Posted by Holly at August 29th, 2008

In New York, a thousand years ago, when I officially worked for Jim, Friday nights meant getting off the elevator down from our 8th floor office at the second floor bar at Sardi’s. <"http://www.sardis.com"> Even though most nights there would be a group of us who stopped off for a drink on the way home, Friday nights meant most of us – no, all of us – observed the ritual of Friday nights at the bar. For the first hour and a half or so, there’d be us, the regulars, and the pre-theatre crowd in from the boroughs, the burbs or just up or down town. They had to weave their way in and out of our clusters at either end of the bar, waiting for the moment when we were able to spread out and settle in for the evening. In chummy fashion, we would chit chat over the trays of crackers and smoky tasting yellow cheese in crocks that Vincent had the bartenders and waiters pass around with drinks….probably to do his part for Broadway and help the theatre-goers absorb some of the alcohol they were drinking. It’s not easy throwing down a couple of Martinis or Manhattans in short order and then heading to see a big musical. Big noise can put you to sleep if you system is overloaded to begin with.

We had some good times there. Our crowd ruled, to say the least. We were smart and funny, raucous and elite in the finest sense of those words. There wasn’t much we wouldn’t do. Once, during the world series, our friend Frankie Brady, a lifelong/diehard Yankee fan, left the bar to go down to the corner hotdog man, buy some dogs with everything, bring ‘em back to the bar, take off his shirt and sit on the drink rail on the wall opposite the actual bar. I joined him as we watched the game and cheered from our “bleacher” seats.

A bunch of us figured out how to make phone calls from the maitre d station at the top of the stairs and charge them to Vincent. Friends on vacation in other countries would routinely get phone calls from us and we’d pass the phone around to everyone in the group, taking our time to share whatever local news and gossip there was.

Once – one of my more stellar moments – Joe, the bartender, let me get behind the bar and play at making drinks. If any of us ever needed to cash a check – this was before there was an ATM on every corner – the policy at Sardi’s was liberal for us. This particular night, when I was playing bartender, our friend Steve Martin (not the actor Steve Martin but, rather, the real Steve Martin) showed up and wanted to cash a hundred dollar check, which he handed to me. With my new power, I instantly denied him the cash and, to seal the deal, ripped up his check. Turned out it was his only check and he was furious with me, to say the least, but not so furious that he didn’t laugh.

Another night, when we knew the same Steve Martin had just shaved off his white beard (that, incidentally, made him look a lot like Kenny Rogers) I went to Eve’s Costumes and got as many white beards as there were in stock. We all had them on when Steve walked in. For the duration of the evening, he never said one word … and neither did we.

To this day, there is an annual reunion of our crowd on the first Friday of October and it is always at the second floor bar at Sardi’s. Fridays are sacred.

So I have to laugh at myself and how I spent this Friday, albeit an afternoon, but cozying up to a bar. Not an alcohol bar but an oyster bar. The local ag business, Wilco, <"http://www.wilco.coop"> that serves all the farmers around here does an annual oyster lunch for all of us who do business with them throughout the year. This is my third one. The business changed hands a couple of years ago and around late spring I started to worry that they would eliminate the oyster feed as a cost-saving measure. I started asking Jim around late spring if he thought they were going to do it again. He probably got tired of my agita over this. When the lime-green flyer invite arrived in the mail a couple of weeks ago, I was really excited. I mentioned it at least once a day to make sure it got onto the calendar – sort of reliable – and into our memory banks – slightly more reliable. My taste buds were up, which was the most reliable of all reminders.

The first year, I put on nice slacks and good shoes. The second year I put on clean slacks and less nice shoes. Today I wore the jeans I had been on my knees in while weeding the garden. I did change my shoes from the black crocs to the sandal style. This year they didn’t barbecue the oysters because, they said, it takes too long for them to pop open. They steamed them in a bunch of good spices. We had to shuck them open, which only makes my mouth water even more as I hurry along trying to find the sweet spot that unhinges them. I stopped counting at the first dozen.

The bartenders – and most of the folks there, for that matter – tend to be less on the trim, city elegant side of the fence and more the portly type needing strong, red braces to hold up their work clothes. No designer jeans here. In fact, after something I saw in the NYTimes last week showing “Distressed Jeans” for $395, I’m thinking of putting up a pair of Jim’s on ebay and describing them as “naturally distressed from the blooming hill vineyard label”. This is a dry event, too, so there were no Manhattans, scotch and sodas or even beers. In addition to the oysters – although I don’t really understand why anyone needs anything other than oysters and, maybe, a little hot sauce – there are hot dogs (somebody forgot the buns this year), hamburgers, lettuce/tomato/onions, potato salad, beans, two kinds of chips, black olives, cut fruit and lots of cookies. Replacing the wonderful wood bar at Sardis’, the mirrors, the famous caricatures of actors and actresses, the red-leather seats of the bar stools, are long tables covered with blue plastic, rented folding chairs, and for backdrop are the big silos that hold the fertilizer for all the farmland around here. There’s a raffle, too, where you can win an owl statue to put out and scare the birds, some big clippers, wheelbarrows and chair seats shaped like a hand upside down with fingers in the air. You sit in the palm. It’s an outstanding event.

This is my Friday bar trip now and I lament only that it happens only once a year.