Yo Ho Ho

One current cliché about New York is that we have no connection to our own harbor and the seafaring past that helped make the city.  And like any stereotype, I suppose there is some truth in the notion.  But at the end of Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn Heights is an exception called Montero’s Bar & Grill.  It’s been at 73 Atlantic Ave. since 1947 and it’s so stacked with great nautical crapola you feel like you  just ordered your last drink before you ship out on a tramp steamer bound for Pago Pago.  While it isn’t full of sailors anymore, it is blissfully hipster-free.  The regulars are justifiably protective of their little gem, but not unfriendly if you don’t act like an idiot.  I always leave wishing this was my local.

The late afternoon light, bouncing of the water and up Atlantic Ave., and then cut up into a million pieces by all that glass brick makes a pretty picture, so make sure  your happy hour intersects with the golden hour.

Tricolor

Here’s another venerable remnant of Greenwich Village’s Italian past.  Since 1919, according to the menu, it’s Gene’s at 73 West 11th Street, just east of Sixth Avenue.  A small, active bar in front, and in the dining room some old-fashioned “Continental cuisine,” as they used to call a restaurant that served both Italian and French dishes.  Of course any place that brings you an ice-cold relish tray to start is going to be someplace I love, but the food can really be quite good if you like the classics.  I’ve had very good luck just ordering that night’s special.  Gene’s is a timeless example of a neighborhood restaurant that ticks along, seemingly unchanged, year after year, sustained by loyal regular customers.  And it’s encouraging to note they aren’t all as old as the place — they appear to be generating a new crop of regulars.  The bar scene can be crowded, but always convivial, with two big pluses in its favor; a pro barman and no music add up to a real oasis.  Red jackets on the waiters, green linoleum on the floor,  and white tablecloths.  Yes, it is a wee bit reminiscent of a certain boot shaped nation’s flag.

Chelsea Place in San Francisco

This is the front door of Chelsea Place, 641 Bush Street, on the corner of an alley of the same name between Powell and Stockton in Nob Hill, San Francisco.  It’s a delightfully crummy dive which keeps the venerable tradition of the “clip joint’ alive in decrepit splendour.  Red indoor/outdoor carpeting, red paint, red brick — you won’t find this kind of hideous “Gay ’90s” brothel gone to seed decor anywhere like you find in San Francisco, bless her.  The ambiance is enhanced by the teenage B-girls who work the bar.  This dump was a rare find on our last trip west, made all the sweeter as we stumbled upon it after a dinner with the family, at point in the evening when we sorely needed a restorative.  At the bar it was all regulars who couldn’t care less about us invading their inner sanctum, and why should anyone begrudge a traveler with a thirst?  In other words, a neighborhood bar sans hipsters.  There are still a few out there, so enjoy them while ye may.  I like the way the brick turned out in this one, and the chair is pretty good too.

Neary’s

Aaaah, Neary’s.  What can you say about the best bar on the East side?  Doing business in Sutton Place, at 358 East 57th Street, for more than forty years, when you walk in the door you feel like it could still be 1967.  Our arrival lowers the median age by twenty years, and we are not young by any stretch of the imagination.  If this place closes I’m moving to Palm Springs with whatever is left of the regulars.  But until that dreadful day we’ll be ordering the prime rib here for many years to come.  Can’t quit now — Jimmy has recently started actually recognizing us, instead of merely pretending.

El Producto

Okay, this one is done.  Now you can compare and contrast with the early stage posted below.  It was a fun painting to do, and I’m happy with the results, particularly the balance between the tight and the loose bits.    Thanks, Paul, for revealing the many treasures of Binghamton, and especially the Clinton Hotel bar.  When the Baroness and I drive upstate this summer we might stop there for a quick one – and we’ll certainly toast our tour guide.

The Green Door

If all this is about ye olde bar rooms in New York City, and it is, you knew this was coming.  This sketch in oil is from the Ear Inn, as fine example of an untouched neighborhood joint as any you’ll find.  Considering what is happening to what has been for decades a sparcely populated backwater of lower Manhattan, that is a small miracle.  Being so far off the beaten path has helped preserve the Ear Inn’s regulars-only character, but you can’t help but wonder how it might change with Soho creeping ever westward, and all the new office space opening up.   But for now it’s still as it ever was, and always worth a stop.  This picture is of the flipped up hatch at the end of the bar, and the random looking collage formed from an old cardboard drink coaster, a drawing of a crayon labeled “The Ear”, an enameled metal “In” sign, and a price list in a plastic sleeve hanging from a rubber band.  Our old friends Peto and Harnett would be pleased with the composition.

Clinton Hotel bar

Remember this one from such posts as that one below?  Now it’s on its way to being a full fledged painting.  This is the early stage.  Roughly, everything is in the right place and I’ll start fussing with textures and details in various areas until I can stand to look at it without seeing twelve things I want to change.  Then I suppose it will be done, and I’ll post a pic of the finish product for comparison.

Dublin House

This one’s almost done.  Nowadays there are so many identical “P.J. O’Somebody’s Authentic Generic Shebeen”, with the same canned decor, that I suspect there has to be a place that sells an Irish-Pub-In-A-Box kit.  Even in out here in Sunny-Woodside (or Woody-Sunside, if you prefer) – a bona fide Irish neighborhood for decades – most of the bars look like they were all extruded from a nozzle labeled “Irish-Bar-O-Matic.”  You won’t get that feeling at Dublin House, 225 West 79th Street near Broadway, which has been the real deal since the 1920s.  We seldom make it to the West side, but a stop here is more than worth the schlep.  The space is a little narrow in the front and they have these tiny two seat booths, part of a unique look that reminds you of a time when everything was the product of an individual carpenter; nothing in here is out of a catalog.  Even if you’ve never been inside, chances are you know this place from the sign.  It may be the best sign on an Irish bar in the city – look here for a very nice 3D image.  I’m happy with the way this painting is turning out.  The color of the floor might be a little over the top, but it fits with my memory of the general warmth you feel on entering the place.  One part I’m enjoying is the very dark green of the front of the bar, which I’m afraid is reading as black in the photo.  Oh well, if you could see everything in the photo there wouldn’t be much point in painting the picture.

Cash Register Update

Interesting article in the Times today about cash registers and the last guy on the Bowery selling new models and repairing old ones.  They mention in passing that bars still want an old looking cash register to add a little authentic ambience.  Above is a quick sketch of two kinds of cashbox, a kind of ‘Eighties electronic register with a LCD display that apparently doesn’t work anymore, and the old standby of yore, an El Producto cigar box.  Chalk one up for you Luddites; the cigar box still holds money.  The bar is the Clinton Hotel in Binghamton.  Stay tuned to see what this will look like as a real painting.

Nostalgia as a constant condition

Just to mix things up, I’ll post two in one week.  Why not?  I’ve been meaning to mention the book I’m reading, New Art City by Jed Perl, as it has a way of fizzing up my brain with a bunch of random thoughts that might be lost if I don’t start writing them down.  I’m reading a section about collage as it relates to nostalgia and how a synthesis of both these may have influenced apparently very different styles of painting.  This just after watching Tony Bourdain’s No Reservations episode about vanishing Manhattan.  It’s a big subject, the most trite thing you can say about it is this city has been in a perpetual state of nostalgia since the days of Pieter Stuyvesant.  This never changes.  It is the universal experience;  you get off a bus from the hinterlands and shake the cornstalks out of your clothes, or you finally move out of your parents’ semi-detached in Canarsie, either way, at the moment you are young and free and starting to live in New York City someone will tell you in no uncertain terms that you missed the real fun by about ten years.  It was just as true in 1915 as it is today.  That said, we are shedding the good stuff at a rate unparalleled since the 1960s, to the point where, as Nick Tosches complains in the Bourdain program, New York exists primarily in our failing memories.   The show itself was a very short catalog of the best of the oldest, all places the Baroness and I have on our list of essentials.  When Tony visited a certain ancient, old-fashioned French institution, however, it started getting a little too close for comfort.  There is nothing like this place for atmosphere, but I had to laugh when Tony insisted the food was good.  Maybe Tone’s tastebuds are blown out from livin’ la vida bad-boy, but nobody goes there for the food, no matter what they tell you.  You go because it’s the last of the Mohicans.  In other words, nostalgia for the place even before it goes under.   The segment made me fear for the health of Monsieur Robert, the owner, and by extension, the restaurant itself.  A few years ago Paul Lukas had a feature in the Times about the vivacious Dames of Beef visiting this same sweet old doll of a restaurant.  The resulting publicity forced a big increase in reservations that caused a lot of strain on the restaurant, and especially on Monsieur Robert, who runs a tight ship, but prefers a relaxed, unchallenging cruise to gale-force business.  Which is why I’m not going to add to the feeding frenzy by typing the name here.  To see this TV show in constant re-runs really worries me.

Anyway, back to book I’m reading.  There is, of course, no single book to read on a subject as giant as art in New York in the middle of the Twentieth Century, and every book about any scene (large or small) will leave out great chunks that someone will find crucial, but there are some nice connections here.  For instance, he starts talking about collage and nostalgia, you know what’s coming and here it is, lovely, sensitive section on Joseph Cornell; but getting from Cornell to Ellsworth Kelly is an unexpected and interesting  journey.  It made me think about how interested I am with the found collages stuck to the walls of all these old bars.  The thing-ness of these random bits of paper, photos, football pools, placed by human hands but in the most automatic, chancy way relates strongly, I think, to Perl’s discussion of dada and collage.  Applying chance to composition with the rigor of Arp can lead to beautifully serendipitous results.  (Serendipitous if you believe he never cheats when he’s making a collage of bits of torn paper dropped from a height onto another blank sheet of paper.  Ah, well, it wouldn’t be cheating to sort of nudge a scrap of paper when you stick it down.)  I’ve always be a fan of your Nineteenth Century trompe l’oeil still life artists, your Harnett, your Peto, especially the postcard rack on the door ones.  Imagine what you get with that head-on, flat aspect, but you had your local bartenders picking the subjects and arranging them!  That might be where I’m headed…