That's Dangerman and Mary Ann on the last weekday that the best bar in midtown was open. In our years at Life and Time, Dangerman and I closed down working class bar after bar until finally we landed at Ye Olde. It had the best rock and roll jukebox in the city, the best decorations (it was always Christmas, St Pat's Day, Halloween simultaneously) and Mary Ann, the best waitress. It also had the best clientelle, i.e. we could be pretty sure that we would see no one from work.
Mike has been the bartender for some 34 years, since age 19 when he went to work for his father, who owned the place. He remembers the night the Rockettes did a kick line, the night Liza Minelli had her first legal drink, the budding standup careers of Freddy Prinz, Ruth Rutner, Larry "Curb Your Enthusiasm" David, trying out their acts at the open mike in the corner. He remembers the chi-chi clientelle from Studio 54 across the street slipping over for a quick drink or a quickie in the balcony room.
There's the table of Con-Ed workers, toasting Mike in Champagne. "The most racially diverse table in the city," says Dangerman. "Asian, Indian, Irish, African-American, Carribean—all table wrestling and arguing but together at 'our dive.'" There are the insurance company crowd, the information services nerds, the session musicians from the nearby sound studios, the coworkers having affairs, the hooker cashing a check. Here we all are.
Here are me and Dangerman, dealing with romances and divorces, births and firings, wars and deaths. Here are our little children, eating fries or asleep at the table. At this table, a hundred plots have been hatched, a hundred ledes written and stories edited, a hundred grilled cheese sandwiches consumed, summit conferences held, tears shed. Like now. Mary Ann is crying, Dangerman's eyes are misty. Dolores speaks the epitaph: "We had a lot of fun here—when we should have been at work."
For serious mourners, there's The Tripple Inn Refugee Portal
3 comments:
Well, I remember closing a few of those places myself. Well, maybe I don't remember. But I was there.
--visa man
I was a regular from 1975 to 1979. Lived across 8th Ave in the Westerly. Could NOT walk by Ye Olde Tripple Inn without stopping in for a few ice cold PBR drafts. $.90 when the other bars were $6.00 or more. I moved to Fort Lauderdale in 1979 and many years later I heard Kenny retired and moved close by me, in Hallandale Fl. I never did look him up. RIP Tripple.
I spent many an hour here, in the 1970s. We had our wedding reception there surrounded by the best people from all walks of life. My then husband and his friend, Big John, rebuilt the bar when it moved from the corner of 54thand Eighth, to it's final location across from Studio 54. Darts, music, and laughter. It was awesome.
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