{"id":2646,"date":"2011-05-21T15:14:03","date_gmt":"2011-05-21T22:14:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=2646"},"modified":"2011-05-21T15:14:03","modified_gmt":"2011-05-21T22:14:03","slug":"the-end-of-elaines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2011\/05\/the-end-of-elaines\/","title":{"rendered":"The End Of Elaine’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a sad changing-times story this week in New York City, where it was big news. Elaine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, the Upper East Side restaurant that for nearly five decades has been a meeting place and hangout for writers, theater and film people and a few musicians, is closing. Elaine Kaufman, who founded the restaurant, died last December. She left it to her manager, Diane Becker, who said business had dropped to the point where she can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t keep it going. The last meal—and the last drink at the long bar where Elaine held court and sometimes managed the place like a top sergeant—will be served late the night of Thursday, May 27. For details of the closing and the history of the place, see these stories in The New York Daily News<\/em><\/a> and The New York Times<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Paul Desmond discovered Elaine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shortly after Kaufman opened it in 1963. It was a place where he could quietly drink, spend time with friends and nurture the notion that he was writing a book, one chapter of which actually appeared. I spent my share of late nights there with Paul. When my Desmond biography<\/a> was published, it is where we held the book\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s coming out party<\/a>. An evening at Elaine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s was likely to involve stimulating conversation with a rotating cast of characters and, sometimes, unscheduled entertainment. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an excerpt from the biography.<\/p>\n

Tim Ryan, the television sportscaster then with NBC, was one of many acquaintances who occasionally sat with Desmond at Elaine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s. He was there with Paul late one night in the mid-seventies when a couple of customers duked it out.<\/p>\n

Ryan said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think I was having coffee and Paul was having another Dewars. Two drunken patrons in the back part of the front room started punching each other. They threw a couple of chairs. They were too smashed to do much harm, but they were creating a major distraction. Elaine came back from her perch at the bar\"\"<\/a> and ordered a pair of waiters who were watching, to separate the guys. The waiters wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go near the fight. Now Elaine was furious not only with the amateur boxers, but with the waiters as well, and started yelling obscenities at all of them. Finally, she waded in, grabbed the brawlers by their necks and pulled them apart. While all this was going on, she never stopped swearing; \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThis is the last time you bastards will ever be in this joint,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and other more colorful phrases, and she threw them out. It was Elaine at her most volatile and best. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t recall ever seeing those waiters again. Paul and I had a ringside seat. We enjoyed it enormously.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With Elaine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gone, my next visit to New York will be less interesting, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll probably get more sleep. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a sad changing-times story this week in New York City, where it was big news. Elaine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, the Upper East Side restaurant that for nearly five decades has been a meeting place and hangout for writers, theater and film people and a few musicians, is closing. Elaine Kaufman, who founded the restaurant, died last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2646","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}