The Great American Saloon Series / The Saloons of Wall Street
Mysak, Joe
cise, as these things went: a barren room, an official witness, browbeating, shouting, and sometimes foul language. Rickover was criticized on occasion for the way he handled these...
...He refused to answer a question on defense spending and, when asked for his views on a solution to the arms race, of the Admiral: that there i s n ' t a Russian skipper anywhere on or under the earth's oceans who sleeps soundly in his berth at night, for fear of Hyman Rickover's sleek, silent, and deadly creations, and for that every American owes him an endur...
...until 8 or 9 p.m...
...Drinking amidst Chippendale antiques and locks of the Father of Our Country's hair...
...His first wife, apparently beloved, died in 1972...
...Undeniably true...
...There is Brennan's on Stone Street, and The Bridge Pub...
...At least a score of such places exist in the Wall Street area...
...The building, at 54 Pearl Street, is a 1907 reconstruction sponsored by the Sons of the Revolution, but it is nonetheless accurate...
...It contains a littleknown taproom, featuring comfy leather chairs, draped campaign flags, and several stuffed buffalo and moose heads--the whole place has the air of the Explorer's Club, which is further uptown...
...I cannot tell...
...there are just none near Wall Street...
...Jefferson's rotunda, he spoke instead about whales, the evils of progress, the belching of "great quantities of junk into the atmosphere," the exhaustion of resources...
...They are a great deal worse...
...The staffs somehow always feel compelled to speak with Irish brogues of varying degrees of authenticity...
...upstairs rooms are regularly used for various functions...
...by J oe Mysak food is Usually swell, however, and on par wkh the cuisine served aboard ocean liners...
...Some of these places also feature two-man bands on the big nights...
...True, they are usually only asked for a glass of white wine, Perrier with a twist of lime, or a bottle of Bud or Michelob, or even "something with vodka in it," but I have seen them mix such relatively complicated potations as martinis and Bloody Marys with a fair degree of competence...
...Why this should be so is a mystery...
...The typical Wall Street saloon is 15 feet wide, about 110 feet deep, and has a "dance floor" the size of a linen closet...
...Such fellows are invariably graduates of the upper East Side prepster saloons favored by pert little coeds named Megan and Courmey, Ivy League athletes, the Top Siders crowd, and winsome Scandinavian students with a tenuous command of the English language...
...Needless to say, these hale fellows have no time to talk about it, let alone discuss current events, because they are constantly shooting drinks out to a surging, importuning mob of about 5,000...
...They are, in the main, elegant, but most of theiz bartenders speak only a kind of Spanish Latvian, and have trouble whipping up anything besides such Street favorites as a glass of white wine, Perrier with a twist of lime, or a bottle of beer, which is invariably Beck's when it is not Heineken...
...He is "not proud" of the part he played in the development of nuclear submarines and wishes that the United States and the USSR would "sink them a l l . " The arms race is out of control and " w e ' l l replied, " . . . wipe out all the Americans and then wipe out all the Soviets . . ." A few months ago, when it begaa to look as if Presidem Reagan might not extend Admiral Rickover's tenure, a former undersecretary of the Navy took to the pages of the probably destroy ourselves . . . . Washington Post to write in defense Some new species will come along...
...They may be wiser...
...They are often not more than 20 years old, and more often are fresh out of high school They all talk with incredible New York accents and dress in what they see as high style, i.e., like whores...
...ins debt of gratitude...
...The reasons are not publicly known, but Rickover himself has provided some clues...
...Nevertheless, it will do very nicely, even though saloons, as a matter of course, are not located in museums...
...Two years later he married a career Navy nurse, who retired shortly after their marriage...
...And these are also men who have found that they cannot go anyplace after work for a beer without a modicum of discomfort or humiliation...
...There is usually a battalion of construction workers on han,., as well as the junior executives...
...Cutting a path to the bar (packed six-deep), choking and blinking back the smog, getting a hole burned in your suit, screaming inaudibly over the band, and finding out you've just seduced a 17-year-old --well, that's just part of the fun...
...But he continued to do it his way, without interference...
...Only one or two, however, come close to qualifying as truly great saloons, and even they cast aside their dignity at night, when it really counts...
...Too, the really toff clubs seem not to stock any but Our Own brand of distilled spirits, the sort of stuff featuring plenty of fake heraldry and portraits of Lord Birdbath...
...Which leaves us with Fraunces Tavern, where George Washington said goodbye to his troops...
...But clubs are not saloons...
...Eschewing the billing that had packed Mr...
...This is not to say that there is not a great number of places to slake one's thirst near the Battery...
...During his final testimony before Congress, the Admiral declared that radioactivity is so dangerous that all military and civilian nuclear reactors should be barred...
...He had friends in Congress...
...The India House was remodeled in 1924 for a businessmen's club, and the THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1982 25...
...Is it the authors' fault...
...or later...
...First, there are the girls--the cleri24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1982 cal help from the banks, brokers, and publishers...
...In short, these are men who need a drink...
...Things are not as bad as they seem...
...They all have jukeboxes, which only play "Centerfold" by the J . Geils Band, "Come Go With Me" by the Beach Boys, and "At the Hop" by Danny and the Juniors...
...The Joe Mysak is a writer living in New Jersey...
...She left behind one book and one angry interview, of which the authors make use...
...Rickover was criticized on occasion for the way he handled these interviews, among other things...
...The area has perhaps a dozen private clubs, but none is a saloon in any sense of the word...
...THE SALOONS OF WALL STREET Delmonico's is closed...
...On Trinity Place you have the Pig 'N' Whistle, whose redeeming feature is very cold Michelob on tap, served in pints, and Volk's, which has been serving them up in various locations since 1882, but which, unfortunately, lacks any kind of atmosphere besides one or two stray remnants of its past glory-an old beer stein, a World-Telegram newspaper clipping...
...G } n e of the ingredients of a great saloon is the patrons, and here, certainly, is where these watering holes and the lofty ideal part company...
...These latter are men driven to desperate drinking, men who have spent the day in knots over the latest lease-financing techniques, the surge in M1, the continuing saga of the Washington Public Power Supply System's projects 1, 2, and 3, and unit investment trust volume...
...They are easily good for two packs of cigarettes, a couple of drags of controlled substances, 15 drinks, and a crush or two apiece before the curtain goes down at midnight or so...
...Nor are they normally dynamited, as was Fraunces some years back, by some Puerto Rican nationalists...
...Yet Harry's turns into the typical Street madhouse after dark, with the average age of the patrons dropping by a good 20 years...
...There are, after all, great American saloons in New York City...
...They may very well have exerted a wraith-like influence on Rickover's life...
...There is Rosie O'Grady's on Pearl Street...
...But remember my fellow grateful Americans: This is also the man who, after a personal interview, hired Jimmy Carter to run a nookaleer reactor...
...nevertheless, it is a fact...
...There is a family: Despite Rickover's frequent derogatory comments about the foolishness of "nest building" and "egg hatching," he sired a son, who is now 42, a financier...
...It is believed that she was the ghostwriter of Rickover's books on education...
...These are men who have gone through years and years and God-knows-how-many dollars' worth of graduate school, and who work from 7 a.m...
...Imagine...
...If you are anybody in the financial community, Harry's is the place to eat lunch, or at least to stop by for a few drinks...
...There always seem to be some construction workers around it, too, but the legendary Delmonico's is no more, and neither is the great American saloon on Wall Street...
...One is Harry's of Hanover Square, located in the bottom of the India House, a landmark Anglo-Italianate brownstone built in 1852-53, which once housed the Cotton Exchange...
...He was Admiral of The Hill...
...These three people are wraithlike in Rickover, of no significance whatever...
...S h o r t l y after this book became available, Rickover's luck ran out: President Reagan declined to continue him on active duty upon the expiration of his latest two-year extension...
...Yet it must be admitted that despite the talk the bartenders are the fastest on earth...
...His first wife, Ruth Masters Rickover, was an intellectual --a linguist and an expert in international law...
...That it should come to this...
...He came to the University of Virginia recently to speak on "The Presidency and National Defense...
...There are a few exceptions...
...Ask for the Carstairs and you get a blank look...
...It has been closed for a long time, although the curved brass nameplate is still there...
Vol. 15 • September 1982 • No. 9
