#68 "Make Your Wish" In Color! August 9, 2013

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I am not a writer.
When I started writing these blog posts almost 5 years ago, it was really just to showcase the drawings. I was only posting the drawings on Bookface before posting them here, and in Bookface there was no description of the drawings, how they were conceived, or any information at all except the number of the drawing. We didn't even name them on there, it would just show up one day as "Tim & Jeremy's Mind on Loup #68!!!" Usually with three exclamation points. When number one hundred was posted, I used all caps. No one cared.
As the blog posts seemed to get longer and longer I also started thinking about them differently. Originally, I would make a couple comments about the drawings themselves, but then I started thinking about the restaurant more. Since these drawings are all done in the restaurant, during the operating hours of service, I thought that it would be more fun for my 8 regular readers to get a glimpse of life within the restaurant.
The Loup is, after all, a strange and magical place. It has been at 105 W. 13th St. since 1989, and was conceived a decade earlier in a different location also on 13th St. Since that time, it has become a neighborhood staple. Regulars know they can come in any time for comfort food and strong, delicious martinis. It is a safe haven for artists and celebrities, who know they can show up and dine unmolested by tourists or people looking for autographs. And then there is the literary aspect. When the restaurant was first opened in 1977 by Bruce and Roxanne Bethany, they decided to court the literary community. They decided that if the place was full of writers, the rest of the world would follow. They were right. Writers of all types have haunted, and still haunt the walls of the Cafe Loup. From Salman Rushdie and Christopher Hitchens' wild late nights, to young unknown poets struggling to buy a pint, the restaurant has been a comfort zone and meeting spot to an entire generation (or two) of New York literati.
Of course I had no idea about any of that when I walked through the doors in 2002 and handed someone my resume. For me, it was off a convenient subway line, it was in a cool neighborhood, and it was a on a block with a bunch of other restaurants so it was easy for me to walk up and down the block dropping off resumes. At the time, I had been unemployed for months and so I would go out every day looking for jobs wherever I could. I was cold-calling places, like the Loup; I was going on mass cattle calls that I found in the back section of the Village Voice, and any other method I could think of to get a job; any job. So when I got the call from the Loup, I was just happy to get a call back. I didn't care if it was a Village Institution. I didn't care if it was a Writer's Bar. I was just happy to get a full schedule and the ability to pay my rent. It wasn't until much later that I realized the respect and admiration the people of New York felt for this little restaurant. I was always a little jealous of the regulars because they had this incredible place to go night after night and interact with all these interesting people. Later on I realized that I was not only part of that, I was helping to continue the tradition of making it people's favorite spot. Cafe Loup was my regular bar, and I got paid to be at it. It was a wonderful revelation, and even though I do have some favorite regular places outside of the Loup (aka work), I still consider it my regular place.
I went off on that tangent to let you know about the restaurant a little, although I am sure I have written all of that in some form or another throughout this blog sometime in the past. The original point of this blog post was going to be me going on a self deprecating rant about how I am not a writer, or how I don't describe myself as a writer. I write this blog out of a weird compulsion to continue writing about these drawings in relation to the restaurant that they were created in. It really is compulsory in that I have no motive, I have no goal in mind for the drawings or for the text that accompanies them. Tim and I have talked about making them into a book someday, and maybe some of this text could be included somewhere in there, but that is not the motivating force for me to continue writing. The truth is, I don't know why I keep writing these things. I think it might be a way of processing the work experience and trying to convey it in a clear and concise manner that helps me understand my past 13 years at this establishment. Not that it is important or even very interesting. Maybe I am trying to defend to myself my employment at a place for such a long period of time, even though working at the Loup has given me the freedom that I moved to New York for in the first place. I needed a place that was steady where I could work while pursuing my other interests, which have been incredibly varied in the decade and a half that I have called New York my home.
So, when you read these posts, I hope you enjoy them, but also know that I am almost writing them as a diary that I might look at some day to help me  remember this time and place in my own history. I always say that in an ever-changing world, at least the Cafe Loup stays the same. I sincerely hope that it stays the same forever, but I know that it won't. Some day it will be a Duane-Reade with a Starbucks kiosk in it, and the Cafe Loup name will be in every mall in America as a "New York style French Bistro." Then, you and I will be able to come back and read all of these blog posts and remember a time that was, of people that were, and a special place in the middle of it all. And we can all laugh at all of my typos, run-on sentences, and basic inability to write in the English language. Until then, I'll see you at the Loup!

#63 "Highway 61, Retwisted." June 12, 2013

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You hear about haunted houses and buildings all the time in New York. There are even ghost tours that you can pay money to have people show you various spots in the city where there are tales of hauntings. Since this city is huge and it's history goes all the way back to the time before white people, you are guaranteed to be standing or working on the exact spot where someone or something was killed. Actually, if you think about it, every square inch of the earth is littered with the remains of something that was once alive, but that is a different, more complex story that I will get into at another time.
I have never seen anyone die in the restaurant, although I have seen people very close to dying and having to be taken out of the restaurant by the EMTs. It's always a scary thing to witness, but it's a thing that happens when you work in a place that is always open for the public to use. People die every day in all kinds of strange manners. Most of the time these people are not planning on dying that day, and so it's a surprise to them and the ones who are around them. Many years ago, I was working in the front of the restaurant and a young lady came in with her father and mother, which is a extremely common theme. But this night, things would end up being somewhat less than common. They had essentially just sat down at the table when I went over to get drink orders from them. As I approached, the young lady started screaming at me to call 9-11. Her father was having trouble breathing, and one look at him and I knew that, yes indeed, I should be calling 9-11. He looked awful; pale white skin with green undertones, an 1,000 yard stare in his eyes and barely breathing at all. It scared the crap out of me, so I took out my cell phone and dialed 9-11 for the first time in my life. I told the operator where we were and what was happening and to send an ambulance right away, and that was that; or so I thought. I went over to the manager to tell him that I had called and instead of being happy about it and saying that was a responsible thing to have done, he started screaming at me! He told me that I was under no circumstances to call 9-11, that it was his job to call 9-11. He said that he had already called when he overheard the young lady and my conversation and now he was yelling at me because the city was now probably sending over two ambulances. I know that sounds crazy, because it was. This manager from back then was crazy. He didn't like me very much and would use any excuse to yell at and berate me. I used to think all restaurant managers were insane and there was a special place in hell for them. No doubt I have talked about that at some point on this blog. I have since changed my tune a little bit, but now I have only upgraded it into the belief that restaurant managers are doomed to live out eternity managing restaurants in some strange purgatory-like restaurant that is always open.
So, anyway. One ambulance showed up and took the father away in a stretcher and out of the restaurant for the evening. I don't know if he died or not. He may have lived and is still a customer at the restaurant to this day. I did not know those people, so I wouldn't be able to remember them today. Since that surreal first time, I have seen the EMTs in the restaurant a handful of times. Every time I can remember, the person who needs them leaves the restaurant with full consciousness, thankfully. However, before the restaurant was in that location, there was a bar in it's place before it. Who knows how many people died there? And the fact that there are 100 apartments above the restaurant almost guarantees human death on that exact location at some point in time. All of this begs the question, where are all the ghosts?
I have closed that place up hundreds of times over the years and have never seen a ghost. How could this be possible? Yes, I have been a little freaked out on occasions very late at night when I am the only one in the whole place and there's no music and no sound. But even then, I am more freaked out about being robbed than about being scared by a ghost. Although now that I know restaurant managers are perpetually managing restaurants for eternity in the hereafter, I guess I should keep my guard up a little. After all, one our most evil managers died in mysterious circumstances about 5 years ago, so he may be haunting the establishment and I have merely not noticed. He's probably haunting a club though, now that I think of it. If I do end up seeing his ghost, I will certainly tell the NYC Ghost Tour people about it. This way we can diversify our clientele by adding occult members and finally get to the bottom of this haunted house thing. Because I really just want to know about the place across the street that I believe was built on an indian burial ground. But that, too, is a different story.

#58 "Magic Wanda" in color! May 15, 2013

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(small talk)
Well, it was an interesting summer. In New York, the weather was pretty mild and I only had to turn on my ancient air conditioning unit a handful of times. I don't know if it was a historically mild summer or if it just felt mellower than years past, you'll have to consult some sort of online almanac for that information. Tim and I had an art opening at Hifi bar again in July and the show is still up in the back room of the bar if you would like to go check it out (probably for a couple more weeks, so see it while you can). I opened up a couple Etsy shops, (the one in the link is not for T&J prints, that one can be found here) but I have only sold a couple of things.

(theoretical rant)
However, I thought the summer was successful overall and felt like I made some progress in my life. Sometimes it's hard to see if you have made progress or not in your life. Time, for the most part, seems to drag along and it's not until you turn around and reflect that it, all of a sudden, seems like the time sped by. The day to day grind of life seems to take so long, and then you look back on the summer, and it seems like not only was it a year ago, but it also seems like it went by in the blink of an eye. I guess when you think about the universe in the universal scale, it did go by in the blink of an eye, and actually, much faster than a blink. But we usually don't think of our lives on the universal scale, because it is too big to grasp. That sort of thinking can be depressing, since the conclusion is always that life is incredibly short and that in the universal scale of things, anything that we do, short of super novae, is not going to leave the slightest mark on the history of the universe. Or, you could look at it from the point of view of chaos theory, that believes in the Butterfly effect. This is the theory that states that even the flapping of a butterflies wings can have enormous consequences days or moths or light years later. If we were to believe in that theory, then every single thing we do is affecting not only the space directly surrounding our person, but is affecting the entire history of the universe henceforth. That is kind of interesting to think that even the breath we are taking in and out of our lungs, all day, every day, could have an effect on the future history of the universe. The sad part is that we will never be able to witness the effect that we had on the history of the universe because we presumably won't be around to witness the effects.

(conspiracy nonsense)
I was talking about that over the summer as well, but on a more celestial plane. I mean, it is depressing that we won't be able to experience the future, but the really sad part, I was saying, is that we'll never know all of the secrets that have been kept secret from us. Or all the knowledge that we will never know. These truths are slightly depressing. Take the universe, itself. We will never know how big it is, who or what made it, and what is on the outside of it. Scientists generally agree that the universe is finite and that it is expanding, but what is on the outside if the "outside" is not made up of "matter?" These questions were on my mind this summer. But also, on a smaller level, I was waxing that in my life time, we will never know who shot JFK or ever get any answers to the great conspiracy theories of our time. I guess on the one hand, it's more interesting to live in a world where all of the answers are not readily available, for if that was the case, everything would be boring because you would know the outcome of every event ever. It would be nice from a gambler's standpoint, because you would never lose on the ponies, but other than that, it would be boring. Also, I am willing to bet that even people in power don't really know all of the answers to all of the conspiracy theories. JFK, for instance; I doubt our current president knows or even cares about who shot JFK because he has so many pressing issues on his plate that he couldn't possibly care less about that 50 year old mystery. Now, when he first entered office, he strikes me as the kind of giddy person who's first questions were to unveil all the national secrets, but then almost immediately he had a country to run, so the excitement was probably short lived, if it happened at all. It's fun to think that when you die you could ask someone all the questions and get all the answers, but then you're dead, so what's the fun in that?

(final thoughts)
I guess you have to accept that you will never know the answers to all the questions, so the least you can do with your life is try to get the answers to as many questions that you possibly can. Then, when you die, your brain will be so heavy with knowledge that when you collapse from death and your head hits the pavement, the impact will tilt the Earth off of it's axis and create a domino effect in which the universe destroys itself, thus rendering the rest of universal history obsolete and no longer worth talking about. 

#50 "A Question Isn't Answered" January 12, 2012

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Who knows how this one started?
Actually, I think I know. Tim and I were working together one night and once the rush and flow of customers had died down to a trickle of thirsty bar regulars, we sat down on Table 8 with a couple of dupe pads. This was one of them. It's the same old story. In fact, that is kind of how all of these drawings got their start. I mean, these drawings start at all kinds of different points within the restaurant; some at the bar, some in the kitchen, some at the waiter station, but their history starts at Table 8. When I first started working at the restaurant, I drew pictures on that table every night, only minus the dupe pads. Long before Tim had a job there, me and the other waiters and waitresses would sit down at Table 8 and drink a beer and order some food. Back then, the kitchen would actually cook us dinner at about 11 o'clock. We would all sit down and split some escargot or a bowl of mussels, and eat and drink until all of the customers were gone and it was time for us to clean up and go home. In those days though, we didn't even bus the table, but would leave all of our empty glasses for the poor fool who was working the lunch shift the following day. Can you believe that? It's incredible to even think about it. And these were the days when you could still smoke in the restaurants in New York, so you know there were cigarette butts in everything. The smell alone must have been something else the next day. But that kind of thing was not only allowed, it was accepted by the people who had to clean it up! Granted, I was that person every once and a while, as I worked lunch a lot more back in those days when I was just a youngster and low on the totem pole. It wasn't until years later that the boss cracked down on us ordering food late night and making a mess on Table 8 that we didn't clean up. If we made a mess now, it was to be cleaned up before we left. That's only fair when you think about it. In fact, the old way seems incredibly disrespectful to whoever had to work the next day. But, "that was the way it was," and that mantra has left so many things in the restaurant the same way for years, for good or ill. However, back in those heady days of seemingly unlimited free food and booze, while we were sitting around discussing the finer points of life, I would sit on Table 8 and doodle on the table cloth. Well, not on the actual cloth, we have paper that is placed over the cloths so that they last a little longer than just one night. I'm sure you've seen a similar setup in some restaurant somewhere along the way. So, I would sit there and draw picture after picture on the butcher paper that covered the entire table. Sometimes they were really great drawings and I wanted to take them home and sometimes they were just a bunch of crap thrown together complete with butter and wine stains. I wish I had kept a couple of them, but for the most part, they are all gone now. Lost among all of the other lost things from those days. I can't remember any of them now, and at the time I never thought they were worth keeping, even the good ones. I might have a couple of the good ones around here in my apartment, but they're either buried in some box somewhere or they were tossed in all of my moves since I started working at the restaurant. At any rate, once Tim and I started in on the Triple Dupes, the drawings on the table cloth paper continued to feel unimportant next to the Dupe Pad drawings that would eventually be displayed here and on Bookface. In a way, they were the genesis of this project since there was a sort of collaboration with everyone sitting at the table, whether they were actively participating in the drawing, doodling at their own seat, or simply spilling some sort of food product onto the paper. Everyone contributed. Flash forward a couple of years and Tim and I are sitting on Table 8 with a couple of Dupe Pads in front of us and we're stumped on what to draw. So, instead of drawing something, we just covered this one with random marks and lines until it was busy with them. Then, for the next couple of days we found all of these characters and images within the lines we had slashed down on that first night at Table 8. The random chaos of those lines turned into this drawing that you see above this rambling paragraph. All of the lines eventually turned into shapes that the brain can read as recognizable things that seem to go together to create some sort of story. And it all got started right there on Table 8. Julian always wanted to write a book entitled, "Table 8" and have all of the crazy stories that were told there compiled into one, neat, hard covered book. I'm sad that never happened because I feel like now, as with the drawings, those stories have gone and moved on to the next phase, lingering only in the air around an unassuming table in Greenwich Village.

#45 "Fever Dream" November 17, 2011

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Nostalgia is a powerful feeling. Sometimes you can remember lyrics to a song you haven't heard in fifteen years, or a certain smell will transport you instantly into the deep past. Miriam Webster describes nostalgia as homesickness or "a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for returning to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition." The second definition is aptly applied to many people who patronize and work at the Cafe Loup. The Loup serves a large portion of Greenwich Village's elderly population who have lived in the neighborhood since the 60's or before. Every night you hear people talking bout the history of New York and the history of the neighborhood. For a culture that doesn't care that much about history, (since ours is so new, and also because America is obsessed with the newest thing and the future) Cafe Loup customers and employees are obsessed with New York's recent history. People always ask how long the restaurant has been open, what was in the space beforehand, where it was originally, who used to own the place, and on and on ad nauseam. The Loup is actually the perfect place to have these conversations because it is actually a place that has no clear place in time. If, for some reason, no one was using their cell phones on a given night, one might think they have travelled back to the 90's, or even further. There are no computer screens, our cash register is the old pre-60's kind with all the great big push buttons. The bar itself is older than I am and the decor is black and white photos from Brassai and Irving Penn. It has a timeless quality that instantly makes people feel nostalgic. A lot of times I will engage in these conversations by answering questions about the past for customers, but a lot of the time, I get very frustrated about this constant harkening back to the old days. Don't get me wrong, I love listening to Jay tell stories of New York in the 1960's and beyond. I love New York history, and the history of America in general; I find it fascinating and have always agreed with George Santayana's famous quote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." But there is a difference between forgetting the past, and being obnoxiously vocally nostalgic about it. Mixing alcohol and nostalgia is sometimes a warm and fuzzy place with fond memories and great stories. It is also a place of bitter resentment for the present and a rose colored version of a past that was probably just as bleak and depressing as the present that one is lashing out against. You might know what I'm talking about, people saying things like, "New York was so much better when it was dangerous." and "New York has lost all of it's edginess." People who say these things and things like them are always so bitter. I understand that they have a certain amount of pride in surviving New York in it's horribly gritty heyday, but just because I wasn't living here/ alive at the time, doesn't mean I'm not a New Yorker. Yes, I would have liked to see the Velvet Underground at Max's. Yes, I would've loved to see the Talking Heads and Television at CBGB's, but I didn't. I can imagine it and read about it and listen to the live recordings, and that's it. Having lived in New York for 11 years now, I am sometimes nostalgic for the New York of 2001, but that is a rarity. I am happy with what New York has become, and I am happy with my life as it coincides with New York's life trajectory. I guess those people who are so violently nostalgic really are homesick. They have become unmoored and feel that the life they are living now may not be their own; that this place, while resembling something from the past, is not, in fact, their real home. They were home in the past, and this time in their life is mysterious and menacing, making them uncomfortable and bitter. They escape to the past to try and grasp the notion of home, while the memories of that time grow more and more abstract while at the same time more comforting. I always think that these people should leave New York, if this modern incarnation upsets them so much, but then I think about the rest of America, and how foreign it feels to people who are used to the frantic pace of New York. Someone who lived in New York for so many years would be completely lost outside of the city, and so instead, they stay here and come to the Cafe Loup and bitch about how everything used to be great and how everything now is awful. Maybe one day it will all come full circle for them and they will find their home again. Until then, the Cafe Loup is open seven days a week (except on the 4th of July).

#41 "The 35th Annual Women's Mini Golf Invitational" September 6, 2011 in Color!

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With the color on this one I tried to keep the same palette as the triple dupe pad. I used the same color from the bitters on the eyes of the characters on the far left and right, and then the skin tone on all main characters is from the dupe pad itself. The rest of the color I thought looked pretty good all faded out and classic looking. This is still the only one that I used this technique with. Most of the usual coloring is done as colorful as possible, and though it has changed significantly over the years, it still remains vibrant and psychedelic as ever. The right side of this drawing might have fared better with more elements of psychedelia, but who can tell; that might have just made that side a gross generalization and  stereotypical "spaced out hippie" drawing. Pun intended. As it is, this is a little wink at the Cafe Loup itself. I was just checking the interwebs about some history about the Loup and there doesn't seem to be any written history about the place. It doesn't have a Wikipedia entry anyway. The history as I know it has been passed down by word of mouth, which is exactly what the current owners, Lloyd and Ardes want. In fact, that is how we advertise there as well, strictly word of mouth. So, I may be doing the restaurant a disservice by creating a history about the place here on this blog, but it is only a history of my experience there so it is incomplete, one sided, and possibly completely wrong. But here is the history as I know it. Back in 1977 a couple named Bruce and Roxanne wanted to open up a nice little French Bistro in Greenwich Village. They found a place on 13th Street between University and 5th Avenue across the street from Les Trois Petits Cochons, which translates into english as "The Three Little Pigs." Bruce and Roxanne thought it would be a good idea to set up their French Bistro across from this charcuterie and call it Cafe Loup, or "The Wolf Cafe." Cute, right? On a side note, the Loup still gets our pate from Les Trois Petits Cochons and if you can get your hands on some, I highly recommend it. So, Lloyd was the head chef there right from the beginning and he, Bruce and Roxanne served the Village for 12 years over there on 13th Street. In 1989 they moved locations, to the much larger space at 105 West 13th Street where it remains today. A couple years later, in 1995, Lloyd and Ardes bought the place from Bruce and Roxanne and have been running it since then. Almost 20 years! Amazing. I have only met Bruce and Roxanne a couple of times, but I guess they ran a pretty tight ship. Some of the people that still work at the Loup have been there since the early 90's and would be able to go into more detail about how it was working there back then, but I just don't know that much about that time. I do know that not that much has changed. I still get customers who come in and say, "I haven't been here since it was in the old location." Those same people remark on how the food is still the same and that it still has the same vibe that it had when it was just a small 20 seat place on the other side of 5th Avenue. So, the title of this drawing is a homage to the 35 years the Cafe Loup has been open. The stamp on the right hand side is the stamp we still use to stamp customers cash receipts and use on our envelopes. Of course, we don't have an Annual Women's Mini Golf Tournament, but I think if we did, it would look very similar to this picture. I think the Golf Tournament is a metaphor for something or other, I just don't know what it is for.
Your guess is as good as mine.