The Hog Pit

Restaurant staff is moving furniture around us.  A couch floats over people's heads, carried by a pair of tall waiters in black.  Discussion's breaking up anyway.  The suggestion to continue the party somewhere else rises up from several quarters.  Where to though?

Personally I'm all for any place that offers one:enough quiet to make holding a conversation possible and pleasurable, two: coffee by the potful, three: proof that I'm still in New York City.

The group decision's a place that doesn't sound as if it's going to supply any one of the three---a barbeque joint on the corner.  The Hog Pit.

If I'd had a guide book handy I'd have known for sure I wasn't going.  Country Western music on the jukebox, a little piece of the good ol' South, a honky-stomping air?  But even without advanced warning like that, the idea of pulled pork at this hour is less than appetizing.  I start making plans to kidnap the company I most want to keep and make a dash for the first place that looks like Edward Hopper might have painted it or Dawn Powell put it in a novel.

Funny thing happens on the way out the door.  Our group breaks into two, and the half I'm part of gets lost in the maze of stairwells trying to find the coatcheck room in order to retrieve jackets, briefcases, and one mysterious canvas bag that looks like it contains groceries.  By the time we make it to the street the rest of the group's nowhere in sight.

Mosey on over to the Hog Pit, right up to the door, and stop.  We're all balking at going in, everybody having the same thought.  This is not what we had in mind.  The more literarily-star-struck of us start making the case for taking a cab up to the Algonquin where we can rub elbows with the ghosts of Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and other wits and writers of the early days of the New Yorker.  But nobody knows exactly where it is, not even those of us who live and work in Manhattan, and our leader, Tom Watson, has been waylaid by an ex-Marine down on his luck who's looking for money for a sandwich.  Tom, being a good-natured sort and in a convivial mood, has the ex-Marine telling him his life story, and, not surprisingly, while we're waiting for the Marine, who of course is no minimalist, he's a regular Tolstoy of verbal autobiographers, to bring his memoirs up to date, the air starts to go from people's sails.

Work in the morning.  Long drives and long train rides home.  Spouses, partners, and pets waiting.

"Ok," I say, "This is the Village.  There's got to be 6000 places around here that offer coffee, relative quiet, and the sense of being trapped inside an Edward Hopper painting.  One of you supposed Manhattanites name one now!"

And one of them does.  And just like that, after some hasty goodnights and (sincere) promises to get together again soon, I'm on my way to having all three things I wanted plus sole possession of the company I most want to keep.
__________________

Turns out the rest of our group wasn't even in the Hog Pit.  They'd passed it up to go in search of burgers.

Comments

[blue girl]

Oh, I'm so glad you wrote this! I hadn't thought of the couch and the keystone kops act trying to get out of the place and Brendan beating everybody to the front door.

The Hog Pit. What a classic.

Funfunfunfunfun. Darnit! Why does time go by so fast?

[CrayolaThief]

Having recently arrived in NYC, I'm still hunting around for the ideal Hopper-style joint. The Washington Square Diner on 4th street has a great location & is usually pretty quiet, but the food's not terrific. The Westway Diner on 9th Ave does better with the food but can get a little loud during certain hours & is uncomfortably close to Times Square. The hunt continues.

[mac macgillicuddy]

It is logical that a place called "The Hog Pit" wouldn't have burgers, though one might also think that -- while its specialty might be things from pigs -- it's overall theme would be meat, and that you could get a burger there.

Me, I would have gone to a place called "The Hog Pit," even at that hour, and even with the country western theme, because a hog pit seems such a good metaphor for my perception of that part of Manhattan.

[Kevin Wolf]

Used to be a great burger joint on lower Broadway, just as you hit the Village (I think) called Silver Spur. Huge burgers and cheap, too. I think it's long gone.

Haven't been to NYC in ages but I guess that area has changed a lot. Forbidden Planet, the sci-fi/comics shop, is gone too, as far as I know.

[Doug K]

I was fortunate enough to stay in the Algonquin (44th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues) on a business trip once, as it had the cheapest rate available for midtown, a mere $200/night. It was hard to discern the literary ghosts through the fog of technology and business issues I had to discuss in the bar..

[blue girl]

Me, I would have gone to a place called "The Hog Pit," even at that hour, and even with the country western theme, because a hog pit seems such a good metaphor for my perception of that part of Manhattan.

Maaaaaaaaac!

Pshaw!

[ElanaDMI]

We are so sorry we lost you. I was trying to figure out how to leave that labyrinth of a basement and then once my part of the group escaped we found the division that had left- the one Kombiz from http://edwize.org/ was already way ahead so I resort to caling them to see where they are.

They couldn't get seating at Hog Pitt so after standing on the street for a while and deliberating we went to find burgers. Little did I know at the time that neither Tom, Murphy or Will had my cel number. Ahhhhh!!!

This means you'll just have to come back and visit us again.