Good god almighty, I have found home. It's the summer of 1949, the war is long over and it's time to
loosen up, booze it up and celebrate in New York's consummate gentleman's saloon, Toots Shor's. Here at 51 West 51st Street, our big, boisterous host slaps me on the back and offers his favorite slogan: "Any crum-bum what can't get plastered by midnight just ain't tryin'."
As a journalist for one of the NYC dailies—sans the internet and before the ubiquity of television—my byline offers a renown in the city that equates celebrity. And since I work just down the street, like most of my comrades, I slip out before deadline for a martini or two, just to help the words flow, enjoying a smoke or two at the round bar in the center of the joint. After meeting deadline, it's back to Toots for the evening round.
Shor is entertaining his best friend Jackie Gleason—who spends the day here imbibing, goes
home and takes a nap, then returns for the night shift—along with the typical mix of celebrities and athletes: Bob Hope, Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, Ernest Hemingway, Mickey Mantle... and Frank Costello, head of the New York mob, tipping his glass to Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. Hey, there's President Truman enjoying a scotch (visitors over the years also include Presidents Nixon, Johnson and Eisenhower). Although we don't talk about it, wives and gal pals are not so welcome here at Toots. This is a man's world, though it's nice to see my girl Judy Garland sharing swill with Marilyn Monroe.
Toots Shor's Restaurant opened in 1940, and was an instant smash success, ruling for two decades as the home-away-from-home lounge for many of the nation's most famous lushes and mirroring the excitement that was New York during the era.
You could also eat here, in the vast back room. On the menu, there's such fancy fare as sauteed frog legs ($4.95), English sole ($4.10), calf's liver ($4.50), cornish game hen ($3.95), Maine lobster ($7.25), yankee pot roast ($3.95) and duckling ($4.75). But really, why bother, with such a generous pour at the bar?
Sadly, our heyday at Toots, like all good things, won't last forever. In 1959, Shor sold the lease for his 51st Street restaurant for $1.5 million to a real estate developer. The following year, he opened at a new location at 33 West 52nd Street, which never gained the following of the original, as social moors changed (devolved?). Meanwhile, celebrity culture became untouchable, athletes starting making obscene amounts of money for hitting a ball and the two-martini lunch was suddenly frowned upon.
Oh, how very sad. And we say that modern culture is more advanced? Life 60 years ago sounds like it was much more focused on living in the moment. Looser. More fun. Ribald. Today, one can't even light a cigarette in the middle of Times Square. Progress? Hardly.
In 1971, as New York began its own wicked decline, the doors of Toots' 52nd Street restaurant were padlocked for nonpayment of taxes totaling
$269,516. Feds offered him a free ride if he would squeal on some of his more infamous clientele. But the loyal Shor refused, and shuttered his struggling eatery. While he had lived for many years in a 12-room brownstone at 480 Park Avenue with his wife, Baby, and their three children, he died at age 73 in poverty at the Drake Hotel.
Fortunately, Toots Shor lives on, via a
brilliant documentary helmed by his granddaughter, which features dozens of original interviews, archival footage and oral history, weaving in the social, cultural and political forces that helped to build his New York empire. I watched the doc over the weekend and was ashamed that I had never heard of Toots. But now, after devouring some four dozen web sites about the man and his regime and studying every picture on the web, I feel like we're old friends. I'll drink to that.
The former site of the original Toots Shor's Restaurant today, marked with a plaque.
The crowd gathers below, along the Hoboken waterfront.
While Sunday was anything but holiday-friendly, with rain blanketing New York all live-long day, the clouds parted Monday for the 4th of July, allowing Ayhan and me to enjoy a cookout in Brooklyn Heights in friends Bo and Suzanne's backyard.
It was four months ago today that our bedroom renovation was shown on HGTV's Dear Genevieve, and friends and acquaintances are still asking about it. You'll be pleased to know that yes, we are thrilled with the results and no, we didn't change a thing she did, other than adding an area rug to the room. I just found a four-minute compacted vignette of the show on Gen's webbie. See it here!
Southern Cali '80s fave The Bangles are returning with their first album of new material in eight years, Sweetheart of the Sun, Sept. 13. Vocalist Susanna Hoffs, guitarist Vicki Peterson and drummer Debbi Peterson (fourth Bangle Michael Steele has departed) offer a collective theme on the 12 new tracks of "paradise lost" in their home state.
Good god almighty, I have found home. It's the summer of 1949, the war is long over and it's time to 
loosen up, booze it up and celebrate in New York's consummate gentleman's saloon, Toots Shor's. Here at 51 West 51st Street, our big, boisterous host slaps me on the back and offers his favorite slogan: "Any crum-bum what can't get plastered by midnight just ain't tryin'."
As a journalist for one of the NYC dailies—sans the internet and before the ubiquity of television—my byline offers a renown in the city that equates celebrity. And since I work just down the street, like most of my comrades, I slip out before deadline for a martini or two, just to help the words flow, enjoying a smoke or two at the round bar in the center of the joint. After meeting deadline, it's back to Toots for the evening round.
Shor is entertaining his best friend Jackie Gleason—who spends the day here imbibing, goes 
home and takes a nap, then returns for the night shift—along with the typical mix of celebrities and athletes: Bob Hope, Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, Ernest Hemingway, Mickey Mantle... and Frank Costello, head of the New York mob, tipping his glass to Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. Hey, there's President Truman enjoying a scotch (visitors over the years also include Presidents Nixon, Johnson and Eisenhower). Although we don't talk about it, wives and gal pals are not so welcome here at Toots. This is a man's world, though it's nice to see my girl Judy Garland sharing swill with Marilyn Monroe.
Toots Shor's Restaurant opened in 1940, and was an instant smash success, ruling for two decades as the home-away-from-home lounge for many of the nation's most famous lushes and mirroring the excitement that was New York during the era.
You could also eat here, in the vast back room. On the menu, there's such fancy fare as sauteed frog legs ($4.95), English sole ($4.10), calf's liver ($4.50), cornish game hen ($3.95), Maine lobster ($7.25), yankee pot roast ($3.95) and duckling ($4.75). But really, why bother, with such a generous pour at the bar?
Oh, how very sad. And we say that modern culture is more advanced? Life 60 years ago sounds like it was much more focused on living in the moment. Looser. More fun. Ribald. Today, one can't even light a cigarette in the middle of Times Square. Progress? Hardly.
$269,516. Feds offered him a free ride if he would squeal on some of his more infamous clientele. But the loyal Shor refused, and shuttered his struggling eatery. While he had lived for many years in a 12-room brownstone at 480 Park Avenue with his wife, Baby, and their three children, he died at age 73 in poverty at the Drake Hotel.
The former site of the original Toots Shor's Restaurant today, marked with a plaque.
While it rained off and on all of Sunday, drenching our plans for a fun outdoor BBQ with nabe friends, the 
evening more than made up for the soggy pre-July 4 urban picnic. Ayhan and I joined Amy Cookie, her man Christian and son Michael at Craft, the ooh la la restaurant at 19th between Broadway and Park, created and owned by TV celeb chef and entrepreneur Tom Colicchio.
I mean, who the hell ever thought that English peas could be a delicacy?
Fabulously inappropriate 4th of July images from a simpler time!
How often does one actually agree when they're told they resemble a public figure? Through the years, I've been told I look like John Larroquette, Vince Gill, Russell Crowe (for about a minute) and most recently, actor William Petersen. And I get the latter. The most frightening thing is that he is 10 years older than I. Perhaps it's time to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge and be done with it.
