Scruffy Duffy's Farewell!

Kids, Scruffy Duffy's is CLOSING on February 6th.

I remember when it was just another 8th Avenue bar, way back when 8th Avenue was scary as hell, it was far too scary to even walk in the door. Then Pat and Eileen took it over from their father, renamed it Scruffy Duffy's, and opened their doors. I had a roommate who got a job bartending there, and Scruff's became a regular haunt. Those were the days when you didn't start getting ready to go out until 10 pm, and that was on a Tuesday night. I don't know how I did it, but in those days I consumed my fair share of brown liquor at Scruffy's on lots and lots of school nights and still got up and went to work clear-eyed and sharp. There were peanut shells on the floor, cable spools for tables, and the floor was see-through. We showed up for Karaoke Thursdays anyway.

In the late 90's there was a core group of regulars, your Janey included, who used to camp out at the front of the bar around the pool table. We would lounge in the two park benches at the front of the bar and the front windows and at the front of the bar. I plugged my five dollar bills into the jukebox and played "The Female of the Species (Is More Deadly Than the Male)" nine hundred and forty five times. I thank Alan the bartender for not hating me for making him suffer through it at least twice a night. The Rev used to come in on Ash Wednesday and give ashes. Shelly invented a drink, served in a pint glass. It was 1 shot of Absolut Currant and the rest of the pint was filled with club soda. It became known as the Shelly Cocktail, as in, "What'll you have? A Shelly?" You went to the john a lot, but you never got drunk, just mildly happy, and you could stay all night just cruising at 33,000 feet of buzzed. It was a neighborhood place. Roni and Sean were the most beautiful and in-love couple in the neighborhood, until they weren't.

Joe Pool ran the table almost every night. When he wasn't there, Tom W would take over with his funny break. Everyone followed the house pool rules (Rule #1: Don't be an idiot. Pretty good life advice, too).

There were scandals and hookups and fights and feuds.

The bartenders were part of our little family, Bob, Sean, Alan, Enda, Dermot.

Pat used to take regulars on "outings" -- to the Renaissance Fair, Booze Cruises, and once he even chartered a bus to take us to Great Adventure. We were on a Scruffy's booze cruise one night in August 1997, and we all drank tons of beer and I danced to salsa music until my feet in their strappy black sandals bled. We came off the boat and piled into cabs and didn't believe the cab driver when he told us "Princess Diana! She dead!" For some reason, none of us went back to Scruffy's that night -- we went across the street to JR's instead, where the Irish contingent of our group were all in tears. I remember the fine shine went off the night and I went home.

Pat would turn New Year's Eve into a "members only" night to keep out the bridge and tunnel riff-raff who would try to come in after watching the ball drop.

For my birthday in 1999 I asked Pat to hire Karaoke Dave from the early years, and he did it! I got to have my own private karaoke birthday party at Scruffy Duffy's. As a present, my ex-boyfriend gave me his Levi's denim jacket, perfectly worn in (falling to bits, actually), with the zebra striped collar he had had his grandmother sew onto it. He went home with a girl who wanted to be my friend and never would be after that. I still have that jacket and wear it occasionally.

Over the years, Pat made gradual improvements to Scruffy's, in lockstep with the upscalification of the neighborhood. The crowd got a little more uppish, and pretty soon the regular crowd scattered a bit, finding the crowds of suit-wearing Ogilvy ad guys and the ones from the financial firms that had set up shop in Times Square a little too "duuuuuude" to tolerate. The regulars scattered to other bars, other neighborhoods.

We do still drop in from time to time, and we always get a warm welcome from Pat.

So now, the Scruffy's era is coming to an end, not with a bang but not quite with a whimper, either.

Thanks, Pat. It was fun.

Has Anyone Noticed...

...that you never see singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright and figure skater Johnny Weir in the same room?




I'm just saying.

What I Did for the Past 30 Days

1. I had a bad birthday. A miserable birthday. Something like 3 people remembered it was my birthday. One of them was my father, who sang his annual "Happy Birthday to youuuuu" into my voice mail. He was calling from the hospital and sounded weak and sick, but still managed to call his Baby Girl on her birthday. I deleted the message at the end of the day, telling myself that I would call him on Sunday, after the morning news shows so we could have one of our talks about the jerks who populate the Republican party.

2. On Sunday morning at approximately 2:00 a.m., Dad died. So I didn't get to call him, after all. Tony Blankley will have to go on being a jerk without Dad to comment on it.

3. On Thursday, we buried him in the new National Cemetery of the Alleghenies (one of the early arrivals at this new cemetery built to accommodate the approximately 325,000 veterans living in Western Pennsylvania.) Quoth my younger brother, "I think this is probably the slowest Dad's ever driven on Clifton Road."

4. I became, at last, a full-time, permanent staffer at the company where I started in August. The wheels of HR turn slowly, slowly, slowly. I attended new-hire orientation. Apparently this company has grown so much and continues to grow that they are doing a weekly orientation with approximately 30 new hires every week.

5. Last week, as I turned the corner from 53rd Street onto Madison Avenue on my way to work, I heard a thump, then screams, and turned my head in time to see two people get hit, then RUN OVER by a speeding yellow taxi, which then, missing me by inches, crashed into a building a foot in front of me. I watched a white-haired gentleman with blood on his head get to his feet and wander away. The woman was not so lucky. Though the police officer to whom I gave my statement said she was alive, she was face down and broken in the gutter. It was the worst thing I've ever seen in person. What I keep seeing is the look of disbelief on her face as she flew by me. What I keep wondering is -- how is she doing now? What happened to that man? And, had I been two or three seconds faster, I would have been crushed against the building by the cab. One down, eight to go.

So you see, it's been an unsettling kind of month for me. So I'm taking a little break.

And Still More Thoughts

I am far too old to be tearing around New York City on a Thursday night until 3 in the morning, on the back of a Harley Davidson, with my skirt hiked up around my hips. But I can't say I didn't have fun.

***

I was just at the 40th b-day party for a friend of mine who just sold his company in an EIGHT FIGURE deal. His part of the nut was seven figures, but who's counting. I am so, so happy for him! He and his wife bought a yacht and are learning to sail. I love that. Even if he does like to say that after World War II his father left Austria and went to Chile as a "tax exile." If that's what you call war criminals these days, I'd love to see what euphemism they come up with for George Bush.

***

I spent Labor Day picnicking with my friend Alisa in Battery Park, then wandering uptown on the promenade. We always have great conversations, though I did feel it was my civic duty to say, each time we passed a group of tourists, to say in a very loud voice, "Rudolph Giuliani is a VERY BAD MAN."

***

Did I mention that I love my job?

***

Okay, I'm off to Hoboken tomorrow afternoon to drink beers and listen to live blues music. Yes, I am crossing two waters to drink beer, in New Jersey. Lord, I have been tamed, haven't I?

***

Spoke briefly to the ex married man thingamajig, and something about him just makes me say mean things. What can I say, he earned it.

***

Learned today to my surprise that one of our contract models is 21. Shit, really? She looks 40, honestly. And that makes me feel good.

***

Just came from the Marshall Stack, and I have to give it the highest compliment that I can give a bar. It's a Shithead-Free Zone. I don't know how MK manages that in the heart of the Lower East Side, but somehow he makes it happen.

And with that, I'm going home to watch a re-run of "Rescue Me" that I watched twice back to back on Wednesday.

Catching Up on Jane's Job and Other Stuff

Okay. Here we are, a month later, and I am officially wallowing in the goodness of life.

I mean, after all these months, after freelancing with the Doyenne of Domesticity and the Luxury Resort chain, I landed at the Dream Job. Now, the DJ means that I get to do what I love and have fun alllll damn day. I don't see much downside to that, so I am just going to day, life is freaking great right now. I'm working for a Major American Designer, and even though Preppy is not my thing, the job is fantastic. It's the most functional work environment that I've ever been in, and I have to wave the flag of feminism here, because other than The Man Whose Name is On the Clothing Label, this company is run by women. Chicks rule. Even the ones who epitomize the Preppy Ideal of the M.A.D. I am just so damn happy going to work, and I don't feel as if the other shoe is going to drop any time soon. Yes, I know it will, but somehow I don't think it will be with the resounding clunk I've heard at other places. I'm challenged and busy all day long, and one thing I can say is that compared to this, I spent an awful lot of time fucking around at other jobs. I am literally busy (and happy for it) from the minute I sit down at my desk in the morning until I check out in the evening. Just to demonstrate how cool this company is, I was offered more money than I asked for when I interviewed. Because the company values talent and grit and brains. I am blessed.

I was plunged into the job headfirst (luckily I know what I'm doing) getting the M.A.D.'s PR department ready for his 40th Anniversary celebration, and it was so cool to work on the materials for the party. (ahem, fifty GRAND on invitations? I was in printing heaven!) Let me fondle Crane's every day, and I'm a happy girl.

I've even had three M.A.D. sightings. The first was one day as I was leaving the office and he was getting off the elevator when I was getting on. It was like those times when you see a celebrity on the street or in a restaurant (well, he IS a celebrity, I guess). That frisson of "ooh, it's M.A.D.!!!" I thought, wow, what a handsome guy, too bad he comes up to my eyebrows. The next time I saw him, it was after hours and he was shuffling around in his signature black tee shirt, jeans and beat-up boots, and I thought, "Wow, the M.A.D. looks like a little old Jewish man. Wait a minute, he IS a little old Jewish man!" Third time, he was lounging on the steps of the office reception area, having an impromptu meeting with some underlings. Very louche.

I can't believe how lucky I feel, knowing that I worked so freakin' hard to be this lucky.

Okay, there is a downside, and it's called a firewall. No blogging allowed through the company servers. And they have something called a Profanity Filter, and if you send me an email with "hell" in the text, it will be screened and quarantined. It's actually funny when you think about it. Oh, and they do restrict access to some websites, so there's no You-Tubing at work. It makes me realize just how much fucking around we do at work. Now, when I'm at work, I'm working!

And that's the Jane Job Report.

Now for the random stuff:

- Don't let your pets get old, folks. I took my 17-year-old cat in for what I thought was a standard checkup, shots, etc., vet visit, and $400 later, turns out the little shit has a kidney infection. Not only does Dorian Cat cost the earth, but now I have to chase him around the apartment every night to give him antibiotics. This requires swaddling his entire body in a towel and holding him captive between my knees in order to give him the liquid antibiotic. At this point, when I emerge from the bathroom with the bath towel in my hand, he peers at me suspiciously for a second, then bolts for the under-the-bed. I can almost hear him saying, "Feets don't fail me now!"

- And speaking of kidney problems, looks like that little issue is moot for me now. Dad went back into the hospital complaining of cramps. After all the hospital hoo-hah, turns out his bowel has completely stopped functioning and he had a colon re-section and now has one of those colostomy bags. Sheesh. I will quote Marty here, and say, "Don't get old."

- Paula, I finally checked out Sugar Sweet Sunshine with my friend C, and OH. MY. GOD. The best cupcakes you've EVER had. Fuck Magnolia and their SATC crowds (I called the cops on them one night, by the way, when they wouldn't get out of my way.) These are cupcakes to die for. I like them because they LOOK like home-made cupcakes. They're a little lopsided, but so buttery and delish that we each ate TWO.

- Having vetted, screened and edited the comments that I got in my prolonged absence, I realize that blog readers are just like cheating husbands. If they can't get it here, they will get it somewhere. So, while I can't promise that I will be a faithful and dedicated blogette, I'll at least throw you a blow job often enough to keep you interested. Just remember one thing -- THAT'S AN EXIT, MAN!