An evening at Keens Steakhouse

I got a call at work from a Maryland number. The company I work for has offices in Rockville, Maryland, not far from Washington D.C. I expected it to be one of the people I speak with regularly, simply calling from someone else’s desk phone.

 It was the finance head of the division. Our division’s management meeting was coming up. It was my turn to pick the evening activity after the first day of the meeting.

These activities usually involve alcohol and something competitive. At my first suck management meeting, when I had been on the job only a few weeks, I played shuffleboard at The Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club in Brooklyn and managed to avoid being noticed as a non-drinker. I did miserably at shuffleboard but it was all in good fun. The DJ there was playing some B-52s, which can make even the most down outcast feel at home.

I missed a few good dinners and an ‘Escape the Room’ evening because of crazy stuff happening at work, but managed to enjoy some ax throwing in Atlanta earlier in the year.

Some of the people I work with are very competitive with these kinds of things. Do I really care if someone can golf better than me? No. Golf is boring. Life is already overheated and frustrating enough without making yourself that way on purpose.

But, our boss thought gold would be a good idea, and I do enjoy trying new things and trying to better myself at different skills, so an evening at the Chelsea Piers Driving Range was one of my ideas. But the night we needed was all booked up.

More than some kind of activity, what people need after a long day of work is a fun meal, and I wanted to finally get back to Chumley’s, but with the large group we had it would have meant renting out the whole place, so I went with Keens Steakhouse.

I should have known about Keens before I learned of it years ago. I had lunch there at my old job and it was a revelation, a place of great history and ambiance that is increasingly endangered with each successive regeneration of our city.

The striking theme of the restaurant you can’t avoid is that it is decorated with clay pipes. Clay pipes line the ceilings and the pipes of some of its most famous patrons are displayed in glass cases by the entrance. Regulars would keep their pipe there so they could smoke while they waited for their steaks.

By the front door you can see the pipes that belonged to General Douglas MacArthur, famous comedian and TV actor Redd Foxx, basketball legend Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, former New York Governor George Pataki, and novelist Joseph Heller. If that’s not a motley clientele, I don’t know what is. And that is part of what New York is all about. People of divergent walks of life united by their ambitious pursuits. In this case, the pursuit of fine steak and pipe-smoking among the eccentric personalities of the theater.

As it was once part of the Lamb’s Club in the theater district, it continued to host theater clientele. In 1905 the actress Lillie Langtry sued Keens to be admitted when it was still a men’s only establishment. There is now a diningroom named for her there.

Our crew was a large and ambitious one and I sat near people who have worked there nearly 20 years. I was equally ambitious about enjoying some of the fine food and ordered their famous mutton chop. It was enormous but I still ate most of it. Some of our group ordered only small steaks, but some got steaks almost bigger than their plates; they all did amazingly well. We are an ambitious bunch and will not cower before fine food.

The dinner lasted a while but eventually people had to get on their way. My coworkers shook my hands to thank me for the fine selection and we all went our separate ways. I stepped in the rainy, New York night and on to the next adventure. 

The Iceman Cometh to Brooklyn

New York is the best place in the world to see theater in the English speaking world. You’d have to go to London to come close to what New York has to offer in terms of plays being produced. Chicago has a thriving theater scene, but it still doesn’t compare to New York’s.

The one problem with New York’s theatrical offerings is that there is so much good stuff to see that it’s impossible to see even a fraction of the worthwhile productions, and inevitably stuff gets lost in the shuffle.

I had no idea that a well-renowned production of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh was coming to New York until I read a review of it in The New York Times. The production was brought over from Chicago and stars Nathan Lane in the lead role of Hickey and Brian Dennehy as Larry. The play was scheduled for a very limited run, from Feb. 5 to March 15 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

I scrambled to get tickets online and managed to get a couple for last Thursday night.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) is located in downtown Brooklyn, an area that straddles the line between old-school ghetto and clueless gentrification. There are check cashing storefronts and other run-down areas not far from these stages. And BAM is not one theater but several and it’s easy to go to the wrong place (or in my case two wrong places) if you haven’t been there before.

But once I found the theater everything went smoothly. The BAM Harvey Theater lacks the upscale decorative charm of many of the Broadway theaters but it is otherwise audience friendly. Unlike your average Broadway show, the BAM audience is mostly New York City residents who know basic theater etiquette (I counted only one cell phone going off during the production).

And this production of The Iceman Cometh lives up to the hype. Nathan Lane, who is more of a well-known comic actor, makes a great Hickey. Because the characters he often plays on TV and in movies are so jovial, it puts an added barb to the soul-crushing dialogue and dark personality of his character.

Brian Dennehy’s Larry Slade broods over each act perfectly as well. And the rest of the cast, especially Stephen Ouimette as Harry Hope and James Harms as Jimmy Tomorrow, bring O’Neill’s words to life with gut-wrenching performances.

The play is about five hours long and has three intermissions, but the time passed by easily. When you’re watching a play done that well, you can lose yourself and don’t mind.

The Iceman Cometh resonates very well with audiences because everyone has some part of themselves that’s doubtful, unfulfilled and wanting. No one escapes self-doubt and no one has avoided procrastination and self-pity, though we’d like to think we do. Everyone has a problem facing harsh truths about their own lives, no matter how good your life may be.

Iceman works so well because just about every one of us has been that drunk at the bar, high on liquid courage and doubtless in dreams that we would never see through. Everyone has engaged in self-delusion at some point in their lives, everyone has something in their past that they’re ashamed of. O’Neill’s Hickey knocks the wind out of our sails with his quest to bring us peace by giving up our pipe dreams.

Art this good is always worth the investment of time. If you have a chance to see The Iceman Cometh, go see it. 

Best NYC Celebrity Encounter Ever: Geoffrey Holder

Years ago, when I worked as an immigration inspector at JFK Airport, I would sometimes encounter celebrities that would come through my line. The first one I remembered was Joan Collins. People I mentioned this too asked me if I remembered what her actual birth date was from looking at her passport, but I didn’t pay it much mind. She was very well dressed and seemed very polite and proper.

Among the other celebrities I has pass through my line were Sting, Geoffrey Rush, George Clinton, Sally Jesse Rafael and Brian Cox. I also met the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, who were very nice. When I told Graham “Suggs” McPherson, singer of the band Madness, that I liked his music, he replied, “You have a good memory.”

But by far and away the best celebrity encounter I had at JFK Airport was the actor Geoffrey Holder.

Working at JFK Airport was actually a big drag. Things changed a lot after the September 11 attacks, so I can’t attest to what the job is like today. But the pre-September 11 era was a miserable place where inspectors often worked seven days straight and could be held for mandatory overtime with no notice given.

I was so unhappy working at JFK that I lived in a state of near permanent miserable anger. Any sign of other people’s happiness made me immediately angry and resentful.

I was coming to tend of my day at the old T.W.A. terminal, thinking that the most recent flight was done processing and I could prepare to go home. I was still in my booth when I noticed people from the airline wheeling a passenger in a wheelchair directly towards my booth. The passenger was singing.

‘What kind of horrible freak are they bringing me,’ I thought to myself—indeed, my resentment of all things happy even extended to the elderly and disabled.

The airline escort wheeled the passenger into my booth and he put his paperwork on my counter. He was a green card holder from Trinidad and once I saw his name I knew exactly who he was: Geoffrey Holder.

Geoffrey Holder spent most of his long entertainment career on stage as a dancer, actor and director. He was one of the lead actors in the first all-black production of ‘Waiting for Godot,’ a choreographer for the famed AlvinAiley American Dance Company, a Tony-Award winning costume designer and successful painter. He was the bodyguard Punjab in the 1982 version of ‘Annie’ and may be best known for 7-Up commercials he made in the 1980s. He was characterized by his height (he was six-foot-six) and his deep, Caribbean voice.

Geoffrey Holder was also one of the best James Bond villains in history, playing Baron Semedi in the 1973 Bond film ‘Live and Let Die.’ Being a Bond villain counts as movie royalty in my book.

“Are you the actor?” I asked him.

“Yes.”

“Well it’s very nice to meet you. I’ve very much enjoyed your work.”

“Thank you. And thank you for paying my rent,” he said, and then let out a big and sincere booming laugh that I couldn’t help but share with him.

Our business together was finished quickly. I stamped his documents and handed them back to him or the airline employee who was escorting him. He thanked me, said, “God bless you.” And then was on his way. It was an encounter that changed my mood and brightened my whole day, and is one of the fondest memories I have of working at the airport.

Geoffrey Holder passed away recently from complications attributed to pneumonia. He was 84 years old. He was remembered for his many contributions to the stage and screen; Broadway theaters dimmed their lights in his memory.

New York is packed with celebrities, and the cool thing to do is pretend to not notice them and then tell all your friends about seeing them later. I had many New York celebrity sightings before and since, but Geoffrey Holder will always be my favorite and best.