He Promised Us Some Life Lessons We Would Never Forget...

The club scene in 1970's rolled in and out, and the early '80's came in roaring with just as much thunder and excess.  Studio 54 had become the symbolic club of social, sexual and even celebrity excess...but there were other clubs just as hot.  They just simply chose to remain in the background and away from all the limelight.  That was E Speakeasy.  The same fun.  More sophisticated clientele, and at the same time just as edgy as everywhere else.

By the time 1982 rolled in, I was a star high school athlete, with several colleges looking at me for scholarships in football, basketball and track.  My mother had long since gotten out of the bar business and returned to being a nurse.  I spent my summers working as a clerk at one of the three major local newspapers to make my minimum wage during the day.  However I spent my week nights being a bar back, and eventually a bar tender at 17 years of age, for several legal and not so legal bars.  Thankfully, I looked mature for my age. Plus my name had gone around the club/bar underground.  You have to remember that back then the legal drinking age in NYC was 18, so me being inside any bar wasn't an odd thing.

Between my athletic and social popularity, the guys who owned the clubs were happy to have me working at their club because a lot of other young people followed me there.  And that meant money to the owners.  But it wasn't until summer '83, six months after my 17 birthday that I would get my real education on life with the big wigs of New York City who stay in the shadows of clubs like E Speakeasy.

Working at the newspaper was suppose to set me up for studying journalism in college and perhaps one day become a reporter after my athletic career was over.  Instead, it was my athletic career and bar tending that sort of drew all of the important friends of the newspaper to me.  Friends like movers and shakers in New York City who had a lot of money.  Yachts in the city harbor, helicopter rides in and out of Manhattan from their palatial out on Long Island. 

Mr. George Cooper was just that kind of man.  He was a friend of my boss at the newspaper.  Mr. Cooper's claim to fame was that he had made millions in ad campaigns to help pull NYC out of it's fiscal crisis in the 1970's and he also owned pieces of several restaurants in NYC.  Cooper was a sports fanatic and followed my high school career.  He was a jet setter in his mid 40's with mid 20's girlfriends.  They all seemed to like his boat and his helicopter rides in and out of NYC to his mansion out east on Long Island.  His favorite girlfriend was Alex.  She was a Ford model wannabe tall, blond.  She was actually pretty smart, had a degree in business from some school in the Midwest.  She had kind of flopped out when she hit New York and landed back on her feet with Mr. Cooper's bankbook.

Mr. Cooper gave me and a handful of some of my best friends some lessons we will never forget, by getting us into E Speakeasy.  First he got me a permanent job there after introducing me to his good friend, Gary "Gus" Johnson, the owner of E Speakeasy.  It was also there at E Speakeasy that I would meet Stephanie Mitchell, a girl from Boston who I eventually fell head over heels.  But, between the moment Stephanie and became an item, there was run ins with me ex girlfriend, who was still part of my pack that followed me to the clubs.  And there was also the time that Alex decided she had had enough of Mr. Cooper, and wanted to try a night with a college bound athlete herself.

There was also a few fights and some other personal drama in between.  All in a day's and night's work.  All unfolded at a club we called E Speakeasy...

What does the "E" in E Speakeasy stand for?

What does the "E" in E Speakeasy stand for?


All these years later, I still cannot tell you what it stands for.  Some say it's for excitement.  Some say it stands for entertainment.  Some even say it is such a successful club that it needed it's own avenue "E".  Not many people outside of NYC know that Manhattan has four alphabet lettered avenues in it.

I think the E has always stood for exclusive and exceptional.  You couldn't just walk up into the place.  You had to be a regular or know someone, who knew someone...or just a pretty girl.  If you were a pretty woman and could dress "hot" you would always get in.

When I was a younger man, my start in the club life happened when my mother took up a job as daytime bartender at a legitimate establishment called Lucky's.  But at night she worked at a second spot called The Hole.  Both were owned by the same man.  However he only had to pay taxes on one of them. 

In many ways, since The Hole was an illegal establishment, it was very much like ESpeakeasy.  You couldn't be a stranger and just walking in.  Otherwise the beefed up guys at the door would help your body defy gravity as they threw you out.

I was 9 years old at that time.  At the day bar, Lucky's you had to look over the glass at the door and be buzzed in.  Since my mother worked there, I could go in at any time.  This was back in the day when cigarettes were sold out of vending machines and if you were a kid - a grownup could give you some quarters to buy a pack of cigs from the vending machine for them, after you got your Twillers from the candy machine right next to it.  No one thought ill of that or that they were encouraging you to smoke.  Back then, store owners and parents didn't worry about getting fined or arrested.


The men in bars showed me how to play pool and taught me a few tricks.  I benefited from such knowledge when I then went to my local Boys Club and played pool against my peers.  I was actually pretty good for my age.  The men usually patroned Lucky's in between their lunch breaks and shifts for work.  But during the weekend, they would patron the whole as it was more set up for music and drinking.  Even when I tried to go in there my whereabouts were more strictly watched.  That place had some real hedonism going on in there.

My mother eventually got out of the bar business, as there were increasing issues there regarding management and making quick dollars.  Plus, there were fights.  More and more people started going there with issues.  Personal issues.  Domestic issues.  Financial issues.  Internal theft issues.  All of which came at a price to the owner.

But I remember the Muhammad Ali closed circuit fight nights at Lucky's.  People from all over would dress up and come sit in the bar to watch.  People from outside the neighborhood, many folks from inside the neighborhood who scratched up the money to watch.  I got only a glimpse inside.  It was like watching every walk of life in New York City...maybe even the world walk into your neighborhood bar...just to watch the fight.  After the fight was over, then they'd be gone.

This early experience in the bar life set me up to become a full and life long member to ESpeakeasy.  It was a bar near midtown, some said the east side.  Some said the west side.  All I know is that a lot of celebrities walked in and out of there.  Namely some dyed blond singer, who danced on staged and was known to have built up a legion of male conquests who patroned her shows.  I was 13 or 14 years old, it was the late'70's, and I was in middle school and just knew her as the blond who's name began with an M.  Something religious sounding.  It wasn't until several years later that she had a hit record called "Borderline" that the rest of the world already knew what we already knew in the hood.

First Day At E Speakeasy...

First Day... at E Speakeasy...


Yep...what can I do for you young lady?  Do you have ID?  I need to confirm that you're 18 or older in order to sit down in this establishment.  Hand me your ID.  Hmm.  Yep that's you.  Well welcome to E Speakeasy.  Why don't you just sit down and have a seat?

Now what can I get you young lady?  What's that?  You just stopped in for directions?  Okay, well the teenie booper place is down the street.  The weirdo place is down the other way.  If you came here for that stuff, you came to the wrong place.

Here at E Speakeasy, the only rules is when someone says no, or you infringe on someone else's rights - you must stop.  If you do not stop, then you have to leave for the night.  If you come back and do it again, you're gone for a month.  If you come back and do it a third time you're gone for forever.  And all my regulars here have a long memory.  So if any guy in here comes up to you in a manner that bothers you, you just let me know.  My name is Gus.  I'm the bartender...and the owner of this place...E Speakeasy.

Excuse me?  What does the E stand for?  Stick around and keep coming back...and you'll find out.  If you take a careful look around...all of my customers are dressed in spring and summer clothes...and it's presently 45 degrees out here in the middle of New York City.  Yet not one person is cold coming in here...or going out of here.

Give me your coat, I'll put behind in my closet behind the bar, next to mine.  Where do you live?  On the Upper East?  I just need to know so that our cab service will be sure to get you home.  Nope, since you're not a member yet, don't worry, your fare is on me tonight.  See, I don't want anything bad to happen to you tonight or any other night.  I want you to keep coming back.  Next time you come back...you'll bring a friend, and then she will bring a friend that next time.  And so on, and so on.

Where are you from?  Boston?  Nice.  Phark the khar, by the bhar Boston huh?  Funny I don't hear any accent in your voice.  Ohh...you're from outside Boston.   It only comes out after you had a few beers huh?  Well the stories you're about to hear tonight and the things you'll see going on in this place...well...they don't do this up in Boston.  I've been there. 

Sit back hunny.  You're with Uncle Gus.  Drinks and cab are on me tonight....