There once was a Greenwich Village restaurant called Joe’s, which a couple of times upon a time flowed through several lives. Here is its tale:<\/p>\n
During all the years of Joe’s existence, I lived a couple of blocks away so feel confident about taking you to the corner of West 10th and West 4th Streets, a typical Village corner where two streets, which should not in this grid city ever encounter each other, defy propriety and crisscross.<\/p>\n
Back in my Village days, what you saw on this corner, aside from disoriented strangers turning maps around and around, were some architecturally eccentric buildings and a cram of restaurants elbowing each other for space.<\/p>\n
Once though, back when I first moved to the Village, there was only one restaurant \u2014 Joe\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Joe\u2019s was Italian, with outside walls of gloomy brick and forever dusty windows on either side of the front door. Actually, everything about Joe\u2019s was sort of dusty, even the red neon sign saying \u201cJoe\u2019s,\u201d which I remember as always lit, even at 5 in the morning. Joe\u2019s always looked a little seedy.<\/p>\n
The endlessly evolving sociology of Villagers and Village eating establishments was — and possibly still is — complex and emotional. Our apartments were small, so the coffee house was our eat-in kitchen, the restaurant our dining room table.<\/p>\n
This is why Villagers remembered their restaurants. It wasn’t nostalgia \u2014 we recalled plenty of lousy meals. It had something to do with the embrace of friendship, with whom we ate and what happened over those meals. Village streets were for us a palimpsest of found and lost restaurants, ghosts layered over ghosts.<\/p>\n
Why did we go to Joe\u2019s? Its menu was the same stained menu of all Italian restaurants then, before an intrepid New World explorer discovered Tuscany. But this was also a time before ubiquitous pizza joints. So we went to Joe\u2019s for pizza, which had not then become a fast slice you gobbled on the way to an uptown concert. Pizza was a meal you sat down for.<\/p>\n
Joe\u2019s pizza was pretty good. Not as good as John\u2019s on Bleecker<\/a>, of course, but John\u2019s always had lines down the block. Joe\u2019s you could get into, you could sit down, you could eat, like grown-ups.<\/p>\n That, in fact, was the really odd thing about Joe\u2019s. The place was always empty. To the left of the front door were a number of tables, the restaurant section. A partition separated Eating Joe\u2019s from Drinking Joe\u2019s, which was a bar on the right. You\u2019d walk in and there would be maybe one table occupied. Or none. Never more than one, usually none.<\/p>\n I remember an elderly thin man in waiter togs and a woman sitting at the bar. Mr. and Mrs. Joe? Possible. They would look at you blankly, as if slightly startled that you had wandered in. Then one would rise and amble toward your group and after some sort of signal that, yes, you were there to eat, would gesture toward the tables. You would sit and commence the timeless discussion over what to put on the pizza, who didn\u2019t eat anchovies, et cetera.<\/p>\n There must have been someone in the kitchen because food would emerge and you would eat. During your meal, the proprietors\/waitstaff would resume their positions at the bar. Their services would not be required again that evening.<\/p>\n Now at some point even I, naive as I was, began to think this was weird. My friends were older and ultra-sophisticated \u2014 part of the \u201860s folk-blues-political scene that was fermenting in the Village. They had lived here for years, knew cool stuff. One night over pizza they laid it on me, sotto voce: Joe\u2019s was known to be a money-laundering spot for the mob. I was hugely thrilled. And felt, with that one imparted confidence, that I had been inducted into a secret society of hip adults. (I even asked details about the process of washing money, and it was explained to me then and many times since and I still don\u2019t get it.)<\/p>\n Eventually \u2014 but eventuality can be a sort of eternity \u2014 Joe\u2019s did close. I found myself sad and simultaneously relieved of an exasperating tension. But it was also sweet that no hand-scribbled sign announcing “RENOVATING WILL RE-OPEN SOON” appeared on Joe\u2019s door. Nobody was in denial. Joe\u2019s was just…closed.<\/p>\n Joe\u2019s sat there closed for a very long time. (Which was, in this hot restaurant neighborhood, also peculiar.) Joe\u2019s ancient dust accumulated history of its own. And Joe\u2019s faded as an entity so completely that in my regular dashes down West 4th Street, I never even noticed it anymore.<\/p>\n Then one day, maybe in the late \u201880s, Joe\u2019s stopped me in my fast track. There was paper over the windows. Renovation was clearly afoot. I began once again to pay attention to Joe\u2019s.<\/p>\n Soon thereafter, Joe\u2019s re-lit its red neon sign and re-opened as \u2014 “Formerly Joe\u2019s.” I laughed in pleasure at the homage.<\/p>\n I ate at Formerly Joe\u2019s a couple of times. It was OK, had a raw bar where the old drinking bar used to be. I don\u2019t remember the menu; it was that kind of menu; the Zeitgeist menu of that demi-decade.<\/p>\n After a couple of years Formerly Joe\u2019s closed. And sat closed for a pretty long time.<\/p>\n Then one day in the late \u201890s, there was paper over the windows again. Et cetera. And Joe\u2019s re-opened. Place had new lights, banquettes, but (almost) the same red neon sign.<\/p>\n I went to eat. Good food, comfort food prepared on a high level. I said to the waitress, \u201cI used to come here when Joe\u2019s reputedly laundered money.\u201d Her eyes grew big in a secret thrill I well remembered and she nodded. \u201cThat\u2019s what we were told,\u201d she whispered. Then she pointed down. \u201cWhen they renovated,\u201d she said, \u201cthey kept the old floor.\u201d I looked down and, yes, that old tile floor, the unusual size of the tiles, the oddball color combinations, and surprisingly I experienced a wash of tender emotion. Ghosts layered over ghosts.<\/p>\n Oh, and Joe\u2019s was now called \u2014 up there in that red neon sign \u2014 “Joe\u2019s…again.”<\/p>\n Are you surprised that after a short time Joe\u2019s…again closed? For a couple of months, a group of film trucks and people surrounded and occupied it, using it as a location for, I think, Sex in the City<\/em>. Then Joe\u2019s just sank back into its long night\u2019s sleep.<\/p>\n Until it re-opened, owned by two guys, Bob and Peter, who re-did the insides, new bar, new paint, new lights. Chinese calligraphy up near the ceiling. They presented an intriguing and tasty pan-Asian cuisine. They were affable and enthusiastic. The windows were the same windows, floor the same floor.<\/p>\n Except. They had a banner covering the old Joe\u2019s neon sign. Upon that banner was written: Chow\u2019s Bar.<\/p>\n Was it just me? Was I too cynical to be thinking, bad karma? So okay maybe if they had called it “Joe\u2019s Forever!!” it would still be doomed, but couldn’t they have placated the ghosts on that particular corner and called it…”(Joe\u2019s) Chow?”<\/p>\n Works for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There once was a Greenwich Village restaurant called Joe’s, which a couple of times upon a time flowed through several lives. Here is its tale: During all the years of Joe’s existence, I lived a couple of blocks away so … Continue reading