Tales from the American Bar

The American Bar of the Savoy Hotel, London is an art deco masterpiece, and the origin of a number of world-famous cocktails. Dotted around its curving walls are pictures of stars of yesteryear who once frequented it - among them, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Fred Astaire, and Marlene Dietrich - and with a live pianist cranking out and singing the classics, it's a place worth visiting for a drink or two.

Last year, I went on my birthday, partly in search of a cocktail to match one I had enjoyed in New York earlier in the year. On our last night in New York, we had gone to the bar at Perry St., where an amazing mixologist called Mac listened to our moods and preferences, and went away to do strange and unusual things with alcohol and mixers.

When he returned a little later, he watched as a waiter dished out our various drinks, and before we were allowed to taste them, he have us their history (some were pre-prohibition, he explained). My cocktail was to be an Aviation, but he told me to wait before sampling it, as he poured a violet-coloured liquid down a glass mixing stick. I gather that the Aviation is made with gin, maraschino liqueur, crème de violette, and lemon juice, but this simple list is, I suspect, only the half of the mixer's skill.

It was, without question, the single best cocktail I had ever had, and on a few occasions since, I have tried, and failed, to get somebody to replicate it. My New York Aviation, pictured above, had a floating "cloud-base", and a flavour of a delicate complexity that I have not experienced before or since. All mightily impressed, we asked Mac where he had learned his almost alchemical craft. "I trained," he said, "under a full-blooded Cherokee named Ed," and we nodded sagely at this semi-mystical statement.

Back at the Savoy, more recently, I ordered another Aviation, expecting a two layered drink of wonder, but instead I received a disappointingly ordinary-looking glass containing a drink of one colour and a maraschino cherry. I have learned, subsequently, that some mixers omit the crème de violette, and it may be that this is the missing magic, or maybe there was something in the teachings of Ed, passed down to Mac, that are simply not replicable by ordinary mortals.

The Lions of West 12th Street

There are numerous famous lions in New York City. There are the glorious and proud carved animals who pose nobly outside the New York Public Library, for example, and any number of others, from across a wide expanse of world history, in the Met and the city's other museums. Walking along West 12th Street, one morning, on my way to the subway, however, I came across a particular pair of lions that struck me as slightly unusual.

I say "lions", but what I really mean, of course, is "a lion and a lioness", because rather than identical, matching statues of two male lions, which is what you usually see dotted about the place, the lions outside this particular brownstone were a male and female couple, one on either side of the steps; a large male, with a full mane, and a smaller and sleeker female. The lion sits, with his tongue protruding slightly, as if cheekily rasping the neighbourhood, whilst his mate has her mouth clothed, her head up, alert.

I don't believe I have ever seen a pair - a genuine couple, indeed - of lions, like this, so I took a picture, and then wandered on my way. Later, I looked for an explanation online, assuming that so distinctive a pair of guardians would have attracted the attention of other commentators, or possibly have a famous story attached to them that would be recorded somewhere. Perhaps I have been looking in the wrong place, or perhaps I have ascribed unwarranted rarity to perfectly mundane ornaments, but I have yet to find any explanation of the West 12th Street Lions.

In the absence of an obvious explanation, therefore, I have imagined a vivid scene set at some point in the 19th-century, where a delightful and mildly eccentric married couple decide to commission statues representing themselves to adorn their new property. A marriage of true equals, where each partner respected the other, there would naturally have been no suggestion of two identical male lions framing their doorway. Instead, and to reflect the husband and wife within, the West 12th Street Lions were born, to the possible bemusement and outrage of their more hidebound neighbours.

If anybody reading this knows anything about them, or indeed the real story, please let me know in the comments, below.

A massage in a bottle

Some massages, it has been well said, are akin being stroked in a dark room. Perhaps some people like such a gentle experience; I do not. In contrast, the massage I had yesterday was much more like to being beaten up in a dark room, albeit to the accompaniment of generic ambient music and distant forest birdsong. The background sounds aside, this was much more the thing, although I did find myself wincing, holding my breath, and properly bracing myself, as my otherwise charming and softly spoken masseuse dug the sharpest point of her elbow deeper into the tangibly tense tangle of stressy knots in the muscles around my scapulae.

"Soft to medium," she had said, when running through the pre-massage checks, and I have to confess that my heart had sunk, as I anticipated another low-powered kneading. Nevertheless, after a stressful week, just about any massage is better than no massage, and I surrendered myself to her ministrations. After the usual anointment with oils and brief feet rub, I breathed in deeply and resolved, in any event, to enjoy the peaceful darkness. And then it began, with a vigour that drove just about all other thoughts from my mind save for the question of whether I would survive this encounter, or if I should ask for her to go slightly more gently.

As I surrendered to the experience, with the possibly naive, but certainly trusting thought that she presumably knew what she was doing, I recalled a previous massage which approached this level of intensity. It had been a few months back, in NoLita in New York. Having pounded the streets for several days, my back and neck had started sending out distress calls and, as I sat in a bar on Lafayette, doing something about the pain became a pressing concern.

The barman suggested a Chinese massage parlour next door and, beggars not being choosers, I stepped down into the subterranean world, hopeful of repair. Unlike any massage parlours I had visited before, this was one large darkened room, divided up by perhaps five feet high panels into six or eight booths. In each booth was a bed and, as I did as I was directed and walked down to the end booth, I realised that each one was occupied by a patron, at least one of whom was snoring.

In my booth, which I shared with drums of cooking oil, presumably for the Chinese restaurant above, I was told to get undressed. A little wary, I removed my shirt and, when barked at by my masseuse for my foolish error, my jeans also. Lying on the bed, reading the labels on the cooking oil canisters, to one side, I wondered what was to come, when I became aware that not alone. I was barked at again, in what I presumed was an enquiry as to what I wanted. I wasn't entirely sure what she had asked me, but I made rough gestures towards my neck, and the treatment began.

It is said that we cannot accurately recall our pain, when looking back, and this is, perhaps, an extremely good thing. What I do recall is that I emerged, blinking, from the basement room into the sunshine, conscious of having been pummelled mercilessly, but nevertheless feeling brighter and more awake. So yesterday, as my London masseuse piled down onto my back and asked "Is that OK?" I winced again, before painfully breathing out a laboured and not entirely truthful, "Fine. Thanks," hopeful that the outcome might be equally rewarding.

Where’s William?

“William?” scowled the security guard.

“Yes,” I replied, with a bright and cheerful enthusiasm which, in hindsight, may have been a bit of a mistake. “Can you tell me where to find William?”

He viewed me suspiciously, as if trying to weigh up, from my eagerness, whether I was an idiot or a troublemaker. I had naïvely assumed that everybody in the museum would know William and his whereabouts. As the security guard looked me over warily, it belatedly dawned on me that, however obvious it might be to me who William was, this crucial piece of intelligence might just have escaped the security guard.

“The hippo,” I explained, in what I had hoped would be a helpful way, but which I soon realised only made matters worse. In response, the security guard’s expression abruptly shifted gear again, from suspicion to low-level alarm, and I started to wonder as to the advisability of going on with our conversation. However good my intentions, it looked like continuing the discussion might only have the effect of antagonising him further.

“Hippo?” he repeated, testing the word sceptically, much as one might sip cautiously at a drink offered by a stranger of whose bona fides one has reason to doubt.

“Yes! William’s a statue of a hippo,” I elaborated. He blinked at me, the dim and distant light of vague recognition slowly coming to his worried eye.

“What era?” he asked, suddenly.

“Uh,” I thought. “Egyptian?”

He thought for a bit. Finally, he nodded and pointed back to The Great Hall and to anther entrance at the far side.

“North Wing,” he said. “Try there.”

Relieved to be able to stop being such an obvious source of annoyance and frustration for him, I thanked him and made my way through the thronging visitors in The Great Hall. Showing my ticket again, I passed further security guards, who were busily engaged in frowning at people with backpacks, and into the gallery of Egyptian art.

In a museum as grand and expansive as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, narrowing one’s field of enquiry to a single wing, particularly if one is looking for a small ceramic hippopotamus, is not quite as helpful as you might imagine. It does help to be in the right section of the building, of course, but as I wandered past mummies, statues of Anubis and, to some surprise, The Temple of Dendur (complete with Napoleonic graffiti), I started to lose heart in the enterprise. It was only a small hippo, after all, but I had wanted to see it.

Finally, as I started to make my way back towards the entrance, having all but given up hope, I saw him. He was standing in an unostentatious glass cabinet, at one side of an otherwise unremarkable room, for all the world just minding his own business and watching the visitors go by.

William (or “Figure of a Hippopotamus” as he is referred to, with commendable understatement, in the Met catalogue) is barely more than 11 cm tall and is glazed in a vivid aquamarine and patterned with lotus flowers. He is from Egypt and is nearly four thousand years old. For most of the last hundred years, having been gifted by Edward S. Harkness in 1917, he has been at the Met in New York.

For an object of such antiquity, William has an endearingly sprightly charm. He stands, looking out of his glass case with a curiously benign expression of bemused indulgence, as if he had spent the last century casually watching the comings and goings of visitors to his new home. Maybe it is his broad snout that appeals, or possibly his pleasingly stumpy feet, which make him look like a puppy standing to attention, but whatever it is, he appears to be a hippo that is pleased to meet you.

As the unofficial mascot of the Met, I had assumed that William would have a display case all to himself, and be the centre of attention, but I was the only one at that moment who was looking at him.

“Hello, William,” I said.

Subway Song

It’s that strange time between rush hour and midmorning, where it feels like the city has taken a moment to catch its breath, and you can take your time. The subway car is pleasingly uncrowded, and I watch the street numbers rise steadily as I make my way north from the West Village.

At one stop, the car doors open and two buskers enter, one of whom is carrying an electric piano, which hangs from a duct tape strap around his neck. I’ve seen plenty of buskers with guitars and banjos before, but this is the first time I’ve seen anybody manhandling a decent-sized keyboard on public transport, and I’m impressed.

I’m already on their side before the pianist begins to play and, on his own, delicately sings “I’ll Be There” by The Jackson 5. His companion hovers nearby, leaning against the pole and holding a gold foil party bag. This is a little incongruous, and makes them look as if they’ve just come from somebody’s birthday; like they've decided to bring the good vibes from a party along with them as they wend their way home.

Then the guy with the bag joins in the singing, with spot-on harmonies, and I feel a tingle all the way down my neck. It’s such a beautiful thing, this well-sung song, and I’m half-sorry and half-glad that there aren’t more than half a dozen other passengers with me in the car to share the experience.

Still singing, the buskers start to sway down the car, and I drop a couple of dollars into the gold party bag - partly in thanks and partly as encouragement – and receive a warm and friendly fist-bump from the singer in return. My stop approaches, and I stand, instinctively swaying along to the music, humming along to the harmonies, and tapping my feet.

Often with buskers, however much you may enjoy their music, you don’t want to engage too much with the performer. This morning, thanks to these singers and their happy music, there is a fabulously warm feeling in the subway car, and I see several other riders also give generously and then exchange glances and satisfied nods with their fellow passengers.

For a strange moment, we disparate strangers are united by the music, and smile at each other, swaying to the rocking of the train and the harmonies of the singers. At my stop, and with a nod of thanks back to the performers, which they return, I leave the car with a warm glow that I subsequently carry with me for quite some time, happily humming “I’ll be there…” as I jump up the steps into the morning sunlight.