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PJ Clarke's at Hapy Hour |
It was at the old saloon on the northeast corner
of 55th Street and Third Avenue that I first learned the 80-20 rule.
That’s the adage that says 80% of a bar’s business comes from 20% of its
customers. The regulars. In my beer o’clock visits I always saw the same half
dozen guys at the front end of the bar by the window overlooking Third Avenue.
I figured that if they were always
there at 5:30pm and I was just an occasional customer, they must be there every
single afternoon. Extrapolation is my middle name.
I first visited the joint in 1970 when I was banished to Rego
Park, Queens to fix an underperforming restaurant that I had opened a year
before. I lived in a basement apartment in Forest Hills Estates where I could
walk to work and take the subway to the City for recreational purposes. The
floundering restaurant was right across from Lefrak City, a huge apartment
complex, and 2-1/2 blocks from the long gone Alexander’s Department Store at Queens Boulevard
and 63rd Road. The little pie shop was the first place where a newly
fired employee threatened me. “You won’t make it through the week,” he warned. That's 2,486 weeks ago. I'm feeling good about my chances.
How I stumbled on P.J. Clarke’s escapes me, but it became a
haunt, the first step on a bar crawl up 1st Avenue to Yorktown and
back down 2nd to 57th Street. My guess is that I learned
about the bar in a bar, the way I learned everything else I know. My
neighborhood bar in Rego Park was in Elmhurst or was it Corona? It’s confusing. Anyway, take a left out of my place, walk to Queens Boulevard, hang a right at
Alexander’s, walk another couple of blocks and Walsh’s Pub was across the
street.
Among the many things I learned at Vinny Walsh’s
establishment was how to process 35mm negatives to get prints that looked like
they were made with 4x5 sheet film. I was tipping Half and Halfs next to an older
guy who, it turns out, was a local portrait photographer. We began to compare
notes. I told him that I wanted to produce prints with as little grain as
possible. He turned to me and said, “Go to 47th Street Photo in The
City (that's what you call Manhattan if you're in the know). Ask for Seymour. Sy knows everything there is to know about
the darkroom. He’ll tell you what to do.”
Sy did. On my nightly, I mean next, sortie into
Manhattan I walked into 47th Street Photo and asked for Seymour. I
told him some barfly in Elmhurst told me to look him up and that I wanted to know
how coax creamy acuity out of a 35mm negative. He told me, “Kid, you
gotta use Edwal FG7 developer not that Kodak crap. Use it 15:1 with a 9% sodium
sulfite solution. Prints like nothing else, I’m telling you. And here’s the
kicker, you can push the film. Take Kodak Plus X film that’s a 125 ASA and push
it a 400, 500 ASA. I did it and it did. So, when I got back to my darkroom in
South Pasadena a couple of months later I started shooting Plus X at 400 or 500
and getting prints that looked they came from a Hasselblad at 100 ASA. That
Edwal FG7-Sodium Sulfite hack is the process I used till my darkroom days ended
in the 2002.
I also learned about the Irish bar circuit at Walsh’s which,
New York being New York, was epic. My favorite barkeep at Walsh’s, one Jack
Kearns, tutored me on the midweek ritual called “busting balls” which isn’t quite
what it sounds like. It’s drinking tour of Irish bars. On a barkeep’s night
off, say Tuesday, he would hit all the bars on his circuit and “be taken care
of.” Meaning he’d be treated like royalty by his brethren of the brew. He’d wouldn’t
pay for a single drink. On Jack Kearns’s Irish bar circuit were, Peter’s Back
Street in Bayside, Patrick’s Pub in Douglaston and the John Barleycorn in
Manhattan. Only the John Barleycorn survives.
Back then it was protocol for your favorite mixologist to
“buy” every third drink, and in a clearly understood quid pro quo, you’d tip him
the full amount of that beverage. All of this was done with the full knowledge
of the proprietor who understood the game. The IRS not so much. If Vinny didn’t tolerate the larceny his
star bartender would move down the block dragging his regulars with him.
PJ Clarke’s has been called “the Vatican of Saloons.” PJ was Patrick J. Clarke, an Irish immigrant who tended bar at Duneen’s
Saloon which opened its doors in 1887. Ten years later he bought Duneen's and changed the
name. The venerable establishment is famous for its longevity, that it hasn’t been
replaced by a skyscraper, its celebrity clientele, and for its pews, I mean urinals.
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The urinals at PJ Clarke's |
You could park your car in those things. They were chest
height with an ice block covering the drain. They say you can tell how busy a
shift is by the size of the melting block. Easier than counting the drawer I guess. "O'Shaugnessy, go measure the ice."
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Wilt Chamberlain walking south on 2nd Avenue between 46th and 47th Streets in 1977 |
On one occasion after half a dozen black and tans I stepped into the men’s room directly behind me. When I opened the door to go back to the bar I walked into Wilt Chamberlain’s ass. I do not exaggerate. The man was so big that at 5’-11” I was eyeballing the big center’s pockets. Unlike most “big men” of the day who were storks, Wilt’s 300 pounds was distributed perfectly on his 7’-2” frame. Imagine Lebron James but half a foot taller. Wilt employed a handler to fend off male patrons. I watched his body man collecting head shots from all the women queuing up to meet the man who scored 100 points against the Knicks in 1962 and, according to Chamberlain, 10,000 women. I’m afraid to do that math.
2 comments:
It is official. There is definitely a book here, and the sooner the better. People of all stripes, whether they know New York or not, can thoroughly enjoy and identify with so much of what you are writing. The Vatican of Saloons is a great piece, Steve, and I am so glad you put it on your blog. More, please!
ارخص شركة نقل عفش من الرياض الى الامارات شركة نقل عفش من السعودية الى الامارات
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