Google and Wikipedia tell me you're 84 now and living in The Bronx. The page was last edited in 2019, so I'm going to believe you're still with us, and obviously, haven't left NYC. Congratulations on that.
To someone like myself who grew up and lived in NYC until they were 46, (now 70) and then moved to Long Island while still commuting to Manhattan every work day until 2011 my instincts tell me that anyone at 84 still living in NYC has a sweetheart of a deal on rent. I wouldn't move either.
But this is not about rent, it's about Pete's Tavern, an establishment I'm convinced you know more than something about. The back of the dust jacket for the hardcover of 'The Pope of Greenwich Village' shows you with a very large dog in front of a place that starts with a P, has what looks like an E following, with a coach lamp behind your right ear: Pete's Tavern.
I've been writing a blog since 2009, something I started at the suggestion of an obituary writer Marilyn Johnson after we got in touch with each other after she wrote 'The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries.' Marilyn knows Pete's Tavern as well.
Sorry for being so late to read your book that was published over 40 years ago. It's not that I'm a terribly slow reader, it's that I remember the movie, and I remember Charlie and Paulie in the car coming back from Atlantic City I believe, when Paulie's horse ran second.
Truthfully, I just started the book, and sought out a hardcopy from a used book Internet site. Sorry, there will be no extra royalty check coming because of my purchase, but I'm sure you understand. I'm not even up to the race part in the book, but I recounted that scene in a posting I made about a horse owned by someone I know that recently ran second, paying a huge place payout. The owner and a friend of mine only had a win bet on Kelleycanrun. Schnooks. They obviously didn't see the movie, or read the book.
But this is about Pete's Tavern, an establishment I'm greatly familiar with. The family's flower business, the Royal Flower Shop, was the legit business cover for Pete's during Prohibition, covering perhaps 15' of depth when you used the Irving Place entrance.
When my father (b.1915) was a small boy he used to wind the huge regulator clock on the left as you come in. He told me he would get up on a stool and wind the clock after school.
The clock no longer works, its parts having been cannibalized by a repairman who ran off with the gears. Or so the story goes. I've mentioned to the management at Pete's several times that I'd help start a Kickstart campaign to get the clock fixed. There are people who I could direct them to who could do the job.
No interest from the management. Phyllis Freeman? one of them. Anyway, the family flower business moved to 18th and 3rd, SW corner, then the NW corner, and remained in the family until 1975, or so. It became my father's shop, but he had a full-time job with the DOD in Washington as a civilian naval engineer, and could only run the business by proxy. And not run it well.
I basically spent highly formative years growing up in that shop on the NW corner and went to Stuyvesant High School while living with my grandmother on East 19th Street. I knew Pete's from the 60s, saw Callahan sitting in the corner, and knew my father's boyhood friend Phil Negri, the bartender. Their photos once graced the place, but were taken down. I still go back there to catch a meal and some memories.
Years ago I was talking to one of Pete's managers, Manny, about the family connection to Pete's. (I got comped dessert). He told me the story of the guys in your book, Charlie and Paulie who worked at Pete's, but then stole the recipe for the sauce and gave it to Sal Anthony's, a restaurant across the street from Pete's on Irving Place, up a nice flight of stair from the sidewalk.
Doing a little web research, I see that the owner and chef of Sal's Anthony, Anthony Macagnone once worked at Pete's. Maybe he "stole" the recipe. Who better than the chef? It was probably his anyway. Unfortunately, I see he's recently passed away from esophageal cancer in January of this year, at 79.
As we probably both know, Sal Anthony's moved to the lower East Side but I now know is proudly back at 3rd and 19th Street, at least since 2017, with or without the recipe from Pete's. I used to go to Sal Anthony's so maybe I'll catch up to them on 19th Street and ask. I don't really expect anyone to answer truthfully, if at all.
Aside from standing in front of Pete's for your dust jacket photo with the dog who looks like he could eat you, I suspect you had ties to the area. Con Ed workers workers getting a Paulie "discount" on dinners can only mean to me that you went up and down Third Avenue yourself.
My father, never being discouraged by not making money, bought the Skoal bar on 14th Street, across the street from Con Edison. He was perhaps the bar's best customer, so he wrongfully figured the place would fill up with Con Ed executives getting sloshed at lunch. That didn't happen, and because people expected to get paid, my father's ownership quickly tanked. Thank God. The site became a Florsheim shoe store.
Maybe we can share a meal at Pete's or Sal Anthony's. We can find out about the sauce from Anthony's son.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
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