P.J. Clarke's

It has been over 40 years since I stepped up to a bar and ordered a bottle of Budweiser. It was $1.85 then. And most of the places I ordered one in, Blarney Stones, are gone. Not just the bars themselves but the buildings—gone.

One bar that was a favorite of myself and the two Piermont brothers was the Spotlight bar next to what was the Ed Sullivan theater on Broadway, but is some other name now, but still a Broadway theater.

The Spotlight was half a block from where were played pool at Broadway Billiards, a large, multi-table, lower level emporium underneath the arcade games, run by Mr. Monaco. The Spotlight is long gone, the outside appearing briefly in an early Al Pacino movie Needle Park. If you look quickly, you can see it in the background. Look really quick.

The Spotlight was run by Joe Harbor and his wife Sara. It was a narrow place, with some booths in the back. They no longer served food, despite there being a huge kitchen. The bartender was Gene Williams, whose claim to fame was that he once appeared in a 1943 Abbot and Costello Movie, "Hit the Ice," singing with others on the back of a sleigh. A singing career was over, so now he tended bar. But he at least was on Broadway.

The above photo is what P.J.'s looked like in 1964, looking out the window onto Third Avenue, without the Third Avenue El in the background.. You have to be my age to remember the Third Avenue El, which came down around 1956. There was a stop at 18th Street where the family flower shop was. Another story.

P.J. Clarke's is on the northeast corner of 55th Street and Third Avenue in a two-story, red brick building that looks as old as it is, and is generally what all the buildings along Third Avenue looked like before the El came down. Bars and rooming houses. Brothels as well. I once met an old-timer who disparaging referred to something unsavory as "Third Avenue Trash." Lower Third Avenue becomes the Bowery, which was even worse at the time. Back in the day. P.J. Clarke's has been open at this spot since 1884.

For those who may not know it, P.J. doesn't stand for pajamas, but is a common pairing of names used by the Irish: Patrick Joseph. If you were named Patrick Joseph you were a P.J. for life.

In the 60s when I delivered flowers to the new apartment houses that were springing up on Third Avenue like weeds. I also noticed that in the elevators there was an inspection card. I don't think I ever rode in an elevator on Third Avenue that didn't list that P.J. O'Connor last inspected the elevator. The inspection cards are no longer in the elevators, but are kept in a building manager's office somewhere.

I never met P.J. O'Connor, and no one ever did a newspaper article about the ubiquitous elevator inspector, but I bet he was an engineering graduate of Manhattan College in the Bronx where most of the engineers for the city went to school. And these engineers were usually from Irish families.

Aside from Pete's Tavern on 18th Street and Irving Place, and Old Town Bar on 18th Street just west of Park Avenue South, there aren't many bars in NYC that evoke the era of beer for a 5¢ and stacks of free sandwiches. There is no more free lunch in NYC. Probably nowhere but a shelter.

P.J. Clarke's is not owned by an Irish family that stayed in the bar and restaurant business. It has investors, one of whom I read was the actor Timothy Hutton. There are a few P.J.'s sprinkled around the city and the country, but the one on Third Avenue is the original.

I also once read that the maitre d' was a bit annoyed that a prospective party wanted a reservation right away. There were a group of gentlemen with John Gotti, the crime boss, and the maitre d' knew that only a table situated so that John could have his back to the wall would be an acceptable table. So he had to do some quick rearranging of who sat where before they arrived. He wished they gave him more time. But it worked out, and no one got shot. Always a plus.

You may not believe this, but this is a long-winded intro touched off by the obituary of Pat Moore, 89, Model who Became Landmark in a Landmark P.J. Clarke's. Something always reminds me of something else. 

The New York Times obit is by Pete Wells, not a usual obit writer, but the food and drink reviewer. One has to suspect that Mr. Wells has made his way to P.J.'s fairly often to have been given the nod for the obit.

Hard to know, but Ms. Moore may have been the oldest server in NYC. It was several years ago that after a concert at Carnegie Hall I went with my daughter, her husband, and my two granddaughters to P.J.'s for dinner.

I only now remembered the server (waitress) because of the obituary. She was decidedly older and didn't write anything down as she listened to our orders. She seemed to fit in more with a waitress (server) at a Greek diner off the New York State Thruway. Little did I know then that she was a fixture at P.J.'s that when she passed away she rated a 19-gun salute, six column obit in the NYT.

Ms. Moore served the rich and famous and the not so famous—people like us—at P.J.'s for at least 45 years. vowing to quit when she was 90. She was said to have dated Frank Sinatra, who is alleged to have proposed marriage, Tony Bennett, and Warren Beatty. Tony Bennett, an accomplished painter, painted her portrait which she had hanging in her apartment.

The modeling part which is no surprise when you see her ad for Ambassador Scotch, started when Eileen Ford and her husband spotted her in a Miss Fordham beauty pageant. The ad for Ambassador is vintage Madison Avenue for a product pitched in glossy magazines, few of which exist today. 

There is considerable "copy" in the ad, which if it were to appear today no one would read, and no one would expect anyone to read in this kinetic, video world.

Pete Wells writes glowingly of the type of person Ms. Moore was, part of "the best waiters and bartenders who were a major part of a restaurant's attraction when they stayed around as long as Ms. Moore did, their longevity inseparable from the restaurant's."

Tony Bennett, who only recently passed away at 96 and still frequented P.J.'s and had Ms Moore wait on him, was once declared by a NYC mayor as being a "living landmark."

Sounds like NYC lost another one.

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