HUNGRY GERALD

When HG was a young New York journalist in the early 1950’s, HG was a heavy drinker. (In later years, HG was a Martini and vodka drinker. BSK put a stop to that after HG had some inebriated tumbles). In HG’s boozer days, beer and liquor were cheap and rough and ready bars were plentiful on Manhattan’s Third and Second Avenues as well as the side streets off these Avenues. As HG  recalls (Memory stretches back more than 70 years), a glass of beer was 25 cents and a shot of rye was 50 cents. It only cost a few bucks to get drunk. HG drank at Mirror Bar on E.45th (Rye and beer chaser plus nibbles of pickled pork knuckle); Murphy’s (Northeast corner of Third Avenue and 45th Street –a bowl of  heavily salted  peanuts on the bar to encourage thirst)–plus numerous bars named after their Irish owners or towns and counties in Ireland. HG’s favorite bar was Costello’s (E. 44th or E. 43rs. Memory is hazy), The star feature of the bar was a cartoon mural by the New Yorker writer/artist/dramatist, James Thurber, painted in 1935. Thurber had run up a substantial bar bill and the mural was his payment. HG often drank at Artists and Writers on West 44th (It catered to the Herald-Tribune staff, was home to “The Match Game” and had very good food including dazzling “Koenigsberger Klopse”). There were a number of gay bars clustered around Lexington Avenue all named after birds. The Golden Pheasant was prominent.