Last Week in Photos

As a totally obsessed photo buff, sometimes I come up with the occasional piece of eye candy. As NY1 claims that with the humidity it was around 110° today in New York City, I'm thinking the debt ceiling will rise all by itself. With little too say I hid out all day and went through last week's photos.

For me the camera is a sort of kinetic meditation. Basically I walk around with a camera to forget how screwed we are with the present set of so called representatives we are stuck with. So if you need break from ugly, than pull yourself up a Wave Hill Chair...



And take a ride with me for a week of photography.

Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry
When I take you out in the surrey,
When I take you out in the surrey with the fringe on top!

My week started out with a three island hike. It was sort of like the voyage of the Minnow only there was no boat and one island was a bit populated. The view of East Harlem, Spanish Harlem or El Barrio on Saturday.



















Those photos represent my newest form of expression through photography, street photography. I'm a bona fide sunset sort of guy and I like to pretend that I know what I'm doing when it comes to flowers and the forest but about a year ago I discovered how liberal of an art street photography really is. I wrote a piece about it called Friday Evening Photo Blogging: Street Photography Edition. In it I claimed that this is a pure art, an offshoot of photojournalism and that Jacob Riis is standing right beside me every time I take a snapshot on the city streets.

Not that I could ever live up to the works of the greats that I mimic but things have changed since I wrote that. That's right I'm a flip flopper. Now there is a little more Berenice Abbott and Helen Levitt standing beside me.



Those other two islands, not so much in the population department but before my three hour tour, the breakfast of champions.



The tour destinations were Wards and Randall's Island. What do you think of this for a "big government" pedestrian bridge?







Really I took the walk for the view of the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. I knew the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the bridge was last week and wanted to write about what a Democrat once sounded like. Sounded like a good topic of conversation to me.



Kossacks found the title Happy Birthday to the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge so engaging that a grand total of twenty-two of them opened the diary wile it was on the recent diaries list. Not really a big deal to me, no matter where you go, there you are.



Both of these islands, that over the years have become one, have long histories as New York City dumping grounds. It was where New Yorkers sent both their garbage and their less desirable.

The island became a repository for people considered undesirable to mainstream society. The city first used the island as a potter's field - a public burial ground for dead people without family or friends to claim them. Later, the city built a shelter for impoverished immigrants and an insane asylum on the island. In the 1930s, Robert Moses wanted to turn both islands into a giant recreational area, but Moses was not persuasive enough, and instead, New York State built the Manhattan Psychiatric Center on the area previously occupied by the insane asylum. In addition to the hospital, other institutional buildings on the island include the New York City Fire Academy, a homeless men's shelter, a water treatment plant and a maintenance garage for the Parks Department's vehicles and equipment.

Today much of both islands are parkland and quite a pretty place for a getaway from the city.







There are even horses.



I wouldn't know a Shetland Pony from Russia, the 200 lb. mascot of Auntie El's Farm Market on on Route 17 in Sloatsburg.



But these horses are pretty small.



The view of Randall's island from the north side of Wards Island. Icahn Stadium can be seen in the background and if Cirque du Soleil this photo would be dominated by a blue and yellow tent.



The bridge over the creek.



And a look back at Wards.



Getting pretty far from the pedestrian bridge.



And close to the return bridge.



Photography is strictly forbidden. "Come and get me coppers."



The view halfway across the bridge back to Manhattan. In the middle you can see the largest building on Wards Island. The once infamous Manhattan Psychiatric Center that has not been in the news for years. You cannot see the Wards Island Men's Homeless Shelter that is almost never in the news. I once volunteered there and there are so many stories that people should know.



Back in Spanish Harlem just in time for the best Pizza in the world.



And I flew home just in time for a Bronx sunset.







Early Sunday morning, the last time I saw sunlight that day.







On Monday I went to work late but I got to seethe sunset both above and below the West Side Highway before trying to get through the Harry Potter fans.







Wednesday's sunset.







On Thursday I stopped in for a late afternoon visit to Wave Hill.















Home for a sunset dinner.



And I stayed up late enough for the view of Cosmo's Moon.



My weekend was all about the most beautiful drive in the New York City area, the Seven Lakes Drive. The fastest route to this nicest drive is not the Palisades Interstate Parkway but there is more to life then speed. Might I suggest a breakfast pit stop at the State Line Lookout? It is a hawk watcher’s paradise.







The Seven Lakes Drive that begins in Sloatsburg, New York winds through Harriman State Park. The entrance to the park and the beginning of one of the prettiest roads in America is only 27.8 miles from the George Washington Bridge.



Seven Lakes Drive is around seventeen miles long and has a strictly enforced 40 m.p.h speed limit but almost nobody minds when you are driving too slow. The road was not designed to get from one place to the next. It was designed long ago for Sunday afternoon family outings in what was then a brand new invention, the motor car. A road that was built for the purpose of forgetting the city nearby.



There is not a single gas station or convenience stand to see, nothing but nature on a road that seems to belong in a forest. Seventeen miles of trees and lakes for the whole drive with deer checking you out, occasionally even a black bear can be seen from the road. The Seven Lakes Drive ends at Bear Mountain.



The are more than seven lakes in the area. Harriman alone has thirty lakes and two hundred miles of hiking trails. About halfway through the drive The Appalachian Trail crosses the Seven Lakes Drive and there are free showers at the Lake Tiorati bath house. You will never meet a dull human who decided a 2,175 mile sounded like a good idea but occasionally you will meet a few who have made it to Medicare and Social Security. These two who were walking from Georgia’s Springer Mountain to Mount Katahdin in Maine, were two of the the most interesting and happiest people I've met this summer.



Of the thirty lakes in Harriman State Park the road is named Seven Lakes Drive because it actually comes within view of seven. Going north Lake Sebago. The name is Algonquian for "big water" and Sebago is the largest of the seven on the drive. There are several campgrounds and rustic cabins you can rent on this lake that is more like thousands of miles from New York City than the actual thirty five.







There is a popular public beach but if you pull off the drive at the Lake Sebago Boat Launch and walk about a thousand feet south, you will find the old abandoned beach. You can walk through a vast meadow where there was one a parking lot and find a sandy beach that has become overgrown with grass. This beach is closed but always occupied by Russian and Eastern European immigrants, such rebels.





The second lake on Seven Lakes Drive is around the bend at the Lake Welsh traffic circle. You can find a Nature Center there and beautiful stands of Eastern White PineLake Kanawauke.







Lake Welsh does not count as one of the Seven Lakes but it is a great place for a detour. Because most people go to Lake Welsh from the Palisades Interstate Parkway the Lake Welsh Drive is perhaps the least traveled road in lower New York State. This time of year the two miles will probably include fifteen or twenty deer and even more wild turkeys.

One of the most fascinating stories in the area is Doodletown which is now a ghost town. There is only a cemetery, a few field stone walls and flowers that have no business in a northeastern forest to mark Doodletown but along the road to lake Welsh there is another secret hamlet with a more substantial reminder of times gone by.

If you take the turn from Lake Welsh Drive at Johnsontown Road you will find a place where a small town called Sandyfield once stood. The town church, St John's in the Wilderness Church still had parishioners on Sunday but the only other signs of civilization are a caretakers house, the church barn and a well kept cemetery beside the church.



There I met Bob Woods and his wife. They posed for a photo in front of his father's grave but he also showed me the graves of his grandfather and great grandfather. The Korean War Veteran told me stories of the thirty families that once lived there. He even knew where they had all gone, down a road that is now a hiking trail called the Hasenclever to the town of Stony Point.



The wife never said a word but Bob told me stories of courting her after church each Sunday and trying to win her hand with witty conversation standing by the town well house. It was in that church barn at a summer dance in the 1950's when he asked her to marry him.



Lake Skannatati is the third lake on Seven Lakes Drive and has a free lakeside parking lot at the north end. A circle hike around this lake makes for a very pretty day.







The south end of Lake Askoti is just across the road from the Lake Skannatati parking lot and is best known for some pretty rock outcrops on the other side from Seven Lakes Drive.





Lake Tiorati that until today I always thought was the largest in the park is the most visited. There is a public beach, a huge picnic area and many summer camps on the lake. The area know as Ceder Pond is very pretty.







Lake Nawahunta is probably the smallest of the Seven Lakes. I also think it is the most beautiful.





And Finally the Silver Mine Lake, where there was once a ski lodge. I remember $2 lift tickets and another two for the equipment. Now it is a gathering place to the largest flock of barn swallows I've ever seen.







And after a drive along the Seven Lakes I always like to go up the Perkins Memorial Drive to pay my respects to George Wallbridge Perkins. Doesn’t that tower in his name just scream “New Deal?”



I’m sure glad that back then there were rich people influencing government to do the right thing, back when the government wanted to put a prison on top of Bear Mountain.

In 1908 the State of New York announced plans to relocate Sing Sing Prison to Bear Mountain. Work was begun on the area near Highland Lake (renamed Hessian Lake) and in January 1909, the state purchased the 740-acre (3.0 km2) Bear Mountain tract. Conservationists, inspired by the work of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission lobbied successfully for the creation of the Highlands of the Hudson Forest Preserve. However, the prison project was continued.

Mary Averell Harriman, whose husband, Union Pacific Railroad president E. H. Harriman died in September of that year, offered the state another 10,000 acres (40 km2) and one million dollars toward the creation of a state park. George W. Perkins, with whom she had been working, raised another $1.5 million from a dozen wealthy contributors including John D. Rockefeller and J. Pierpont Morgan. New York state appropriated a matching $2.5 million and the state of New Jersey appropriated $500,000 to build the Henry Hudson Drive, (which would be succeeded by the Palisades Interstate Parkway in 1947).

What a view!





And a pretty woman sitting under my favorite krumholtz too!



Just one more view, a look down from the northern hills at Hessian Lake in Bear Mountain State Park and the Hudson beyond.

Watch that fringe and see how it flutters
When I drive them high steppin' strutters.
Nosey pokes'll peek thru' their shutters and their eyes will pop!
The wheels are yeller, the upholstery's brown,
The dashboard's genuine leather,
With isinglass curtains y' can roll right down,
In case there's a change in the weather.
Two bright sidelight's winkin' and blinkin',
Ain't no finer rig I'm a-thinkin'
You c'n keep your rig if you're thinkin' 'at I'd keer to swap
Fer that shiny, little surrey with the fringe on the top!

Happy Birthday to the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge

Today is the Sliver Anniversary of the bridge formerly know as the The Triborough Bridge.

The New York State Assembly voted to rename the bridge two days prior to the 40th anniversary of the tragic assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and the bridge was officially renamed on November 19, 2008, one day prior to what should have been his eighty-third birthday. Amongst Robert F. Kennedy's many contributions to progress and civil rights, on the day he was recognized by the The New York State Assembly he was given credit for the oldest community development corporation in the nation, the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation.

Here's a photo of the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge that I took on Saturday.



The Bridge is also a symbol of progress. The construction of the Triborough Bridge began on Black Friday in 1929 and was almost ended by that day in history. The project was resurrected in the early 1930s by Robert Moses and the bridge was opened to traffic on July 11, 1936. As one of the largest public works projects of the Great Depression the R.F.K. Bridge created over two thousand jobs when jobs were needed most.

"The bridge symbolizes the best of what our city and our nation can do. Remember in the 1930s, this was a very, very difficult time. This was a time where they built the Triborough Bridge, the Hoover Dam and Empire State Building. To this day they are monuments to a wonderful dream," said Bob Singleton of the Greater Astoria Historical Society. "We consider it to be a planner's dream and engineer's triumph and a legacy to our city."

Today the toll revenues on the bridge that honors the name Robert F. Kennedy pays for a portion of the public transit subsidy for the New York City Transit Authority and the commuter railroads. To celebrate this significant step in bringing the five boroughs together, the MTA is promoting the 75th anniversary of the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge by putting together a photo exhibit and is hosting a roundtable discussion tonight.

In a city where renamings seldom stick, it was very fitting to name the bridge that connects Manhattan and the Bronx to Queens and another renaming that stuck, John F. Kennedy Airport. I hope New Yorkers will think twice before calling that span the Triborough Bridge and take time to remember all of the bridges in American society that were created by Robert F. Kennedy.

A Coney Island Greeting on the Fourth of July

This started out as a gray day in New York City. Instead of a view if the Palisades and an armada of small boats slowly making their way down river for the Macy's Fourth of July fireworks, my windows seemed like very large glasses of milk. it looked like a perfect day to enjoy a second viewing of John Adams on HBO and remembering what politics was once like in America.

Two years back I worked on the Fourth so I made a photo diary out of my lunch break. It was a celebration of the local farmers who also worked that day, The Lincoln Center Farmer's Market on the Fourth of July. Ron Binaghi, a 6th generation farmer who really knows his product, explained the importance of being able to "Eat it raw."



Last year on this date, I think it was about 98° and way too sunny. Because I was too busy enjoying the crowd and fun at the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest, I did not write a Fourth of July diary. So on this day, as I enjoyed John Adams, I found some of those photos and put together a Coney Island view of the Fourth of July.

I hope you are having a wonderful Fourth of July. Since I started writing the weather has cleared up some and I can smell Bar-B-Cue on my terrace. But I'm feeling lazy and stuck in John Adams mode. With the sun breaking through, some city dwellers will be enjoying the Fourth in a Johnnie Pump. And does anyone here remember Scully!



Living in the Bronx and with almost ever other driver out of town, half the fun of a Coney Island Hot Dog contest was getting there. National Parks are breathtaking but so is the view of and from the Brooklyn Bridge.







There are few pit stops as delicious as a break for a "Poor Man's Malted." Have you ever had an Egg Cream? No egg, no cream but agitation with a spoon as seltzer water, semi-frozen milk and some chocolate syrup is mixed. Mixed with those long salty pretzels, it just doesn't get any better that a genuine New York City Egg Cream.







While I was in the neighborhood I took a look around.







Goodbye Presidents Street and Hello Coney Island.



At Coney Island the year round fun never stops and there always some great views to see.







The view of the people enjoying the surf on the 4th of July.



And last years turnout from the pier with the view of where Astroland once stood.



I was lucky enough to get out there before the final days of Astroland and posted a photo diary called Got a Happy Story? Coney Island Edition. That was back in 2008 and some might feel that now with a corporate amusement park, the homogenization of Coney island is complete.

The southern tip of Brooklyn might no longer be, as George Tilyou once said, "Coney Island, between June and September, is the world," but New Yorkers are lucky that there is any amusement Park at all there. In that diary I met and thanked Dick Zigun, the self appointed Mayor of Coney Island and owner of the Freak Show.



Dick Zigun and others worked very hard as community activist to keep the amusements in Coney Island. His letter to the editors, Coney Island surf should remain working people's turf, is now a classic.

Some say it was the economic downturn that saved Coney Island from Bloomberg's dream of high rise hotels, shopping malls and office buildings but I like to think that "people powered politics" played a part. So CHEERS for the little guy on the Fourth of July.



I think "Shoot the Freak" has survived. That's harmless enough but you probably won't see anything with the controversy of a "Waterbord Thrill Ride" anytime soon at the new Coney Island.



Still amusements dodged the Bloomberg bullet at what was once the amusement center of the nation.







The new amusement park is named after the once great Luna Park and two landmarks have survived. The Wonderwheel.



And the great Cyclone that Woody Allen did not live under in Annie Hall.







Another survivor that is still standing but no longer in use. Once the people who did not want to see the view from the Cyclone because of the steep hill that followed could take a nice gentle elevator to the top.



You can find the old Coney Island everywhere you look.



And you can't say Coney Island without saying Nathan's Famous. Those hot dogs really do taste better here. It must be the salt in the air.



Last year a police officer told me that 50,000 people attended the hot dog eating contest.







And who won? I don't remember and don't even know who won this year but it was fun to watch with so many people.



CHEERS to the people.



Had enough of my photos? If not you can always go visit The Lincoln Center Farmer's Market on the Fourth of July and celebrate some of the Americans who are making a difference.



John Adams just ended. You gotta love a mini-series that ends with;

"My Dearest Friend,
Whether I stand high or low in the estimation of the world, my conscience is clear. I thank God I have you for a partner in all the joys and sorrows, all the prosperity and adversity of my life. To take a part with me in the struggle." --John Adams to Abigail Adams

"Should I draw you the picture of my heart, you would know with what indescribable pleasure I have seen so many scores of years roll over our heads, with an affection heightened and improved by time. Nor have the dreary years of absence in the smallest degree effaced from my mind the image of the dear, untitled man to whom I gave my heart. You could not be, nor did I wish to see you, an inactive spectator." --Abigail Adams to John Adams

"Oh, posterity.You will never know how much it cost us to preserve your freedom. I hope that you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it." --John Adams

A parting shot.



Have a Happy.

Remembering an Artistic Watering Hole

I have some fond memories to share. After reliving the experience of seeing The Dizzy Gillespie Dream Band, thoughts drummed up about another aspect of Lincoln Center. The nostalgia for a once famous bar that was across the street on 63rd and Amsterdam, a place where I once helped make the music and sang along for many years, came on strong.

Let me start out where Alvie Singer ended because it is a good way to set the stage. In the background during the final scene from Annie Hall you can see the concert hall where Dizzy Gillespie blew me away but in the foreground, the camera was set up in a bar and restaurant that was once called "O'Neals' Baloon."



The view is for you. I need no reminders of what O'Neils Balloon looked like and this in not a story about me. Perhaps this is a story about a forgotten era that might just be making a comeback after of the success of the movie Black Swan. Well not really, more popularity and higher ticket prices can never take up the slack where the National Endowment for the Arts left off.

This is a story of a painting getting its act together and taking it on the road, a story of ballet at the barre and a recollection of times gone by. Just memories of a social gathering spot that was name "balloon" because it was illegal to call a bar a "saloon" in New York City. Those Blue Laws have been changed now. So much has changed now. So much has been forgotten.

"So, set 'em, Joe" Today if you look across the street from Lincoln Center the same corner of the Empire Hotel is still occupied by a bar and restaurant. P.J. Clarke's probably has an even richer history than O'Neals' but that is another story. As one establishment expanded, a joint that was famous for hard drinking news reporters, Frank Sinatra sightings and Johnny Mercer writing One for My Baby (and One More for the Road) on a cocktail napkin, the O’Neal family contracted back to the original Lincoln Center location.

O’Neal's Baloon was not uncommon in many respects, very similar to most bars across the nation where you could enjoy a tasty burger and good conversation. It was a family run restaurant and one family member, Cynthia O'Neal worked hard to make sure the food was far better than most bar food but other than that, the roots of O'Neals' Baloon was no different from many drinking establishments back then. A place where a warm atmosphere could be found and friends were waiting at the bar.

That root was The Ginger Man, a bar that was born in an empty garage on West 64th Street. From the beginning there was some link to fame. One of the four owners, two brothers and their two wives, was the actor Patrick O’Neal and he was appearing in a successful play on Broadway. That play was called "The Ginger Man" but it did little for drumming up business at first. The construction workers who were working to complete the very first gathering of major cultural institutions into a centralized location in an American city were probably the first steady customers at The Ginger Man.



Back in 1964, when The Ginger Man opened in a neighborhood known for working class families, the tenements of 'West Side Story' and the automobile dealerships on Broadway, the neighborhood was in the final stages of a grand transition. In 1962, just across Broadway, the New York Philharmonic had already left Carnegie Hall and Leonard Bernstein conducted the gala opening at Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) in their new Lincoln Center home. 1964 was the same year that New York City Ballet took up residence as New York State's cultural participation in the 1964-1965 World's Fair behind the travertine walls of the New York State Theater. You can still taste the flavor of 1964-1965 World's Fair in that theater, that was built with state funding, renamed "The Ramada Opera House" by The New York Times architectural reviewer back in 1964 and had a tragic renaming during the summer of 2008.

Two years later business was better at The Ginger Man, so the bar and restaurant expanded to the new location on 63rd and Amsterdam. The birth of O'Neals' Baloon, that was probably intended to cash in on the theater going crowd but almost immediately filled to capacity with people who worked in Lincoln Center, happened around the same time that Lincoln Center was getting into the swing of things. It was the year of final season at "The Old Met" and on September 16, 1966, The Metropolitan Opera House, that just closed the 2011 season with Richard Wagner, opened with the world premiere of Samuel Barber's Antony and Cleopatra.



I was not there at the very beginning but I understand that the Baloon opened to rave reviews. The activity level and atmosphere of this liberal drinking destination in the late 1960's and early 70's is hard to explain in an era of the $14 Manhattan Martini and corporate bartenders who are more interested in their smart phones than their customers. Those thirsty times were also well before the popularity of red velvet ropes and people who looked like they should be playing for the NY Giants deciding who entered and who didn't. There was an atmosphere similar to, but much warmer than, the sidewalks of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Eight deep but instead of crowding up to police lines, the celebrants were hugging an oak rail and watching bartenders preforming a high speed chase scene to pass cocktails out into the crowd.

There was the occasional tourist but it was the sort of bar that you could walk in and possibly see the Leonard Bernstein entourage at one end while George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins would be discussing the next New York City Ballet production at the other. Producers and directors from other media along with the stars of the Broadway stage and movie personalities were also drawn to O'Neals'. They came to embrace the people who were building New York's newest experiment, Lincoln Center for the Preforming Arts. So many great minds in one place made for a sort of magic in the air.

The customers were mostly theater people but not all were movers and shakers in the theater world. Since getting rich and preforming arts rarely merge, I don't think any fortunes were made on cocktail napkins but several opera and ballet sets got designed that way and occasionally with the stagehand sitting beside the designer suggesting a scrim for that portal or coming up with more efficient stage moves. Musicians discussing their next "possible twenty" rubbing shoulders with composers going over their next masterpiece would become associations. Performing art deals were made, shows were created at the bar but more often it was elders passing on knowledge to the young and people from different fields discussing anything from the newest productions across the street to the families waiting at home.

In this day and age of "social media" you would think such a crowd would become cliquish but that never seemed to be the case. Everyone knew everyone else and everyone seemed equal. It was very different times when you would be hoisting a drink in the evening with the same people that you would be sitting across from on the collective bargaining table from the next day or drinking with the director of the production you would be working on that night. Way back when a liberal and a conservative could sit at the bar and politely talk politics all night long, there was little separation to be found. It was just a familiar sort of place where Maestro Irving was just plain "Robert" and Rudolf Nureyev was "Rudy Baby!"

About a year after the sad demise of O'Neals' Baloon, Jim Enzel who was the last manager there summed up the feel of bar when "The Talk of the Town" at The New Yorker was already trying to find the good old days. Jim said;

"That was some bar. Every night you'd have Robert Irving, City Ballet's chief conductor, there, in his tuxedo, and next to him would be three or four dancers, and next to them would be stagehands in their sneakers. At 'Nutcracker' time you'd have kids running around too. It was terrific - artist, movie people regular people. You'd come up to the bar, and there would be a fur coat talking to a guy in bluejeans. I'd say in my restaurant experience that was one of the best-choreographed bars in New York."

Primarily O'Neals' was a ballet bar, a place for dancers to hang out and let loose. During the holiday seasons when 'Nutcracker' was playing across the street and the bar would really be buzzing, I have fond memories of not just children running around. I recall being surrounded by Sugar Plum Fairies nursing white wine spritzers and on matinees days they would still be in make-up. If the crowd was thin enough you could have seen something as amazing as a young Peter Martins demonstrating some new choreography to his fellow dancers. I was lucky enough to see that and also remember many a ballet star "busting a move" there that was more Bob Fosse than ballet.

The late great George Balanchine even wrote a song about O'Neil's Baloon. Well actually it was about ballerinas sitting on their behinds and getting lazy while drinking and flirting with the bartenders. But as any member of the NYCB company would tell you, it was all in jest. I worked there and remember the great choreographer as taking on the role of everyone's loving and caring father. Carol Sumner, who was once one of Balanchine's principle dancers, recalled both those times and Mr. Balanchine in "TIME FRAME."

"And you know what was really fun about the place too, because a lot of us were very young and had just moved into the City after living with our parents in New Jersey or Brooklyn and we were on our own? We were serious, good kids working at a career. We were level-headed, but at the same time it was wonderful to go into O'Neals’ and sit at a bar for the first time. Be a woman who could sit at a bar and be safe and understood! There would even be stagehands from the Met and the ballet. You didn't have to worry. You could even flirt a little bit if you wanted to. And everyone knew who we were and that we were in showbiz and that we were the up-and-comings of Mr. B. We were filled with emotion. If I could tell you the crushes on various waiters who were young and handsome! Mr. B knew everything but he would let us do it because it was part of our development as people ... I remember him taking me over there occasionally. We would be walking out the stage door together, and he would say, ‘Let’s go to O’Neals!’.' And we would have a drink and chat. He loved the place."

If you were young and single with a job in Lincoln Center than O'Neals' Baloon was the place to be. But it was also far more than that and sort of stood out as an amazing sort of cultural exchange. The dominant ballet company was the NYCB because the New York State Theater was just across the street. The walk was not much further when American Ballet Theater was in residence at the Met. Even the dance companies that preformed at City Center, all the way over at 55th and The Avenue of the Americas, those dancers seemed to find their way to O'Neal's too.

But ballet came from much further that that, with Sol Hurok acting as the real Ambassador to Russia and the National Endowment for the Arts subsidizing many tours, the world's greatest ballet companies almost seemed like summertime residents of New York City. If the Stuttgart was in town, O'Neals' had a German accent and when the Royal was in residence your ears told you it was a London tavern. For the Bolshoi or Kirov they stocked up on the vodka and the parties never seemed to end.

The cultural exchange was far more than teaching Danish dancers how to properly set a "Depth Charge," understanding London Pub etiquette or learning from Russians that after raising a glass and saying "Na Zdorovie" if one drop of vodka was left in the glass it represented bad wishes for all that you toasted with. Not that teaching "Liar's Poker" to people who never heard of the game wasn't a good investment but you could get rich in many other ways sitting on a bar stool at O'Neals'. Everything from learning what "Uncle Vanya" meant to the people it was written for to finding out from a British stagehand what their National Health Service was really like. A listener could learn what a day in the life of a Parisian was like or hear about relaxing vacations in Brighton, Niece or a dacha in the white birch forest of Russia. It was all pretty amazing to learn the realities of life far from home, especially so, while living in America.

The ballet connection was caused by Cynthia O'Neal. Her and her famous husband Patrick were big fans of the dance world. Actually Patrick O'Neal was famous for collecting the dirty rotten stay outs at closing time, dungareed stagehands included, and packing them into yellow cabs to continue the party at his Central Park South pied-à-terre. The view of the park was spectacular. Cynthia was really the huge ballet fan and had close ties with the stars of the day. She was also responsible for the one enduring piece of O'Neals' Balloon nostalgia.

"The dancers were always there: I was insane about them, and I just got the idea, Wouldn't it be fun – since they come here all the time – to do a mural?

That still famous 16 foot long painting is called "Dancers at the Bar," by Robert Crowl. The long bar that I remember so well and that windows that faced the Plaza at Lincoln Center along with the overhead rack for glasses and the distinctive clock were captured in that mural. Thirty-three of the regulars from that era, including waiters, the restaurant's maitre d' and manager, also included members the world's leading ballet companies standing and sitting beside the O'Neal family. The painting captured that era of ballet in America.

Can you find Peter Martins in the mural? I remember him being one of their best customers and I used to be able to pick him out but even though I worked with him when he was very young, I no longer can. The man who is now in charge of the New York City Ballet must be the blond kid in the red, white and blue stripes and the woman he is straddling seems familiar but my memory fails me. (Click here for the big picture)



Outside of the unmistakable Patrick O'Neal in the Blue blazer and dark turtleneck, the faces are no longer familiar but I remember the styles. Carol Sumner said she was wearing hot pants, so she is probably besides the pant leg of the of the dancer in the Bruins jersey. Sara Leland got written up for wearing a mini. Perhaps Sara is on the right in the short green skirt. I think that is Balanchine's "Ruby" Patricia McBride wearing a Midi and long black boots while sitting above the rack that held glasses. So that must be Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux beside her and the man Patricia McBride seems to be thinking about kicking in the head must be Robert Irving.

Two of the great American Ballet Theater stars posed for the mural, Edward Villella and Cynthia Gregory. One of Mr. Balanchine's "Emeralds" Mimi Paul is in there somewhere. Former Principal dancer with the Royal Ballet include Ann Jenner, David Wall and one of Sir Kenneth MacMillan's favorites, Lynn Seymour. A pair of John Cranko's stars from the Stuttgart Ballet posed, Egon Madsen who is still active and Heinz Clauss who is sadly no longer with us. Sir Anthony Dowell who retired as the Artistic Director of Britain's Royal Ballet and Dame Monica Mason who has also been the director of that company can be found somewhere.

There are several who are still at the top of their game, including the artistic director of English National Ballet Wayne Eagling, from the San Francisco Ballet there is Helgi Tomasson and Dennis Nahat who directs the San Jose Ballet. John Clifford. who established Los Angeles’ first successful resident professional ballet company posed. There is Karin von Aroldingen, one of the founding members of The George Balanchine Trust but sadly not Mr. Balanchine's "Diamond" the wonderful Suzanne Farrell.

There was a day many years ago that I remember the corner of O'Neals' Baloon being destroyed and I remember someone telling me it was a taxi cab. They get blamed for everything in New York. But when I read that Time Line Cynthia O'Neal, who always like to talk about all the times that Rudolph Nureyev almost posed, told a different story.

Although they weren't portrayed in the mural, many of the most celebrated dancers of the Bolshoi, the likes of Maris Liepa and Yuri Vladimirov hung out at O'Neals' after performances, of course under the watchful eye of the KGB in those pre-glasnost days. Cynthia remembers particularly one after-hours, vodka-laced party that went on until very late. Shortly after everyone had left, a car pursued by the police crashed into the restaurant, demolishing the large round table that a couple of hours previously had seated the cream of the Bolshoi stars. She still shudders at the carnage that might have been. And the group portrait of dancers, hanging just above, looked calmly down over it all.

It was not just ballet that O'Neal's should be remembered for. The bar once represented a study for what a day in "Theater Life" was once like and for many it was like going home to family. Good food, decent prices and a pleasant atmosphere packed the Balloon with the blue collar theaters workers at the start of the "theater day," around 5 p.m. Ushers and supernumeraries were mostly people with day jobs who worked nights for very little money but to see or be seen on the grand stage. After the first hard day's work they would be the early arrivals, lining up at the bar in the late afternoon sun with place settings that made the bar seem more like a cafeteria counter. There was both the comfort of a chicken pot pie and a conversation with the bartenders about the day at the office.

A little later, once the place was getting busy by most standards, the stage managers and technicians who worked rehearsals every day and needed to go right back for the performance in the evening would show up for a dinner break at the bar. The black bean soup with sour cream followed by hand cut French fries and the best burger in the Lincoln Center area could be had for little more than a song. On dress rehearsal days musicians, wardrobe and hair departments would also need a place to rest. The rainbow trout and steak au poivre were extremely popular.

Then the theater goers would arrive as the place would start looking like a happy madhouse as the bartenders would go from good conversion to working their magic. They were the linchpin of the whole operation. If O'Neals' was happening now Robert and Richie, the two bartenders I remember most, would be celebrities on the internet as the real choreographers of that scene that is now forgotten. From the early evening cocktail juggling act to closing time when they were fondly known as the "train killers," Robert and Richie were just the right combination of a little drink pouring showmanship and a lot of knowing and caring about every single customer. "Train killers" as in "I need to make the 11:40 out of Penn Station"..."Let's have a nightcap and and then I'll have to make the 12:20"..."Just one more and I'll jump in a cab for the 12:40"..."Oops! I missed my last train. Can I sleep at your place?"

It wasn't just about the bar. With one of the first Manhattan sidewalk permits I can recall and an interior tent wrapping around the entire establishment, the tables took up far more space than the bar rail. By seven o'clock Speed Stone kept the red and white checkered tablecloths humming with everything from visiting dignitaries to the bridge and tunnel crowd, while the bartenders kept the local workers and customers waiting for a seat buzzing at the bar. The young and beautiful waiters and waitresses, most of them actors working towards their big break, added to the atmosphere. Fresh after a hopeful audition enthusiasm raced through the crowd like smiling obstacle course runners and always with a pleasant greeting or a quick joke.

But what a pair Robert and Richie did make. They both had a a strong mother instinct. No matter how crowded the bar was, if you called out for a hamburger you got more than just the best burger in the neighborhood. It was understood that you would also get a place setting and someone up front would be chased out of their bar stool. From Richie it would be "Theater worker on a short break need their nourishment." From Robert the negotiations would be too quiet to make out." Non-alcoholic beverage on short breaks were always free. I fondly remember Richie's line "Nonsense I never charge stagehands for medicine." From Robert it would be knuckles rapped on the bar to signal "On the house."

Robert was the stereotypical Irish bartender. I don't know if Robert actually had any Irish heritage but he had all the right moves. He had that now rare talent of listening to a customer's story or thumbing through their vacation photos while seeming very interested and remembered the names of most customers along with their family members. Now Richie, he remembered you and made everyone feel welcomed but he also went to work to hold court. Everyone loved every word he said. Richie was a tall thin man with white hair who was not only impeccably dressed, it seemed that he never wore the same shirt or tie twice. Richie had all of Robert's talents plus he was also a walking theater encyclopedia. He knew more back then about the goings on both backstage and in the footlights than Michael Riedel does today and Richie knew which stories not to tell while telling the ones he did were far more interesting than the efforts of some New York Post reporter.

They were also both also everybody's time clock. Since everyone who works in the theater doesn't need to be there from curtain going up to the bitter end for many customers a visit to O'Neals' was a 50 yard dash from the New York State Theater to the bar between scenes. There's an App for that today but back then the two bartenders kept a running tally of who needed to be back when and never missed a cue. Can you imagine Peter Martins dancing the lead role in the first part of a triple bill and sitting at the bar with blue jeans over his tights for the next two in the bill? Or better yet, the look on someone's face when Richie told them "That bar stool is taken. The customer just ran across the street to take a bow."

It's all good memories but the story has a happy ending, or rather has yet to end. The high flying days of the family owning several Manhattan restaurants have ended and Patrick O'Neal passed way back in 1994 but his brother Mike is still a restaurateur. There are two outdoor eateries where he and his wife Christine can still be found. One is a small pretty building, just a few footsteps from the Dairy and Carousel in Central Park, a snack bar for the softball fields.

The larger of the two is down by the Hudson River at The West 79th Street Boat Basin Cafe. There the food reminds me of the good old days and the photo to the left is a relic from the very first restaurant. The place is definitely worth visiting.

Cynthia O'Neal, along with the famous director Mike Nichols, founded the crisis center for life-threatening illness that is called Friends In Deed.

As to the mural “Dancers at the Bar,” you could say it has gone home. When the second O'Neals' (originally the Ginger Man) closed stagehands carried the panels across the street to the New York State Theater, where the painting now hangs in the company’s main rehearsal hall. Someday you might be able to see it too.

Rob Daniels, a City Ballet spokesman, said in an e-mail message, “We also hope to exhibit the mural in the front of house area of the theater at some point in the future.”

I could not find a photo of O'Neals' Baloon but back when the second O'Neals' closed there was an auction of the artwork and I saved a copy of this painting. My apologies to the artist, I did not save his or her name but here is a view I remember so well.



You won't find me hanging out at the barre anymore but at one time I thought it was about the most wonderful place on earth, my prime of life watering hole. Dancers, opera singers, actors and members of the New York Philharmonic mingling with stage managers, stagehands, wardrobe and hair people. Hey you know, expose yourself to art. I am looking forward to the day that painting goes back on display.