.”

The energy shortage had curtailed the decorations on the tree in Rockefeller center. Fifth Avenue wasn’t its usual glittering self. The faltering economy, the war in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal had dampened the Christmas spirit.

Downtown, in Soho, the only way you could tell it was Christmas was that the galleries were closed and the sweatshops had sent their Hispanic ladies home early. The artists emerged from their lofts, hunched in fatigue jackets, with an occasional scarf as a gesture to the cold. Everything was closed. Only one light burned like a beacon in the night–Spring Street Bar.

We had no tree, no lights, no Christmas dinner. And we only had one customer: Kobe, the son of an Admiral in the Japanese Navy. Rumor was that he had been sent packing after he stabbed some guy with his father’s ceremonial sword. Earlier in the evening Mei, the Chinese busboy, had knocked over his drink It seemed like an accident, but then I saw Loq, the Chinese dishwasher giggling in the kitchen doorway. Kobe saw him, too. Now he was downing tequilas and glaring at Mei, visions of the Rape of Nanking dancing in his head.

Marisol was a famous Venezuelan artist, who was having an affair with Jack, my bar partner. She was known for her explosive temper. “Get ready for some shit, I stood her up today,” he had muttered as she lurched in, having fortified herself elsewhere for an epic confrontation.

I watched warily as he poured her a red wine, which she knocked back like a shot of whiskey, while glaring at him. Then thrust her empty glass at him for another…And another…

A couple came in out of the flurries. She was tall, graceful, wet snow glittering on her dark hair and cashmere coat, the kind of beauty who never buttoned her coat, even in bitter cold. He was shorter than she and softly fat. Biology hadn’t given him a break. His face was red and chapped by the cold, just as it would be red and blistered by the sun. He steered her to the bar and glared as I smiled at her. There was a lot of glaring going on tonight.

“What would you like?” he asked her with what sounded like a parody upper class drawl.

“I don’t know…anything.” Her indecision gave me an excuse to look at her. Dark eyes under thick, unplucked brows, were focused somewhere else.

“What was that crazy drink you loved in Venice?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t remember.”

“Pousse cafe,” he said.. He threw down the challenge. “Can you make that here?”

I had never made one in my life. “I can make it anywhere,” I said, defiantly.

I rummaged in the office behind the bar and found a torn copy of Mr. Boston’s Bar Book. Pousse cafe had six ingredients floated on top of one another to produce what the author called “a striped rainbow of color.”

The liquors had to be floated in the right order, the heaviest down to the lightest. I would have to make the drink in front of her because if I carried it the colors might run.

First, I covered the bottom of a highball glass with Grenadine. Using the back of a mixing spoon I floated Yellow Chartreuse on top of that. Then… reddish Creme de Cassis…White Creme de Cacao…”

A stool scraped.

“Nobody move please,” I said. With a steady hand I floated Green Chartreuse and a final layer of Cognac.

I stepped back and contemplated a work of art, one layer of gorgeous color on top of another.

“This is probably the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” I told Jack.

But the girl pushed it away with a sob. “I can’t.” The drink came apart, its colors sloshing and bleeding into one another. She got up.” I’ve got to go back there.”

“No…” He pushed her down and whispered vehemently. “We’re going to have a Christmas drink just like we said…Then, we’ll go uptown…”

You stand behind the bar and try to get the story straight. This looked like a long term relationship finally crumbling. He trying to hold it together. She desperate to escape.

Peggy, the waitress, sipped the ruined pousse cafe. “It tastes like poisoned candy,” she said.

The girl found a crumpled cigarette. He fumbled with his lighter. “What do you think they’re doing now?” he asked

She took a sucking drag and blew the smoke through her nose. “I don’t know what they do anymore.”

“Your Mom’s making her special egg nog like she always does, right? Well, we can have one, too.” He turned to me with a pleading look. “Bartender, two beautiful Christmas egg nogs…”

We made a classic egg nog at Spring Street. Three parts heavy cream, two parts cognac, one egg yolk and gomme syrup in a mixing glass (we didn’t use blenders back in the day.) Shake vigorously and pour in a tall glass. Sprinkle with nutmeg.

The beauty lit one cigarette off another. Not a good sign.

“Talk to me,” the fat kid said urgently. “What did you do on Christmas when you were a kid?”

“You know…”

“Tell me anyway…”

Another deep drag. “We’d spend a few days in town with Daddy…Skate at the Wallman rink…Then he’d put us on a plane to Aspen to meet Mom and Bart. Mom and Bart would go skiing and Francy and I would freeze in that dark chalet…When it was dark, they’d come back with their friends. Bart would try to get the fire going and everybody would laugh because he was so loaded. Mom would come out of the kitchen. Time for my special egg nog, she’d say…”

Almost on cue I laid the drinks in front of them. He took a tentative sip and brightened. “This is good…Just like your Mom used to make… “

She could hardly put it to her lips. When she did she shook her head…”No, it’s not like it at all …” And got up again. “I have to go back there…”

On second look I saw that her long, graceful fingers were yellow with nicotine. The face under that mass of dark hair was gray. The eyes had the panic of a trapped animal. “Let me go back there, please…”

What was “there?” A pile of coke? An abusive lover? Was this fat, red-faced kid trying desperately to save a tragic beauty he would hopelessly love forever? Suddenly, his face had a suffering nobility. His shoulders sagged and he stepped away. “I’ll get a taxi.”

He slid a twenty under the ashtray.

“Sorry about the egg nog,” I said.

He shrugged like it didn’t matter. “Merry Christmas.”

He stood arm raised in the middle of Spring Street where cabs never came, while she shivered in a doorway.

Peggy took a sip of my spurned masterpiece and made a face.

“More like ugh nog,” she said.

AutoBARography 5: A HIPSTERS THANKSGIVING

Published on November 25, 2008 in archives. 2 Comments Tags: ANGEL DUST, BARCARDI RUM, bartenders, CHRISTMAS, cocktails, HOLDIDAYS, MERCE CUNNINGHAM, RAUSHENBERG, REMY MARTIN, RICHARD SERRRA, SOHO, SPRING STREEET BAR, THANKSGIVING.