THE RIALTO

By Joseph Helmreich

 

On a chilly spring day in a kosher luncheonette on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, I am slowly building up the nerve. It’s been two weeks since I first spotted him, my savior, seated quietly but not calmly at the booth in the back, a figure as anachronistic-looking as the cramped, yellow-walled eatery itself. He’s here again today, his graying orange hair slicked back but trying to break free, his fierce eyes trained on his vegetable cutlet and soup though his brain is obviously absorbed in whatever’s being pumped through his ears. There’s a ferocity to everything he does, to his listening, his eating, and especially to his signature move, when every minute and a half, with the flair of a Samurai, he swaps his utensils for a pencil and pad and jots down notes.

I know what he is: a last vestige of the New York City that was supposed to greet me on arrival, that dirty and dangerous downtown scene I’d read about in Velvet Underground and Jean Michael Basquiat biographies that had in fact been hosed down long before (further east tried to hang on, but it’s now nearly two decades since its avenues stood for Alcohol, Blow, Crack and Death). More important for my present pursuits, I know what else he must be: a rock critic.

“I asked for black, but there’s milk.”

It’s the first time I hear his voice and it doesn’t disappoint; a low, husky instrument, intimate, I’m sure, with numerous varieties of smoke. This here’s my shot, his ear is unplugged and he’s engaged with the outside world and I’m not exactly ready, but fuck it.

“You a music critic?”

I’m standing over his table. What am I doing?

“Who’s inquiring?”

“I’m also a critic. I mean, if you’re… are you a critic?”

He looks me over. “You like that word. ‘Critic.’”

“What?”

“You’ve just used it three times.”

Not sure what to reply, I nod absently and then suddenly, having apparently lost my mind or at least control of my limbs, I indicate his table. Have I just asked to sit down? I think so. Does his bored shrug almost mean “yes”? I think so. Just like that, I slide into his booth, and am relieved his expression doesn’t really change.

“How old are you?” he asks. “Fifteen?”

“I’m 28.”

“That’s old enough to learn some new words. Try these: connoisseur, dilettante, aficionado. Or, if those are too fancy for you, specialist. What do you ‘criticize?’”

“Um, I write a bunch of different things. Record reviews, musician profiles. Mostly rock bands, some hip hop.  Sometimes prog funk or acid pop.” I don’t know if these last two are genres; my mouth has made them up on the spot.

“Who do you write for?” I ask. “Rolling Stone, Pitchfork? The Deli?”

He shakes his head. There may be a flicker of disdain, and even though I read and enjoy those publications, I want there to be.

“You’ve never heard of us,” he says. “Our outfit’s more interested in hearing noise than making it.”

I smile and nod like I get it. “Well, as they say, the loudest bells ring ‘cause they’re empty.”

This seems to startle him and he gives me a suspicious look. “Who says?”

“Uh, my grandmother used to say that. I think it’s German or something.”

He mulls that over and his lips slowly part, revealing a set of perfectly-shaped if ever-so-slightly cigarette-stained teeth. It’s the first I’ve seen the man smile and now he lets out a dry chuckle and continues to laugh as a young woman removes his sullied coffee and replaces it with a fresh mug.

“All right,” he says, when the laughter’s subsided, “This conversation is finished, but if you’re serious about becoming a connoisseur, our next staff meeting is Wednesday night. Eleven p.m., 202 Rivington Street. Basement.”

I conceal my surprise and delight with this: “Wow, you guys are literally underground.”

He sips his coffee and looks at me like he’s already feeling regret. “Don’t repeat that address to anyone else.”

The following Monday and Tuesday, I cram. I have no doubt they’re all going to be snobs, but what variety of snob? I start with the original downtown punks: the Velvets, Voidoids, Ramones, Suicide, Television, holy leather-clad misfits who channeled early rock and roll and somehow made it sound even more primitive, lobbing musical grenades from sweat-splattered stages on Park Avenue South and the Bowery. I listen to their seminal hits, refresh myself on key biographical facts. Richard Hell’s second life as a rare book collector? Check!

Next, I wade through some of the 80’s indie underground: the Replacements, Minutemen, Black Flag, Husker Du, angsty drunken romantics who could tear your heart to pieces when they weren’t leaping into the audience to smash in someone’s face. I spend some time on hip hop, too, the latest Kendrick Lamar and someone named Ice Spice, but I won’t catch up, and I take a similarly shallow dive into New York’s post-punk revival: Interpol, the Strokes, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah’s. I also read up a little on their descendants, those nerdy Brooklynites whose offerings range from insufferably moody and self-serious to insufferably whimsical and twee—but I can’t bring myself to listen to any of it. I likewise steer clear of classic rock; I won’t score points for what I know and my gaps might even lend me some kind of mystique.

By Tuesday night, I’m nervously hopeful I can pass, that tomorrow will find me recognized as a fellow traveler and that, soon enough, my new life as an employed full-time rock journalist will begin. No more temp jobs, freelance copywriting, or whoring out my very soul to the Stereogum comments section and Steve Hoffman Music Forum. I fall asleep listening to the Ramones’ “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” and it turns into my dream so that I can see Joey up there on that hallowed Ritz stage sing-shouting about needing to be slowed down. The Talking Heads are also on the bill and rumor has it Bowie’s somewhere in the crowd, and I know I’m in for a wild time that I won’t recall a thing of when I wake up.

The following evening at 10:45, I set out from my sublet on Ninth Street and First to 202 Rivington. While I don’t intend to be the first one there, a wrong turn onto Ridge Street guarantees I’ll be the last. When I finally arrive, the building turns out to be a nondescript orange-bricked tenement with several boarded windows and a copper-colored fire escape. I circle around the trash cans out front and head down an uneven metal stairway that leads to a door embedded in a stone wall. I knock, but no one answers and when I press my ear against it, I’m met with silence. Was there some miscommunication? Am I the butt of a joke? I turn the handle, discover the door is unlocked, and go through.

The room I enter feels ancient and cave-like. In the center stands a rickety-looking table, around which five or six people sit in what seems to be deep concentration, headphones in their ears, swaying back and forth with near religious fervor. Several brandish cigarettes whose smoke is being sent swirling round the room by two low-hanging ceiling fans, giving the proceedings a ceremonial, temple-like vibe. No one pays me any mind save for the man from the luncheonette, who, seated at the head, gives me a perfunctory nod. He’s wearing dark shades and a motorcycle jacket and looks more than ever like Lou Reed’s red-headed twin.

I sit down on a rusted folding chair in the corner and watch and wait. The walls, crumbly and unpainted, are dotted with faded photographs of golf courses, an odd choice, I think, for the headquarters of a rock magazine. Stranger still is a neon pink poster of Buster Keaton, but the men and women at the table seem disconnected from their surroundings, anyway, and I eagerly anticipate the reports they’ll be sharing when they return to Earth. In the meantime, I watch their movements for any hint as to what they might be hearing. Do I detect a slightly syncopated quality to their swaying? Jazz, maybe? I hope not—I hadn’t prepped for jazz.

Eventually their bodies stiffen and I surmise the track has ended. There’s a short period of silence, broken by a large and bearded bear of a man. “Enchanting,” he says, leaning back with an air of finality. “Possibly Reingold‘s best. The melody’s charming—stately even—and if the sentiment is, well, sentimental, it’s nowhere near as trite as something like “Mir felt a fraynt.” Maybe if every tailor listened to his wife, they’d all become as successful as this one does.”

“For fuck’s sake!” interjects a young man seated to his left. He wears a navy bowler hat and horn-rimmed glasses while a Chinese dragon tattoo curves its way around his neck. “That ‘charming’ melody is a direct lift from Avraham Goldfaden. The whole thing’s a parody of ‘Gots vunder’ and the tailor’s ‘success’ is clearly meant to be ironic and grotesque. To take a song about the Exodus and turn it into a sarcastic commentary on corruption is hardly what anyone ought to call ‘sentimental’.

“Or maybe Reingold is paying homage to Goldfaden and the parody and social commentary are your own projections,” replies the bearded man, clearly used to this kind of pushback. “Either way, the melody’s lovely regardless of its origin and Lebedeff‘s singing is one hundred percent sentimental.”

“Because he’s parodying Eisenberg!”

I wait for the bearded man to respond again, but instead, both men now turn to my friend from the luncheonette and I realize that the whole energy of the room has become focused in that direction, that the assembly is waiting for a final pronouncement. My friend takes a brief moment to consider all that’s been said and then nods. “The man makes a good point.”

It’s not clear to me which man he means, but there’s no time to speculate, because it is at this moment that he suddenly chooses to acknowledge my presence.

“I’d like to introduce you all to that guy,” he says, pointing directly at me. That’s it, the whole introduction, and a few of them offer polite nods, though the young guy with the bowler hat eyes me with suspicion.

The next track is called “Hit raykh, meydlekh,” a stern-sounding number that I learn was written in the 20’s for a Yiddish musical called “An oyg far an oyg.” When it’s finished, a tall woman with ropey black hair and an accent that to these ears sounds French declares it “victim-shaming par excellence.” After that, they listen to “Biznes in Amerike,” a jaunty tune apparently about fraudulent American business practices. This one triggers a hearty debate over the composer Alex Silberstein’s real-life politics. While I’m disappointed that I can’t hear the tracks themselves, the reactions they ignite are certainly captivating on their own.

A little after 1 a.m., when everyone starts to file out, the man from the luncheonette approaches me. I consider whether to thank him for inviting me or ask what the fuck he invited me to. He speaks first:

“Der glok klingt vayl er iz pust.”

As my parents have not bequeathed to me whatever smattering of Yiddish they might know from their own parents, this jumble of sounds sadly means nothing to me. “Sorry?”

“A bell rings because it’s hollow,” he says, a glint in his eye. “See you next week.”

The following Wednesday, I arrive on time and, with some trepidation, join the others at the table. When all are present, we are each texted a link to the night’s playlist, curated by my mysterious friend, whose actual name is Gary Stone. The songs, which include “Mayn Goldele” and “Zise derinerung,” are all from composer Joseph Rumshinsky’s 1923 Yiddish operetta, “Die goldene kale.” They remind me a little of ragtime, though a song called ”Mir aenen aktyorn” makes me think of Andrew Lloyd Webber.

It is at this meeting, and the following one, that I start to get to know the other personalities of the Rialto, as this outfit which prefers hearing noise to making it is called. The guy with the bowler hat, glasses, and tattoo is named Ira and he’s easily the most vocal and contrarian of the bunch. Possessing an encyclopedic knowledge of Yiddish literature, he’s especially passionate about the early 20th century socialist weeklies and the subtle ideological distinctions dividing them. His favorite songs deal with sweatshops or textile factories and he can read most any piece of music as a commentary on capitalist greed.

In stark contrast, Harvey, the burly man with the beard, experiences music purely as a source of sublime pleasure and inspiration. In his thick Milwaukee accent, he can recite the name of every Yiddish musical from 1882 to 1973 and is fanatical about an actress named Yetta Zwerling (this obsession would border on dangerous were it not for the fact that Zwerling is thirty-seven years dead). He sometimes seems to exhibit a far more benign crush on Ofira, the tall woman whose Israeli accent I had originally mistaken for French, but I believe Ofira is married, and to a woman. With her dark hair and lanky frame, Ofira reminds me of a tattooed Patti Smith or Annie Liebowitz. She’s an aficionado of subversive vaudeville entertainers like Miriam Kressyn and Pesach Burstein.

Easily the quietest of the group is Lester, who looks twenty but is apparently closer to fifty. A clarinet virtuoso, he spent decades playing free jazz in Harlem living rooms and Upper East Side supper clubs before discovering klezmer at a “cholent party” in a synagogue attic on Sixth Avenue and never looking back.  Always decked out in a straw boater and maroon blazer, Lester can supposedly deconstruct a track into infinite individual components, though I’ve yet to hear him speak.

Meanwhile, presiding over everything is Gary, who remains an enigma. Though he’s rumored to co-own some twenty-odd golf courses across North America in partnership with a retired basketball legend, the only biographical facts I can offer with certainty are that the Rialto is his vision alone and that everything about it, from its “staff” to each evening’s playlist, is subject to his whim.

And what is the Rialto? I can more easily tell you what it is not: a rock magazine, for one thing. Nor any other kind, for another; it publishes nothing and so far as I can tell does not exist outside the confines of this near-crumbling basement. Nor is it a “club” or even an informal group of like-minded individuals. These individuals are demonstrably dissimilar and while they may share certain affinities, neither they nor their affinities define the Rialto itself. If forced, I might describe the Rialto as nothing more or less than a vehicle, an organized suspension of time and space whereby through ritualized immersion in songs from the gaslight era of the Yiddish theater (roughly the 1890s through the 1920s) one may be transported to that magical moment when the neighborhood surrounding Second Avenue was home to more than twenty Yiddish theaters and when Bertha Kalich and Menashe Skulnik were for certain households, household names.

The Rialto will not advance my career. But as Jeffrey Ross Hyman once sang, “It feels like somebody put something in my drink.”  The fire of this town, as it turns out, still burns. It’s hidden, perhaps, and only a tiny flame, but it doesn’t flicker and I can warm myself in its glow.  I no longer come to the Rialto by choice; it is an addiction, a desperate craving that can cruelly only be satisfied one night a week. In the meantime, I steadfastly avoid my old lunch spot, terrified of encountering Gary in the harsh light of day and being found wanting or otherwise somehow rupturing the status quo. For the same reason, I keep my mouth shut Wednesday nights.

However, as the fourth meeting comes to a close, it occurs to me that my strategy of safety in silence may itself be dangerous. True, Lester almost never speaks and Gary himself is generally quiet, but if Lester does speak, it’s an astute observation informed by decades of study and play amongst true masters, and when Gary speaks, he usually settles a contentious debate. What contribution am I making as a fly on the wall? And what if somebody else wonders the same?

It is with this is mind that on my fifth Wednesday night with the Rialto, immediately after listening to a song called “Lebedik Yankel“, while everyone else is still forming their opinions, I offer the following observation: “The tune’s got a spiritual, almost prayer-like vibe that’s really interesting.”

A bowling ball tossed from Sears Tower would land with less of a thud. No one chimes in to disagree but I can feel their eyes on me and know that their disapproval has little to do with what I said and lots to do with the chutzpah I exhibited in saying it. Speaking was a tremendous miscalculation and I begin to clear my throat self-consciously, waiting for the moment to pass. The next person to speak is Ofira, who, ignoring my comment, remarks that the song’s hopeful lyrics feel somewhat trite. The message is clear: I am invisible.

The next week’s meeting goes without incident. We listen to a collection of “penny songs” from the tenements and all the while I am sure to keep my mouth shut, hoping that my past transgression may be, if not forgotten or forgiven, moved beyond. But at the end of the night, Gary asks me to stay behind.

“You’re an innocent,” he tells me, the two of us sitting alone at the table. “There’s charm in that, but part and parcel to it is a greenness that’s beginning to rankle the ripe.”

He must discern from my expression how cryptic he sounds because he suddenly goes straight for it: “You know zilch about Yiddish anything–language, culture, music–and it’s sticking in some people’s craws.”

I open my mouth to respond, but nothing comes out and he continues: “Course I knew that when I invited you and I’d prefer you stuck around, so I worked out a sort of compromise with the gang: You can stay if you’re willing to let us give you the Coffin.”

“Coffin?” I ask with alarm.

He smiles reassuringly. “It’s a sort of crash course in Yiddish music. There’s no guarantee it will work or be adequate, but the alternative is we say our goodbyes right now.”

Just hearing those words sends me into a virtual panic. It’s an easy decision, I tell him: I’ll take the coffin.

The following week, bleary-eyed and sweaty in that tenement basement with the others all gathered round, I ready myself for my last chance. I haven’t slept in two nights, instead using the time to ingest every piece of Yiddish music I could track down, fearful that the Coffin won’t suffice. But as with an expectant mother suffering morning sickness, nothing would settle, the songs entered and exited like the phantoms they are, and now the Coffin remains my only hope. It is roughly twenty minutes since the start of the meeting and five minutes since I discovered, upon it being dragged out of a closet by Lester and Ira, that the Coffin is an actual coffin.

It beckons from the floor, a pinewood gateway to salvation, and I’ll be climbing in just as soon as I can figure out a way to forget my severe claustrophobia. Pressure mounts as the others look on, their expressions mostly unreadable with the notable exception of Ira, who is staring at me with a burning impatience. As our eyes lock, his widen and I sense he’s about to speak and I sure as shit don’t want to hear it, so I force my mind blank just long enough to get in the coffin and lie down onto my back.

Gary peers down from above and closes the lid and as the darkness sets in, so does the panic. My heart feels like a sped-up metronome and though my mind tells me there’s ample air, my lungs want to claw their way through my chest. My head feels light and I can’t tell whether I’m beginning to calm down or pass out and it is then that I suddenly hear it, so soft as to be nearly imperceptible, the quiet strains of a flute or clarinet.  My consciousness latches onto the sound and I know synesthesia must be real because this high and delicate melody is cutting through the blackness as surely as any match.

“Az ikh tu mir dermonen, mayne kindershe yorn,” a voice sings and while I don’t recognize the song that’s evidently being piped into the coffin, I certainly recognize the voice, Seymour Rexite, who sang “In der lieb” and three other songs we heard two weeks ago.

“Belz, mayn shtetele Belz,” he continues to sing and it is as though he is in here with me. While I’ve never before seen his face, I see him now, dark and soulful eyes, white tie and tails, he’s here, no older than thirty-five, a vintage RCA ribbon microphone in hand, serenading me with the same silky tenor that once moved Calvin Coolidge to allow Rexite’s mother and sisters to emigrate from Poland. At each instance of the chorus, he cocks his eyebrow like Clark Gable and utters the word “Belz” with irresistible longing.

The crowd loves it, for I’m not alone, am I? The hall overflows with people, men and women in immaculate tuxedos and lavish evening gowns. Rexite isn’t alone, either, he’s backed by a klezmer band, huddled on a makeshift stage beneath a banner welcoming us to the 20^th Anniversary of the Zlotomsko Society.

“Care for some champagne?” a waiter dressed in bowtie and suspenders asks me in Yiddish, and if I’m surprised I can understand him, I’m even more surprised I can respond:

“Gezoykn a’floysh” (“Yes indeed!”).

Sometime later, I’m sitting at a table, enjoying my second glass of champagne and watching a new singer perform a decidedly baroque take on Jennie Goldstein‘s “Das Gassen Meidel.” She’s dressed in the popular flapper style, bobbed hair and shiny layered dress, though the Chinese dragon tattoo on her neck seems off. The performance is expert, but I’m distracted, still thinking about the girl I’d nearly killed on my way to the restroom. She was so short I hadn’t seen her and so slight that when I brushed past, she nearly toppled over.

“Are you all right?” I’d asked, taking her arm to help her steady.

“Oh mamma,” she replied with an impish grin, “Everything feels so good!”

What was I to make of that? All I know is that her saucery Betty Boop eyes have cast some weird spell on me that even the finest rendition of “Das Gassen Meidel” can’t lift. Except the singer’s not playing “Das Gassen Meidel” anymore, there’s a pointy-bearded man in a bowtie singing “Erlach Zein”. When did the last singer leave and the next arrive? It’s as though the performances are bleeding into one another. I’m finding myself increasingly dazed.

“Strange, isn’t it?” someone asks and I turn to find the silver-haired gentleman from the other side of the table, who’d until now been conversing quietly with his wife, suddenly addressing me.

“Strange?”

“On Rivington Street, we’re celebrating our recollections of Zlotomsko with this extravagant spectacle, while the current Zlotomsko of 1928 has forgotten us entirely. Everything Zlotomsko means to us—–the fruit stands on Jatkowitz Street, the Yiddish library, the decrepit artisan and merchant guilds, they’re gone! The old synagogue is now a movie palace, though I hear the Star of David’s remained on the dome. But do you think there’s a plaque outside the boarding school that used to be the yeshiva? Are you kidding me? The current inhabitants of the city have no idea they’re living in an invisible museum.”

I start to ask what he means by “invisible museum” when a droopy-eyed man in a neon pink suit, the spitting image of Buster Keaton, saunters onto the stage and interrupts our conversation with an announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, she said she wouldn’t perform, we called her a liar, and we were right: the one and only, irrepressible Molly Picon!”

As she bounds onto the stage, I curse myself for not having recognized those mischievous eyes sooner—and for almost killing the queen of the Yiddish theater!

Molly engages in some of her classic stage banter (“You up front, I am not older than your wife, I just look it!“) and then she and the band launch into a charming rendition of “Yidl mitn fidl.”

“Yidl mitn fidl,” she sings, walking around the stage. “Arye mitn bas, dos lebn iz a lidl.”

About an hour later, as she orders a scotch and soda from the bar, I sidle up. “The drink‘s on me,” I say to the bartender, then, to Molly, “It’s the least I can do for almost finishing you.”

“You’re a gentleman, but it’s an open bar,” she says, flashing those eyes again. “And besides, my money’s no good south of Houston Street.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” I retort, “Provided you don’t run across some philistine who can’t recognize the Jewish Helen Hayes.”

She’s about to respond when we are both interrupted by a boyish-looking fellow in an olive green fedora who has approached from the side without our noticing. I don’t have to ask who he is, everyone knows Shneur “Skippy” Zadobnik, as feared for his Tammany Hall connections as he is beloved for his years of dutiful service as President of the Zlotomsko Society.

“Is this the set-up for some joke?” he asks, “Two of the world’s greatest Yiddish performers meeting for the first time at a bar?”

Molly looks at me confused and then it hits her. “Well now don’t I feel like the philistine!”

“Please,” Zadobnik says, looking at me imploringly, “You’re going to perform for the people.”

With his snappy attire and carefree swagger, it’s hard to believe he was once the most promising disciple of the holy Vieviser Maggid.

“Sorry, Shneur,” I reply. “I’m here strictly as a civilian.”

“Oh, but you must!” Molly implores.

“Don’t worry,” says Zadobnik. “He might be feeling shy, but he’s also a faithful son of Zlotomosko and he won’t let us down.”

Zadobnik is right. Moments later, I am stepping out onto the stage as the droopy-eyed M.C. introduces me and a shocked hush falls over the crowd. Is it really me? I can hardly believe it, myself.

“I thought you were retired,” the bandleader whispers as I remove the mike from its stand.

“So did I,” I answer. “Say, can you handle ‘Oygnflashkin’?”

It’s a tall order, I know. “Oygnflashkin” is not only the fastest number in my repertoire, it just might be the fastest Yiddish song of the past twenty years. The bandleader gives me a sober nod as if to say, if the band can’t handle it, they’ll die trying because we all know this resplendent crowd already expects nothing less.

I stare out on the assembly for a few silent seconds, letting the anticipation build, and then without warning I count in the band and we’re off. The audience is on its feet in no time, dancing with wild abandon as I sing the song’s familiar refrain: “Mayn voilt arayna oygnflashkin” (“My world is full of disarray“). Meanwhile, the band gamely keeps up, even as their playing is marred by stray notes and missed cues. The microphone passes from my left hand to my right and back as I dance my way to the edge of the stage, calling out “Oygn!” to which the crowd responds, “Flashkin!” A certain delirium has taken hold, but it’s entirely appropriate and if I have a care in the world, it’s only that my stomping right foot has failed to connect with the stage. By the time I can conclude I’m indeed falling over the edge, it is too late and so I brace myself for a painful collision.

Instead, as my chest leaps into my throat, I am plunged into total darkness, where I remain several seconds, catching my breath. I can still hear the music, now a faint scratchy recording.  Suddenly it stops, as the blackness is broken by an expanding crack of light. Gary has removed the lid of my coffin and is staring down on me. How long have I been sleeping? Hours? Years?

I climb out of the coffin as the other members of the Rialto stand back, watching me carefully. They’re understandably eager to know if their little experiment has paid off, whether I’ve undergone any kind of transformation.

Transformation? Oh mamma, they couldn’t begin to know.

“A gveitzen mochayis,” I declare to no one in particular.

There’s a moment of stunned silence. None of them seem to know how to react.

“A gveitzen gachmshis,” I continue. “En oylten mechabsin kalitz.”

More perplexed looks. The only person who doesn’t appear completely bewildered is Ira, who has in fact begun to laugh, rare for him. The others turn to him with searching eyes as his laughter continues, a high and mellifluous chortle, until at last he’s out of breath.

“Don’t you get it,” he wheezes out. “The moron thinks he’s speaking Yiddish!”

They all seem to cringe simultaneously. Of course they know he’s right, but should something so pathetic and distasteful be spoken aloud? Gary, meanwhile, turns to me with a mostly bored expression and gestures toward the exit:

“Don’t ever come back.”

Outside, the moon rests high over the Lower East Side as I dizzily make my way down Ludlow Street. My phone tells me it’s 3 a.m., though the quiet deadness feels more like a suburban dawn. I walk by a shuttered storefront and realize it’s the former site of the Cake Shop, the last true breeding ground for New York City rock acts. A few blocks away, I pass 56 Ludlow, where a twenty-two-year-old Lou Reed shared a loft with John Cale and they cooked up the chords and riffs that would become “The Velvet Underground & Nico.” Minutes away, I know, are the burial grounds of the Fillmore East, the Great Gildersleeves and Tonic.

I want to see all of it. I want someone to invent time travel glasses that I can put on and see CBGB instead of a boutique, Max’s Kansas City instead of a takeout join, the Mars Bar instead of TD Bank. That I can bring with me through every pipe and pulmonary vein of this still-gasping metropolis and savor every last exhibit in the invisible museum.

But first I want alcohol. Nothing excessive, just enough that I might later crawl into a gutter, soil myself, drift off, and hopefully wake up in a puddle of my own vomit. If I’ve been cast out of Paradise, let me at least experience the full depravity of Gomorrah.

“Last call was 2:30,” the doorman at Arlene’s Grocery explains. The other bars on the block closed even earlier. It’s the witching hour in New York City and I can’t even find a drink.

There’s a twenty-four hour Ukrainian deli on Essex Street and I wander in and order a coffee. “No milk or sugar, just the hard stuff,” I instruct the slim, goateed teenager manning the counter. There’s an old man sweeping up in the back, probably the owner, maybe the kid’s grandfather. With my cup in hand, I take a seat by the Coke machine and inhale the coffee’s strong, nutty aroma. In several hours, the sun will be starting its rise over the Hudson River, though this place feels somehow out of daylight’s reach.

“Let me ask you something,” I call out to the teenager, who looks at me warily. “Do you think we’re on the Lower East Side?” He shrugs and looks away, but I continue: “Let me tell you about the Lower East Side. The Village East Theater? Dreck! That used to be the Yiddish Arts Theater. You could go there and catch a matinee starring Celia Adler or Aaron Lebedeff. Shima on Second Ave and 12th? I’m sure the sushi’s fine, but when it was the Café Royal, you might see Boris Tomashevksy sharing Matzoh ball soup with Molly Picon or Menashe Skulnik or Maurice Schwartz, any of the greats. Afterwards, you could go catch Pesach Burstein cracking jokes at the Second Avenue Theater or Moishe Oysher chanting Kol Nidre at the Grand. So is there a plaque marking the site of the old Grand? Are you kidding me? What I wouldn’t give to hear Oysher today, that one-in-a-million baritone, instead of your sister’s boyfriend’s shitty release party at Rockwood Music Hall.”

By now, the old man in the back has stopped sweeping. He stands there with his broom in hand, staring at me with a look of incomprehension. “What are you, fifteen?” he asks in a thick Russian accent. “How could you ever remember those days?”

“How could you,” I say, turning to face him and cocking my eyebrow in a perfect impression of Clark Gable, “ever forget?”

 

About the Author

Joseph Helmreich most recently the author of “The Return” (St. Martin’s Press), has contributed to North American Review, Volume 1 Brooklyn, and The Millions, among other publications. He teaches creative writing at Pace University.