22.05.12

There are many reasons why Gregory’s was a magical place for me. First of all there was the nautical theme. Just inside the front door there were two real whale bones, seven feet tall and touching at the top. Passing under them, you could go left to the bar or right to the dining room. On the bar side was an enormous captain’s wheel and an assortment of ropes and pulleys draped over wooden barrels. On the dining room side was the “crow’s nest table.” This was an ordinary round table, but it was perched about five feet in the air on a large “mast” and was accessible only by ladder. For many years, it was my favorite place on earth.

But it was the regulars who really made Gregory’s special. Listed individually, they sound like a collection of clichés. English Billy typically came to the bar after a game of tennis, wearing white short-shorts and Tretorns. Daisy, a guy whose nickname no one understood, was tall and thin and smart, and so, inevitably, he had a handlebar mustache. Sal wore painted-on, stonewashed jeans with tucked-in white V-neck T-shirts. His partner, George, was a flight attendant. Don Jo, an older Cuban man who sold high-end lace for a living, always wore a fedora. The hostess chain-smoked Virginia Slims and her name was Marge. And of course there was my dad, a cop with a Tom Selleck mustache.

Source: New York Times (blog)