And, since it's me, of course I wanted to do something that reminds me of my one true love, history. But rather than cavort in the 18th century, I decided I'd rather be a flapper for the day - after all, my love of the 1920s New York City scene is well documented, and I've been in a 20s mood lately. And unlike the 18th century, there are actually quite a few 1920s NYC haunts still around, if one knows where to look.
Having already agreed to meet a friend for my last NYC hangout of the year, we decided we'd make an afternoon out of it and planned the whole thing around visiting the Museum of the American Gangster in the East Village, a neighbourhood I know well (since I've been working in that neighbourhood for over a year).
Of course, we had some time to kill beforehand...
As my friend had just gotten off work, and I hadn't eaten a very large breakfast (my work's holiday party had been the night before and I had still been full from that in the morning), we decided it was better we ate first.
We walked down the street to B&H Dairy, a no-frills old school Jewish hole-in-the-wall. Technically, this place opened in 1938, but it's still pre-WWII, and doesn't look as if it's changed much since then, so it still counts. It was still easy to imagine a couple of bearcats like us moseying on into a place like this for some good old fashioned Jewish food after living it up all night at a nearby speakeasy.
B&H is a kosher establishment, and has been since its inception, when this neighbourhood was still considered part of the Lower East Side and was full of working-class Jewish and Eastern European immigrants. Thus why it is called a 'dairy' - a truly kosher establishment either only serves meat dishes (thus a 'deli') or only serves dairy and pareve (prepared without meat or dairy) dishes - meaning it's excellent for vegetarians like me! Still gotta be careful of fish, as in Jewish dietary law fish is considered pareve, but that's not hard to look out for.
Everything was jake in this juice joint! I got a plate of 3 (HUUUUUGE) latkes and a cup of sour cream to smother them in, as well as a cup of matzo ball soup - this is the only place in the city I've found so far that serves vegetarian matzo ball soup. (With a proper sinker of a matzo ball - all you who like your matzo balls to float can bite my ass and go chase yourselves.)
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| Not quite like Bubbe used to make |
After our meal which left us so full oh my god, we actually ended up walking past Gem Spa, the self-proclaimed "inventor of egg creams", who claim to have the best egg creams in the city. Having tried their egg creams on a separate occasion, B&H has better ones IMHO. (Though if I'm being real with you guys, my favourite egg creams so far are the ones at another beloved Jewish dairy establishment, Russ and Daughters. Shh! Don't tell anyone I said so!)
I don't know why Gem Spa is called Gem Spa. It's a newsstand, not a spa or a new agey gem store. It actually did open up in the 1920s, but didn't acquire its current name until the 1950s, when it was a popular gathering for beats. We didn't go in - we couldn't have fit more egg cream into our bellies if we'd tried! But we did stop to see this piece of (honestly kinda racist) retro kitsch sitting just outside:
A relic of the penny arcades, fortune-telling machines like this were still being manufactured and used in the 20s. The "Cleveland Grandma" model (one of which can be found at Coney Island still) was first made in 1928, for example. I couldn't find any references to Zoltar machines before the 1960s, though. Still, we each inserted a dollar ($2 for a fortune is so not a 20s-accurate price!) for a fortune, which warned us to not be so judgmental and try and find the good in every situation.
It was time to get a wiggle on, however - the Museum of the American Gangster has a strict tour schedule!
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| Actual gangster Henry Hill donated this ice pick |
Back in the days of the 20s, there wasn't a front entrance to the building on St. Mark's. To get into Hoffman's speakeasy - a very popular one even among corrupt police officials, who Hoffman bribed to avoid getting the place raided - patrons would have to go around the corner to Schieb's Butcher Shop, owned by one of Hoffman's underlings, a man named Walter Scheib. Saying the right phrase would get you through a backdoor into an alley, and from there you could enter the speakeasy through another door which now leads onto the stage of the theatre that currently occupies part of the former dance floor.
You following me so far?
The museum is full of sordid, yet glamourous and thrilling, tales like these. Another involves Hoffman's safes, both of which are still in the museum.
Apparently, at one point Hoffman had 12 million clams (that's 20s slang for dollars - do try to keep up!) stashed in these two safes. But he left for Germany some point in the 30s to visit family, instructed Schieb to keep an eye on the place, and was never seen nor heard from again - that pesky WWII making it difficult for Germans to get into the United States and all! (What, like the Nazis were gonna let an infamous criminal who worked with Jewish mobsters out? Hoffman was brutal but he wasn't stupid enough to try it.)
Hoffman's reputation was fearsome enough that Schieb waited over 30 years before trying to get into the safes to get at those millions - after all, Hoffman had once planted a bomb into the building that would go off and take down the entire structure (and all the innocent clubgoers in it, the flappers and their shieks who just wanted to have a good time) should anyone try to break into the basement. If Hoffman was willing to murder that many innocent people, Schieb wanted to be sure he was dead before trying to steal the money. By the 60s, he figured Hoffman probably wasn't coming back.
But by the time he got the safes open, he was shocked to find one of them was empty, and the other was full of 40s-era garbage - as well as only 2 million dollars, not 12!
The theory is that sometime in the 40s, Hoffman, a girlfriend, and a bodyguard returned to the building and snuck into the basement while the music and dancing upstairs masked any sounds they were making. They took what they could and scrammed, leaving behind 2 million that their pockets had no room for. But perhaps the bodyguard got greedy and murdered Hoffman and his girl - and since Hoffman was the only one with the code for the safe, he couldn't go back for the rest of the money. Either way, Schieb was shit out of luck.
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| Here's the other safe, down in the basement. The wall next to it is where that bomb once was planted. |
Though it's been halved in size, it still looks much as it did in the 1920s. Granted, things like fire sprinklers and windows and a front exit have been added since then. Booze isn't illegal anymore. And there's a cheeky sign outside now noting the bar's history, reading "During Prohibition your grandmother drank here... unless she was a Baptist, in which case she drank at home in the pantry."
But it's still got the Cuban mahogany countertop that it did back then. It still has the old school checkerboard floor and tin ceilings. And it still serves its hooch in ceramic mugs, just as it did back in the days of actual Prohibition. (This was common back then - if you can't see the liquid inside, you have deniability, even if everyone knew it was giggle water.)
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| The bar now has a mirror to show that back then it wrapped all the way around - and note that ceramic mug! |
We got to see the theatre that opened in the 1960s on the site of where the old dance floor once was, and we got to go down into the basement where Hoffman had once stashed booze and big bucks alike.
It was definitely not what I had been expecting from a museum tour, but getting to stand in these actual sites that saw so much action in the 1920s was perfectly thrilling, the bee's knees even!
We walked down First Avenue a bit for our last stop of the day's outing:
Okay. Thrift stores aren't really very 1920s, but it's one of my favourite thrift stores in the East Village (a neighbourhood with a lot of them) and we couldn't help ourselves. I actually ended up finding a cute 1920s style dress though! Granted, it was clearly one made after the 20s - perhaps the 70s or 90s, as it has fringe on the hem, and while fringe is common in flapper Halloween costumes, it was rather uncommon in the actual 1920s.
But it's a posi-lute-ly copacetic little number, to borrow more 20s slang! It's all black, thick straps (not period-inaccurate spaghetti straps! Hoorah!), knee-length, black beading - with a long string of pearls and heels I'd be all ready for a 1920s theme party! (If I ever went to parties lmao.)
It was a nice surprise to find, and a perfect end to the outing. I'll be dreaming of the 20s in New York while I'm missing the city in California.
So long, New York City! I'll see you in 2018!
-Nym
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