Nickel beer at Sam's

Jeremiah's awful news yesterday on the possible demise of the Holiday on St. Mark's inspired to me look into some other old haunts on the street from year's past...I came across this article in the Time magazine archives on Sam's Bar & Grill.

The Nickel In St. Mark's Place
Monday, Apr. 4, 1949

Pale and shaken, 51-year-old Sam Atkins backed away from himself with a feeling somewhere between disbelief and awe. By a single, splendid cerebration he had been lifted out of the ruck into the status of a television curiosity. In his humble Manhattan saloon, Sam had decided to cut the price of beer (the 7-oz. glass) from a dime to a nickel.

Up to that moment Sam was just a pensioned pumper driver from the Bayonne (N.J.) fire department, and Sam's bar & grill was like any neighborhood joint around St. Mark's Place on the Lower East Side. Its only distinctive touch was Sam's cousin, "Bottle Sam" Hock, who amused the trade by whacking tunes out of whisky bottles with a suds-scraper. But the customers got a joyful jolt when Sam opened up one morning last week.

All around the walls, even over the bar mirror, tasteful, powder-blue signs proclaimed in red letters: "Spring is here and so is the 5¢ beer." The early birds drank and took their change in mild disbelief. The nickel wasn't obsolescent after all. The word spread. Sam's bar & grill started to bulge like Madison Square Garden on fight night. People drank, shook hands with strangers and sang.

Then something went sour. The two breweries that supplied Sam cut him off, and an electrician came around and took the neon beer sign out of the flyspecked windows. Somehow, it seemed, Sam had betrayed free enterprise. An organization of restaurant owners muttered that Sam might not be cutting his beer, but he was cutting his throat. The Bartenders Union threw a picket line in front of the place because it was nonunion.

But Sam hung on. He signed up with the union, managed to get his beer through a couple of distributors and a Brooklyn brewery, announced that he was going to have the windows washed, and keep at it. Said he solemnly: "The people want it." By this week Sam's idea had spread to other saloons in Washington, D.C. and New Jersey, and Sam was getting more trade in a day than he had drawn before in a week. The nickel beer was here to stay, Sam announced.

Photos via the Time archive.

Downtown Beirut, around 1990, about 3 a.m.

I can't remember when it closed, 1994? On First Avenue.

Speaking of Downtown Beirut, I came across an article on menright.com about Carolyn, a downtown fixture and bartender at Downtown Beirut and member of Killer Instinct, X.K.I. and Bad Tuna Experiment.



According to the article:

Carolyn was new in town, working for an answering service and as an occassional punk extra in clueless Hollywood versions of the Lower East Side. She spent the nights she wasn't working on the benches in Tompkins Square, or on the stoops around Stromboli's Pizza on St. Mark's Place. She didn't have enough cash to get into the clubs very often. Drink of choice: a forty-ounce Bud.

The article talks about her bands and early years in the neighborhood. And whatever happened to her?

Carolyn resumed her long-interrupted college career and graduated summa cum laude from Hunter College. She got married. She studied for a PhD in English (specializing in Medieval Germanic Languages), wrote grammar exercises for college textbooks, and appeared on Jeopardy. (She won the trip — not the money.)

Carolyn is now the mother of a daughter by the name of Harriet, has a house in the woods, and is a Senior Editor for a major textbook publisher in New York City. Unlike many of her contemporaries on the Lower East Side, she survived. This is her hidden past.

And here's BTE with "Beer Picnic."

Window-washing day at the Empire State Building

This gives me the creeps. I hate heights.

A sign that I like

On 14th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B. Check out the old telephone exchange -- OR 3-4786.

Three other signs that I've always liked

Yes, all obvious ones...But I wanted to start the new year with an appreciation of some classic-looking signs.

The Parkside, Houston and Attorney.



Veniero's, First Avenue at 11th Street.



Smith's, 44th Street and Eighth Avenue.

Two signs that I like on Essex Street

Next door to each other. I'm curious if the Dembitzer Bros. are still shipping all over the world...

My Kinda Town

Bobby Steele and the Undead. Tompkins Square Park, July 2006. For everyone, like me, who's out of town at the moment.

Smokes and smiles

No secret how expensive cigarettes are...funny why the brass at the Mobil station on Avenue C and Houston thinks advertising the not-a-bargain price might lure in some motorists...



Meanwhile, remember to smile.

Save the M8

Scoopy has the following item in this week's issue of The Villager:

East Village native Quinn Raymond reports that COBATA (Coalition of Block and Tenant Associations) has started a new Web site to save the M8, the bus line linking the West Village and the East Village. The MTA wants to curtail the route as part of their plan to close a moronic $790 billion* budget gap.

* an EV Grieve estimation

Squats vs. the city

Also in The Villager this week: An interesting piece by Lincoln Anderson titled "Former squats are worth lots, but residents can’t cash in."

[Photo of 209 E. Seventh St. from the mid-1980s by Fly via The Villager]

Things to do if you're really bored

Measure this distance! On First Avenue between 10th Street and 11th Street.



Seems like more than 75 feet to me.

Here's to your New Year's resolutions!

Happy New Year

An end-of-the-year look at the northern end of Avenue B

Hmmm...progress...

Sept. 7:


Dec. 24:


Previously on EV Grieve:
What's doing on at the northern end of Avenue B?

Gone but not forgotten

The Tower of Toys created by Eddie Boros. Sixth Street and Avenue B. RIP, May 2008.

Forgotten but not gone

Anything related to Sex and the City.

Or fro-yo.

Or bank branches popping up on every corner.

Or greedy landlords.

Or...well, you get the idea...too many things for this list.

Year-end self-serve: Revisiting some popular EV Grieve posts

These were posts that either solicted a few comments...or linkage elsewhere or just seemed to be popular on the hit list:

When the Christodora House became a Greek house

An EV Grieve editorial (aka, this week's sign of the Apocalypse)

Appreciating what's left of the Bowery while it's still there

Dwell95 fiddled after Wall Street burned

NYPD Blew

Team Bride
confidential

Post scribe thinks turmoil in Africa is so trendy in the news right now!

"The neighborhood was desolate, so underpopulated that landlords would give you a month's free rent just for signing a lease"

The Lower East Side: There goes the neighborhood

These are a few of the photos you'll find when you search for "Carrie Bradshaw" on Flickr

Hurry! 2008 is almost over!: Looking at 708 First Ave.

At 708 First Ave. near 40th Street at site of the former Con Edison Waterside power plant. Wasn't there supposed to be a 50-plus-floor office tower going in here...?

Anyway, nice chunk of real estate, as the Times noted in 1999:

"This is probably the most valuable piece of land in New York City today," said August A. DiRenzo, a vice chairman of Cushman & Wakefield, the brokerage and consulting firm that is assisting Con Edison with the sale. He added that most of the major developers in the city were looking at the sites. "I can't tell you who they are, but anyone you can think of has expressed interest," he said.

Probably not

This storefront has been available for some time now on Second Ave at Third Street (the northeast corner).



Someone with a marker has asked a good question:

Subtle ads of the year! (And question: Are all ad people horny guys?)

Hey now. Just a quick year-end look at just a few of the subtle ads that graced the neighborhood in 2008....Mad Men? Hmm...How about: Perv Men? Horny Men? Men Who Think They Can Move Product By Showing a Photo of a Woman's Mouth?

A few places around Manhattan where Jesus will possibly save your sorry ass

A good thing for starting a new year.

On Henry Street in the LES.





On 51st Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenue.





On 11th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B.

New graffiti in the Library restrooms

Uh, the Library bar. Avenue A.

A few things about Woolworths

The City Room had a fun piece the other day on the old Olympic-size swimming pool in the F.H. Woolworth Building on lower Broadway.

An early promotional brochure for the building promised tenants an “immense Swimming Pool and Turkish Bath establishment, open day and night,” equipped with “every modern device making for comfort, safety and sanitation.” This was in addition to the Postkeller restaurant, the barber shop and the Hospital Room “for female stenographers, clerks and others, where they may receive first-aid treatment and simple remedies at the hands of a competent nurse.”

Speaking of Woolworth stores, which closed for good in the city in 2001, here's some footage of the old Woolworth's location in downtown Flushing from 1997:



Which reminds me of eating at the Woolworth's lunch counter on 14th Street...and wasn't there one on Park Avenue South around 23rd Street? The food was pretty awful at times, but it was cheap, of course.

Here's a Woolworth's menu from 1960 (via Mr. Monopoly):

East 10th Street across from Tompkins Square Park seems like a lovely place to live, but...

Between Avenue A and Avenue B. Click on the images to enlarge.