SUPERMAN AND HIS FRIENDS WALK INTO A BAR...
By Sharon Garbe
Christopher Reeve and his friends showed up one night and just like everyone else, they had to wait 45 minutes for a table. Welcome to the Great Jones Cafe in the 1980s! Wasn’t it crazy that people would wait up to two hours to eat at Great Jones? Sure, sure, entrees like gumbo, blackened fish, popcorn shrimp, dirty rice, jambalaya, smothered chicken, etc. were excellent, but honestly, we had the best burgers, fries, salad, soups, chili, wings, and cornbread. And for a while, chicken livers. You could eat well for under $10. The ingredients were high quality, the menu was curated with care, and the dishes were tinkered with until they were perfect and importantly, reproducible. Rich Kresberg, one of the original owners, stressed again and again that we had to aim for consistency. He would call in the evening to check in if he couldn’t stop by, and if someone new was working, he would check that the salads had the right ratio of shredded carrots and red cabbage. He cared, which made everyone else care. Same with Phil Hartman, the other original owner. He would pop in to chat and gauge the mood and see if anyone needed a drink on the house. Staff who weren’t working were in and out every night. Former staff came back. I was there for 7 years, 6 or so as a part-time manager. It was terrific training. I got my first job working in website content management because the guy who hired me was impressed that I’d managed the Great Jones.
I liked managing the Great Jones. I didn’t have to be there until 11am. Once I was there, I spent the morning sipping coffee and checking things, counting money and empty bottles, putting together the various orders to place, figuring out staff schedules, paying bills. If Karen Haglof was cooking in the kitchen she would usually take a break around then and come out to the bar area, stirring cornbread batter, or doing some other multitasking, to watch TV and dazzle me and the prep people with her Jeopardy! prowess.
One of my favorite tasks during the day was shopping. I would take short trips in the neighborhood to places like Shapiro’s Hardware, or the grocery store on Mercer and 3rd – was that called Sloan’s? I loved going to David Davis to buy the big, colorful chalk we used on the specials board. If the early shift waitress that day didn’t want to write up the specials board, I would gladly do it, adding chevrons, polka dots, paisleys, drop-shadows to liven it up. I also went over to the Bowery to shop at Paragon or Balter for things that couldn’t wait for a bigger order, and I’d deposit the money from the night before at the bank on the corner of Broadway and Great Jones. Or was it Bond St.? Anyway, one time after making the deposit I was at the ATM inside and a fellow behind me said, “Excuse me, Miss. You have something red and sticky on the back of your jacket.” I just rolled my eyes and said, “Oh well, nothing I can do about it now,” and went on with my withdrawal. I figured I’d backed into the stack of ketchup bottles that I’d been marrying before I left (that’s when you empty the ketchup from a mostly empty bottle into another bottle). I found out later I was the victim of a popular ruse at the time: A miscreant would squirt ketchup on you, alert you to the problem, then wait for you to freak out and take your jacket off so they could steal your money.
Speaking of scoundrels, we had a very Bowery-specific theft once. The culprit(s) made off with the petty cash, Bud quarts and blackberry brandy. Remembering that reminds me of the safe. It was a metal cylinder in the floor behind the bar. The bartender from the night before would have put all the money in there, stuffed in a purple cotton Crown Royal bag. I would collect the money, checks and orders slips, then down to the basement office I’d go, to count and tally things while listening to the prep guys like wonderful Bill Judkins (who later became a manager) and gals (although I only remember there being one gal, Ingrid?) washing, chopping, talking, music playing on the radio. Rich taught me how to count money quickly and neatly. I had to roll coins, too. I found counting money meditative, and reconciling order slips with the evening’s take was an enjoyable puzzle to solve. But I also had to be prepared to jump into action for things like fixing the ice machine or finding a repairman for the walk-in refrigerator.
Besides rounds of Jeopardy! in the morning, there were deliveries. Crates of beautiful produce, boxes of spices, jars of chopped garlic, dry goods, paper goods, fish – so much fish and shrimp that had to be put away with a drop-everything urgency. Cakes and pies arrived to augment Karen’s bread pudding and lemon chess pie, and then the butcher would arrive. I remember a surreal scene one morning after we’d had a delivery by two cute guys we nicknamed “The Meat Men.” I heard yelling and looked out the window and saw them brawling in the street, their bloody aprons making the situation look more desperate than it probably was. I ran out the door, yelling “Meat Men, Meat Men, stop fighting!” Mark Hitzges was the chef that day. I got teased with that line for a long time.
I was ambitious about decorating for holidays. Once, I bought a crate of Spanish moss in the flower district and strung it up all over the place with beads and streamers for Mardi Gras. That wasn’t such a great idea because it kept falling into food and we worried there could be mites in it. In winter I bought garlands of pine at the Union Square Farmers’ Market to hang along with lights. And we’d turn the column supports into red-striped candy canes.
One winter night the film director, Wim Wenders, was hanging around late. He was there with Phil (he executive produced Phil’s film, No Picnic). Phil had to leave for a bit and asked me to keep Wim company until he got back. I sat down and had a beer with him. He was tapping the label on his bottle of Foster’s Ale, muttering ‘kangaroo’ over and over. I asked if he was going to make a movie about kangaroos. “No,” he answered. “I will make a movie with kangaroos.” Phil told me Wim helped him close up for the night, which involved hanging the heavy metal gate over the window.
I guess I’ve wandered back into celebrity territory. Anyone who worked at Great Jones during the Jean-Michel Basquiat years has a story or two. He was very sweet, and it was painful to see him so wrecked some days. One weekend during brunch when it was quiet, he wandered over to the specials board and began artfully erasing words. Ugh! I had to be the grown-up. I told him that it was nice, but people needed to be able to read the menu so they could order stuff and we could make a living. He felt bad, then I felt bad.
We had a couple of celebrity colleagues. One of them was the photographer, Nan Goldin. She was bartending the night when a group of Wall Street clods sitting at the two tables by the window got out of control after drinking too much schnapps – yes, schnapps!—and were cut off. One of them picked up the potted rubber plant in the corner and threw it toward the bar in protest.
Besides managing during the day, I picked up waitressing and hostessing shifts or filled in when people didn’t show up. I was there for the infamous evening when Gene, a regular, went berserk over some drug money he felt he was owed by another patron. Suddenly, voices were raised, then Gene started smashing bottles and menacing everyone with a jagged bottle. Sweet Edgar Green was bartending. He kept very calm and offered to give Gene money from the till to settle the debt, but Gene was in a drug-fueled frenzy and couldn’t be reasoned with. I don’t remember if people – staff and customers— were herded into the kitchen or escaped there. Instead of going with the crowd, clever me, I ducked into the bathroom for safety. But then I realized the flaw in my plan. What if Gene needed to pee?! There was a flimsy hook and eye between me and a madman who might need to relieve himself. Being behind a closed door I can’t tell you how the situation was resolved. I only know that Gene didn’t have to pee and he was 86’d.
Being 86’d reminds me of another story. My last weird story. I was working one night and a friendly customer pulled me over and whispered that the guy at the next table was doing something he shouldn’t be. I looked over and there was George, a regular, watching TV with his pants undone, jerking off. Guess he forgot where he was. He was 86’d, too. The best part of the story is how cool the customer and her date were about it. They just went back to eating their meal. They’d probably waited for that table. We gave them a round of drinks on the house.