“YOU’RE HIRED”

By Emily Rubin

Excerpt from: All THE RESTAURANTS IN NEW YORK

Great Jones Café 

54 Great Jones Street

(1983-2018)

I was the first waitress of the Great Jones Cafe, or the Jones, as it is still affectionately known.  It was June of 1983.  My friends Phil Hartman and Rich Kresberg were the new owners, and with all the preparation for the opening–construction, decorating, figuring out the menu, hiring the chef, bartender, and dishwasher, they had not hired the wait staff.  I had been hanging around helping with the setting up.

            “How about me?” I asked. 

            “You’re hired,” Rich and Phil said without hesitation.

We toasted my new job with Cajun Martinis—vodka infused with jalapeno peppers. Hot, smooth, peppery, fiery.  We were experimenting with various recipes of the signature cocktail. With only 11 tables they figured one waitress could handle the floor.  That was fine for the first couple of weeks, but then the word got out: The Great Jones is the spot—a little bit of New Orleans in New York.  Jambalaya, Étouffée, Oyster Po-Boys! Good food and a jukebox filled with Dr. John, the Neville Brothers, and the Meters. It got very busy, very quickly.

            Soon more wait staff came on board and the Jones family grew.  We ate, drank, and danced (often on the tables) with patrons, many of whom hung out until the wee hours.  It was one of the best restaurant gigs I ever had.  At the end of a shift I was tired on my feet, but the pockets of my apron filled with tips.  

–Emily Rubin

Postscript

The kids that might have resulted following a night of fun in the early days of the Great Jones Café would be old enough to have kids of their own by now, but word is they are still dancing on the tables.

Excerpt courtesy of  John Donohue
https://alltherestaurants.com/pages/all-the-restaurants-in-new-york

FREE ELVIS!

By Eleanor Gaver, Sam Messer, Jo Messer

FREE ELVIS! was my only thought when I entered the bar the night of October 28, 2021. The tables were full but the vibe wasn’t the same. This was no Great Jones. Gone were the Cajun shots, the dancing naked on the bar and sex in the bathrooms. All of these diners were well dressed and actually using their napkins.

No wonder Elvis looked forlorn in the window. An assortment of candles and glasses surrounded him, but it was not a shrine more of a dumping ground. Sam moved everything to one side and held open the door so I could assist Elvis in his escape. Embracing him, I marched down Great Jones street with Alex, Jo’s boyfriend. At the corner we stopped and looked back. Jo and Sam were talking to someone. Alex lit a cigarette and sucked on it. What were they doing?

Later, Sam told us the manager stopped him and Sam explained the Elvis was ours and we had put it in the window in 1985. When the manager heard the story he said, “If you had told me I would have given you Elvis.” He even offered Sam and Jo a drink. To make absolutely sure all was well, Jo gave the manager $100 for Elvis which he accepted.

An hour later, Sam got a text from the Owner saying, “Return Elvis immediately or I’ll call the police.” “How did he get your phone number?” “I gave the manager my name and number, “Sam admitted. We laughed. Only Sam would “filch” something and then volunteer his contact info.

 The Owner kept calling every ten minutes and we did what every Great Jones regular would do when menaced, we ignored it. His threat was baseless. It was our Elvis plus Jo had paid the manager. Case closed. Not quite.

A couple of days later, a friend texted us a photo from Instagram and asked “Is this you guys?”  It was a photo of Sam and I from my IG account of our block party and the Owner, ignorant of his homage to Baldessari, put red circles over our faces, wrote THIEVES at the bottom and posted it on his IG account. “They think they’ve pulled off some sort of clever caper. We caught one of the accomplices red handed while the other made off with the sculpture…and if these crooks don’t return …the Elvis that they have stolen in the next 24 hours we’ll let you know exactly who they are and where to find them.”

Fuck him. Bring it. The owner D.M.ed  his post to Jo and she said, “His followers will shit on your stoop.” How quickly the Owner’s lying made his followers turn ugly made us want to return Elvis. Ira Glass from This American Life heard about our Elvis saga and sent a producer to record the return.     

Two weeks later, three cops came to our door. “We’re the warrant squad and we have a warrant for your arrest.” Sam explained we had returned the Elvis and they advised us to go to the precinct and tell Detective McVeigh, who was in charge of the case. We sat in the precinct lobby waiting and when Detective McVeigh came down he said, “You’re under arrest.”  Sam called his attorney and stepped closer to the door to hear better. McVeigh grabbed Sam’s arm and I said, “Let go of him. He had nothing to do with it. I did it.”  McVeigh said,” You just admitted guilt and you’re both under arrest for a felony.”  “Felony?”  McVeigh nodded. “The Owner said the Elvis is worth $20,000.”

            McVeigh fingerprinted us both, put Sam in a cell and handcuffed me to the leg of the table in the interrogation room. Several hours went by. Jo brought a sandwich for Sam and a salad for me, so far the only one I’ve eaten handcuffed.

            We hired a lawyer who asked what the Elvis was worth. Sam assured him the Elvis was neither art nor sculpture like the Owner believed but a kitsch plaster bust which can be purchased on EBay today for around $200. For this $200 felony we appeared in court twice and paid our lawyer $5,000.

But the case wasn’t over. If the state kept prosecuting it would get more expensive. Sam asked Phil Hartman, one of the original owners of the Great Jones, to write a letter on our behalf. Luckily, the Assistant District Attorney was a fan of Two Boots Pizza, which Phil also owns, and he called Phil. Phil saved the day by assuring him the Elvis was ours and it was on loan to the Great Jones. The ADA gave us the benefit of the doubt and said our case would be dismissed in six months as long as we didn’t commit any crimes before then. Nine months after freeing Elvis, on July 12, 2022 we were no longer felons.

            The Great Jones was a special place for all of us, a place before cell phones where people went because they knew something extraordinary could happen.

In his IG post, the Owner accused us of disrespecting the history of the Great Jones, but the Owner doesn’t understand its history. But we can teach him. Let’s FREE ELVIS AGAIN!

MEMORIES OF THE GREAT JONES

By Mark Kirby

Here we are 40 years later. I never thought about making it this far and never thought I would still be in the Great Jones family of friends, ex-lovers and play cousins.* That’s part of the magic of the place  and one Phil Hartman.

In some ways the dishwashing job at the Jones remains the best job I ever had. My impressions of this job are colored by what came before. I had quit teaching and wound up with a horrible job as a prep and line cook at a proto yuppie bar, McNeil’s, in Hoboken NJ It was so bad that on Saturday night after we closed I would take the PATH train and head over to the Jones for next to last call just for some sanity and go back home.

One fateful day I noticed a friend and band mate Martha Atwell was back in the Jones tiny kitchen washing dishes and making salads. I asked how much she was making – $5.50 plus tips. That was what I was making back in hell’s kitchen.  And if a small woman could do the job I knew I could. What was the job? Washing dishes and making salads. Sometimes I would have to restock cases of beer, or grab another container of fry cut potatoes or lettuce, shredded cabbage and carrots, which I prepped in the basement prep area. All this “work” was accompanied by an 8-track player that only had two tapes one could play: Led Zeppelin IV and Devo’s “Are We Not Men?” It also afforded the time to smoke pot in the walk-in which put me in the perfect zone for this relaxing, Zen-like job. Sadly, I often thought how I was doing this job and making more than I did as a Head Start teacher tasked with molding the lives of four-year-olds. Yikes.

It was so much fun, heaven actually. The tips from the bartenders and waitresses made the money really good for the time. The pay was cash.  And free food! And my friends were coming around. I had spare ribs day after day with French fries, and was surprised that I was getting fat. So I switched to the hand made burgers. And fries. Or the Jambalaya. My greatest contribution to the restaurant, one that became a fixture at both the Great Jones and later Two Boots restaurant, was my salad. When I first got there, the carrots and cabbage were mere sprinklings, garnishes. I said “We’re charging $3.50 for a salad? Can’t be cheap with the carrots and red cabbage” and I put much more on the salad and to rave reviews.

I grew to love Rolling Rock beer and kept it flowing in the kitchen as I gazed out at the folks at the bar. This was the beginning of the Yuppie phenomenon and Bruce Willis on “Moonlighting” was a role model to these young dudes: tie up to the top button even late at night on a Friday, and hair rebelliously spiked up in the middle of a receding hairline. The show would be on the TV above the bar with Elvis’s head looking out at these guys watching in rapt attention or hitting on punk rock babes with lines like “I’m a hell raiser in the office but I’m making the company and myself buttloads of money so what are they gonna say” or my favorite “You see” gesturing to the suit and tie, which he now loosened “I’m not really like this. I bought a guitar with my bonus. I’m really into punk.” Those smooth raps didn’t seem to work, though.   

There were some stresses and stressful moments like Saturday and Sunday brunch where I started the day sweeping up broken crack vials that covered the sidewalk like a glistening dusting of fresh snow and crunched under every step. I filled up a trash container with this debris? To this day I wonder: did every crack head in the city come down here? How could there be so many crunchy glass vials? Then came the frenzied preparation and then brunch which required busting ass on dinner and brunch pots while doing the usual duty of cleaning plates, bowls and silverware. The other main source of was every time Rich came around everyone got nervous, except the chef Karen, who I dubbed the Evil Chef, to everyone’s delight, including Karen (as long as I didn’t overdo it). She “knew” Rich very well, according to the staff and was also the chef and the creator of the Peanut Butter Pie a/k/a Elvis Cum Pie. She was “close friends” with Jack Daniels and was known to torment some other dishwashers and line cooks, but I knew when to keep quiet, no jokes, and don’t say anything when a dozen burnt pots came to me at once, slamming and crashing on the floor around me.

There were the celebrities, too. When I first started, I was told to watch out for homeless people coming in to beg and that there was no take out food: except for Jean-Michel Basquiat. This old proper white butler would wheel across the street a buffet cart with silver containers and white linen to get his ribs, gumbo, and Karen’s peanut butter pie and go back across the street to where the artist lived. He, Mary Boone and some other gallery types showed up for dinner on occasion. After all the Jones was the hip place to be. Jonathan Demme came there and ended up marrying a Jones waitress. Soon Basquiat would come by himself to get the food. He then came by just to get change and talk endlessly on the bar’s pay phone while smoking cigarettes down to the stinking filter and lighting another one off that. Eventually he was not allowed to use the phone or ask patrons for change of a dollar or just change. Soon he stopped coming by altogether. Then he died.

Most celebrities just blended in, trying to be cool. But not all. One night I looked out the kitchen window and saw a white limo parked out front. A rare sight. Then my name was called, “Kirby!” I looked out at the room and saw two derelicts in oversized, ill-fitting coats and filthy, baggy pants. I looked closer and saw Ghostbusters! It was Dan Aykroyd; his ‘hello’ gave it away. The bum with the slack jaw staring at the jukebox with a beer – not from the Jones – tilting and about to spill, was Bill Murray! They moved around the room having fun. A waitress was crazy for Bill Murray so he pulled her, giggling and red-faced into his lap, while he ordered. Aykroyd went into the bathroom for a looong time. He came out and immediately came into the kitchen, right up to me as I worked and started coke-babbling to me.

“Hello, my name is Danny Boy, what’s yours?”     “Kirby.”     “Hi Kirby, you like your job?”     “Yeah, it’s alright.”     “Oh well, me a Billy boy decided to come downtown to have a good time and blahblahblahblahblah yada yada yada.” I thinking wow, I’m getting coke babbled by a Blues Brother and Ghostbuster.

They danced around the bar acting goofy to everyone’s delight. Later I was outside rinsing off the kitchen mats right near the white limo. Two young NYU girls were outside with Murray and Aykroyd. I could tell they went there because they both had ‘Flash dance’ hair cuts and matching NYU sweatshirts with the collars cut off, barely hanging on off the shoulders. Murray said “You girls want to come party with us. We got the limo right here.”

The girls said, “No, no, thanks. We have a test tomorrow.” I was appalled. I went to NYU and wish I had said, “He guys, excuse me, let me talk to them for a minute. Girls, I went to NYU for a year. It sucks. Fuck that test. Party with the Ghostbusters. You’ll remember this for the rest of your lives.” But I minded my own business. I wish I had jumped in the limo my damn self.

Phil would have understood. Phil and I had an instant understanding and connection. He got me and vice versa. He was the kind of boss I hadn’t had but once before, one who let you be you, inspired you to do so, and you felt a part of something, not just a drone working a gig.

The bartender Keith, who along with another bartender, Andy, I knew from Oberlin College. One night Keith said I should bartend. He pulled out a wad of money. “Kirby, this was a kind of average to slow Sunday night, right? I worked from nine o’clock until now almost 2 A.M.. I made $280.” Wow. My rent at the time was $300. But no one was leaving the Jones bartending jobs so I had to wait until Two Boots opened.

I kept going as a customer when Warren Lee was working Sunday and Mondays. Those were legendary debacles of drinking and soul music until dawn and beyond. But he was fired and the Jones always closed the bar early. But I still showed up. It was our community center, a place where I could also count on seeing a familiar face. And have awesome food and delicious beverages. BTW there was no such thing as Avocado Toast on the menu.

    * A play cousin is what you would call that neighbor or family friend that is always coming around the house, especially at meal time.