Sometimes life throws you a curve ball. I had a totally different post set up for today and was just finishing it up when I checked my email and read this: “I thought I would let you know since you had written when Fedora sold the restaurant. She passed away peacefully last night at the Village Nursing home. She had been failing for the last two months.” Really sad news. Meeting Fedora and hanging out with her at her restaurant was a real highlight of my 365 bar crawl tour. I met a lot of people that year and she was one of the best. A classy lady with great stories of her wonderful restaurant in Greenwich Village. A true New Yorker. When I was leaving she gave me a postcard and told me it was her favorite picture. I keep it in front of my computer and it never fails to bring a smile to my face when I look at it. She was a beautiful woman with a gorgeous smile. R.I.P. Fedora, you were a wonderful person. I’m honored you took the time to hang out with me.
It was just about a year ago that I went to Fedora’s bar and restaurant in the West Village. I had a great time drinking and chatting with Fedora, the 89-year-old owner. She told me tales from the old days, stories about Lauren Bacall, her husband, some of the people who had worked there and she showed me pictures of her great-grandchildren. In the end it was a bittersweet day though, because she confirmed the rumor that it was closing. She told me she just couldn’t do it anymore and who could blame her for wanting to retire? Not me. She told me she had sold it and said that the new owner promised her that they would keep the original sign hanging as a tribute to her. That made her smile and it made me smile as well. At least a small chunk of the past would be preserved.
So months passed, they gutted Fedora and brought in shiny new things and a highly polished bar and tables and chairs. Oh and within the first week they took the sign down. So much for promises. The new owner, Gabriel Stulman, claimed it was too old and damaged and was beyond repair. Hmm, I wonder how a functioning neon sign could be “beyond repair?" Anyway, they made a new one. Now everything had been changed by Stulman and nothing of the past is left. It’s all his and I’m pretty sure that’s the way he likes it. I swore I’d never go back, but I’m curious now as to what the new Fedora looks like, so that’s tonight’s destination.
Here we are at Penn Station, it's really nice out tonight.
This asshole woman just pushed me aside as she ran down the escalator. And there's a huge stairway to the left, I'll never understand this shit. You ride the escalator, you walk/run down the stairs. Pretty simple rules that some jerkoffs can never understand.
And here we are, the West Village, Fedora's is just a few blocks away.
Here's the new sign. You really can't tell the difference much, but it still sucks.
Let's go inside and get this over with.
Wow, it's completely unrecognizable from the original Fedora. And it's loud with stupid chatter in here. Everyone's trying to talk louder than the next person, really annoying.
A black leather banquettle and tables line the wall opposite the bar. Gabriel Stulman said he'd keep some of the old photos and memorabilia from the original Fedora, but it's all gone.
Lots of high-fiving going on in here. Woo and hoo.
There's a black and white picture of Jay Z in the corner where the pay phone used to be.
The bar is packed with the chattering masses.
And people texting and staring blankly and lovingly at their phones.
Here's the bartender having a passionate moment with his phone. I've had enough.
Two word review of the new Fedora: Vomit, eruptis. Obnoxious people talking two octaves too loud, fake-laughing at each other's ironic jokes in a loud and sickening manner. Those that weren't screaming at each other like wild hyenas amped up to the nines on crystal meth were texting and hypnotized by their cell phones. Music played in the background, but all I could hear over the loud chatter was a bass line reverberating like a ball peen hammer hitting a trampoline in an echo chamber. A chubby blonde woman who made it clear that she was from Chicago broke out into an impromptu dance between the bar and the tables and shook her head, hair and hips in a manner that brings a new definition to the words, "ridiculous and embarrassing." Fedora's is dead. It's gone from a nice cubbyhole where you could escape and talk to real people and hear stories of the old days in New York while nursing a bottle of beer to an asshole emporium with an all you can eat buffet of everything that's wrong with this world. To quote Col. Kurtz and the final words in the fine book "Hell's Angels" by Hunter S. Thompson: "The horror...the horror. Exterminate all the brutes!" Zingo!
Here’s a paragraph from a review of the new Fedora on New York magazine’s website by Adam Platt: “Let the feasting commence,” said one of the merry hipsters at my table, as we pondered the impressively gigantic “big pork chop for two,” which was smothered in pork meatballs, no less, and served with a stack of fluffy scallion pancakes. An equally massive côte de boeuf special was buried, not entirely successfully, in drifts of bok choy and Cantonese fried rice, and if you order the fried chicken leg, it comes over a pile of fragrant, faintly sticky sushi rice, with its gnarled claw still attached.
Merry hipsters? A big old pork chop smothered in pork meatballs? Oh my. And here’s a few lines from a review of the original Fedora on the same website written by Kathleen Squires: To nightly applause from diners, Fedora takes her spot behind the bar to serve up strong drinks, generous smiles, and a tale or two from the old days. So who cares that the mashed potatoes taste half-instant? You don’t come here for the food, after all.
Well, Fedora is gone and a bearded, pork-obsessed jackass who wants to change the neighborhood to something called, “Little Wisco” has taken her place. I don’t really have any reason to ever come here again. Look what they’ve done to your song, Fedora...better still just walk away and pretend this place just doesn’t exist anymore.
Four Celebrities Wearing a Fedora And One Greasy Dude Humphrey Bogart Keith Richards Shawn Chittle Cary Grant Greasy Dude (Getting all handsy with Whitney Port. Is it bad that I have no idea who Whitney Port is? She sounds like a bottle of wine to me.)
Sometimes life throws you a curve ball. I had a totally different post set up for today and was just finishing it up when I checked my email and read this: “I thought I would let you know since you had written when Fedora sold the restaurant. She passed away peacefully last night at the Village Nursing home. She had been failing for the last two months.”
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