Image of the Day

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Proprietor and Patron in a Montana Bar by photographer Charles E. Steinheimer

(via The New York Times Book Review)

Last Call

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Woody Allen outside Elaine's.

Wow, it's a black-and-white kinda week on Pacific Standard, huh? ...But the trend continues because tonight is curtains for Elaine's, the restaurant on New York's Upper East Side where for 48 years everyone who was anyone came.

Liza Minnelli, Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger at Elaine's, 1978.
Photo by Ron Galella.

Gay and Nan Talese at Elaine's.

Photo by Jessica Burstein.

Frank Sinatra and Elaine ... at Elaine's.

Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi and Lorne Michaels
in the kitchen at Elaine's, 1975.
Photo by Jonathan Becker.

Sean Penn and Madonna at Elaine's, 1984.
(Seeing these two together makes me feel old.)
Photo by Ron Galella.

George Plimpton, Jared Paul Stern and Cameron Richardson at Elaine's, 1999.

Photo by Larry Fink.

Interior at Elaine's.
Photo by Olivier Zahm.

Olivier Zahm.

We were not among that crowd, but it's one of those places - like the Oyster Bar, or Bemelmans, or The Central - that just feels good to have around. I'm sad to see it go.

Elaine Kaufman, who died on Dec. 3 of last year at age 81,
tossing a garbage can lid at Ron Galella.

Tom Carney, bartender at Elaine's.

Elaine's.

Find Elaine Kaufman's NY Times obit and an accompanying slide show here.

Image of the Day

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Fried Chicken "Funky DJ" (Stone, 1976)

I'm playing 45s tonight at Captain Blacks for the latest installment of Chicken & Waffles. Stop on by!

(flyer artwork by Derek Erdman)

Raising the Bar

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From a slideshow of historic Seattle bars at the Seattle P-I:

The Rainbow Tavern, 1980

Bartender Arlene Smith at the 5 Point, 1980

Inside the DJ booth at Shelly's Leg, a gay bar under the Alaskan Way viaduct, 1976.

Visit seattlepi.com for many more.

Family Slideshow Part 1

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Two weekends ago after Emily finished school for the quarter, we treated ourselves with a quick getaway to Whidbey Island.

It was our first weekend off since Emily's birthday in March and we started it right by swimming through some local hot spots on the way up.

Oyster shooters at the Conway Pub. Generally I shy away from food with names like poppers, shooters, or extreme poppers – but I will never be mad at a local oyster, artfully prepared in a shot glass.

More oysters in La Conner.

The La Conner Pub sits out over the Skagit River – you can watch fishermen come in and unload their haul across the way, and harbor seals follow the boats in looking for scraps.

When we got to Deception Pass we parked and walked across the bridge and down to the water.

This guy had the same idea.

Deception Pass is called Deception Pass because – well here, just read the sign:

I like the type.

I've been to Deception Pass hundreds of times but this time felt new. We've had a rough time of it this year with Emily in school and me working so much. I don't want to sit here and whine, but it's true – we haven't had a chance to do so many of the things we came back here to do. Still, I feel like things are looking up. Being up there was a breath of fresh air.

After that we went up to Toby's in Coupeville for some mussels and kind of stopped taking pictures, until we came back to the house and the sun was setting over the Olympics.

Some days are diamonds.

Checking the Traps

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In the Dining section of this morning's New York Times, Sam Sifton has a funny review of the Carroll Gardens restaurant Prime Meats.

You can see people standing on Court Street nightly, staring through the plate-glass windows at a dining room packed with brownstone bohemians, third novelists, people with Web sites, with good art at home. They look slightly pained, these visitors from afar wondering about the life choices they made that put them in Chelsea or Park Slope or Montclair, and not down here in Carroll Gardens, this little Italian village off New York Harbor where life is obviously perfect.
...
Have a Manhattan made by one of the whiz kids back behind the bar, some mustachioed chemist with tattoos and an understanding of bitters that rivals a rabbi’s knowledge of the Talmud, then some brilliant oysters, fresh and clean and cold, tasting only a few hours out of the waters of Cape Cod or the Gulf of Maine. Eat some roasted bone marrow with crunchy radishes, vibrant gremolata, caramel-like roasted garlic and toast; some malt-rich pretzels and fiery mustard; a spicy hunter’s sausage; a few scoops of snoutish pâté or thin-sliced smoked pork belly. Devour a steak or an excellent burger along with some salty, crisp fries the color of burnished copper. Drink some grüner with it all, or a few tankards of Sixpoint ale.
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The staff is exceptionally well trained and efficient, a crew of handsome men and women dressed as if ready to ride horses back home to Bushwick, where they trap beaver and make their own candles. And a meal in the restaurant proceeds with all the jollity and good manners of something scripted by Laura Ingalls Wilder and scored by the Grateful Dead. It is an extremely pleasant place.

I've only been to Prime Meats once – it opened after we left – but I can vouch for the quality. (I'm sure you care. I also think there are a number of restaurants in Seattle that do the same thing just as well or better, lest anyone start feeling jealous. It's not a competition...it's not a competition.) Read the rest of Sam Sifton's review of Prime Meats here.

And with that I believe it's time to hunt down some dinner.

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Side point: The gold type on the big mirror in the photo above was my original inspration for the gold foil-stamped type on the Kristofferson record (though it ended up being quite different).

Made Me Look

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Some photos from my recent quick trip to NY...

My brother's bulletin board

Laundromat in Park Slope

Crombie, taking meetings in the Shark Bar.

Cable-knit top tube pad

Blenheim Ginger Ale at Jones. I recommend ordering one of these after you eat your brunch.

Botched self-portrait with J. Ralph Phillips and Chad, at Union Pool

Jane B.

His & Hers

Log bench at Droog. Basically this is a big log with seatbacks attached to it. The thing is, some rich person will buy this and put it in their loft in Tribeca – and the juxtaposition would be cool – but for the rest of us, it's just an idea that we could emulate or be inspired by ourselves. That's one thing I really like about Droog, you get the feeling they don't care if people buy the stuff, they just want to think up cool ideas and try them out.

The "D" fell off my brother's coat but the FDNY was out of "D" patches, so they replaced it with an "O." The day I got there, Sky had a 2-alarm fire and smelled like smoke when he got home. The day after I left there was a 7-alarm in Chinatown. Pretty crazy.

Do I Sound Like A Musical Robot?

Neck Face Book

Image of the Day

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The ceiling downstairs at Von, NYC is covered with corks. Cool idea.

Welcome to the Johnson's

I found this coin in the alley by our house on the way to work yesterday.
Seems like a good excuse for a roadtrip.

You Have A Choice

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Sunny Bono's highly convincing screed against the pot will be shown along with other old PSAs, advertisements, trailers, educational films, science films, space films, and other shorts in Vermillion's Dinner & A Movie event this coming Sunday night. The dinner: Andre Hopper, chef at Black Bottle, is preparing a whole country-cured ham from Bob's Quality Meats in Columbia City, along with mixed greens tossed in a berry vinaigrette with wine poached pears and candied walnuts, roasted garlic soup, and braised winter greens from Full Circle Farm. God dammit that sounds delicious – and the whole thing is only $20 per person. Kind of makes you wonder if Vermillion is smoking the pot.

7pm Sunday night at Vermillion. Tempting. Very. Tempting.

Last Minute Notice:

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Sorry for the extremely late invitation – I am reminded why I stopped deejaying out regularly, as pulling records and promoting (or not, as in this case) is tough to juggle with a demanding day job – but if anyone feels like getting a drink and listening to some records tonight, I'll be down at Rob Roy for the next installment in the Quarterly Disorderly. This time out we're pleased to welcome guest selectors Sarah Honda and Max Billions (you know him as Matthew from the blog...don't be fooled by the rocks that he got). The music will be great and the company will be even greater – come on in out of the rain and take a load off.

6pm-11pm tonight at
ROB ROY
2332 Second Avenue at Battery, Seattle
robroyseattle.com

No cover charge, happy hour specials 'til 8pm

Image of the Day

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Tom Marioni Free Beer – an installation made from the detritus of his beer party salon as it was exhibited/hosted at SFMOMA in 1979, under the title The Act of Drinking Beer With Friends is the Highest Form of Art.

Watch a 2-minute video about it at SFMOMA.org.
More Tom Marioni here.

"The Lilliputian Canvasof the American Experience"

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Matchbooks from the collection of Bill Retskin, founder of the American Matchcover Collecting Club, in Asheville, NC. Retskin has over one million matchbooks in his collection, and one gigantic blunt slicing thumbnail. Photo Rebecca D'Angelo/NYT.

There's an article in the New York Times this morning about a purported resurgence of bars and restaurants offering matches to their patrons. (I only say purported because the Times has a way of highlighting trends that sound good, but sometimes do not pan out as real trends...but hey, when they sound good, I'm in.)

For whatever reason Emily and I have always been fanatical about getting matchbooks from bars and restaurants when they're available – rarely the case since smoking bans have dominoed across the country. For the record, I was opposed to the smoking ban in New York – I don't smoke, I just always thought bars should be smokey – but I realized soon after it went into effect that it was a good thing because it meant less trips to the laundromat. Some other time I will explain how I came to the decision to not smoke cigarettes. I still like to get matchbooks, though, because sometimes other things need to be set on fire, and I like how they look. It's a small graphic space that presents interesting design possibilities, for one, and for two, I am a sentimental dude, as readers undoubtedly know by now. Matchbooks seem old. Incidentally, it's a great feature of many bars in Seattle that they still offer matchbooks.

All of that to say that the article is worth reading – click here to check it out. And why don't we all please make a concerted effort to start asking for matchbooks so they stick around and/or come back.

It's funny they included a Virgil's matchbook in the article. No one likes to admit that Virgil's has some of the best barbecue in New York, because it's right next to Times Square, and it's a multi-story restaurant full of tourists – but they do, especially when immediately preceded by a visit to Jimmy's Corner:

That's Jimmy with Muhammad Ali in the big photo above the bar.