Adventures of the Lost Expedition, Part III: Plunging into the heart of darkness

NIGHTLIFE

July 16, 1982

Adventures of the Lost Expedition, Part III:

Plunging into the heart of darkness

CAPTAIN’S LOG, BAR DATE III: It was with great trembling trepidation that the Lost Expedition approached what was expected to be the most challenging and dangerous part of their mission. In order to drink their way from the foot of Main Street to the Genesee County line, they had no choice but to traverse the sleazy, prostitute-infested block between Virginia and Allen streets. At the heart of it was the infamous Richie’s at 848 Main, an alleged haven for hookers that’s roundly reviled by police, press and its neighbors.

            In the belief that there’s safety in numbers, more than a dozen potential celebrants had been invited on this leg of the safari. Then the apologies rolled in. A pair of new recruits turned up sick. One of the veterans had to tear out an old laundramat in Gowanda. A couple who had frequented the Main-Virginia bars during their courtship couldn’t find a babysitter.

            So it was the basic quartet of expeditioners that gathered at Friday happy hour in the familiar tranquility of Sebastian’s, an Italian restaurant and lounge complete with tiny Christmas lights in the decorative bough of a tree, set in an ancient mansard mansion at 884 Main.

            Thanks to the late Carroll Hardy, jazz deejay and record promotion man extraordinaire, Sebastian’s in the ‘70s was a hangout for folks in the music business. Any given Wednesday, the day radio music directors see record promo people in this town, they’d pack the place. It proved to be one of the city’s better purveyors of pasta. The chicken wings rivaled those up the street at the Anchor Bar. Now Sebastian’s has been sold.

            “This is going to be turned into a gay bar,” said the bartender, David Tomasello, who used to man the taps at Jack’s Cellar downtown. “As for me, I think I’m going to go back to the hospital.”

            “What are you going to do at the hospital?” we inquired.

            “Brain surgery,” Tomasello said with a sly grin. “Actually, I’m going back downtown to Hummer’s, where Jack’s used to be.”

            Three of Tomasello’s female fans arrived. While he attended them at the far end of the bar, we fell upon $4.25 double orders of chicken wings. Thus refreshed, one of our party bowed out to the Buffalo Athletic Club while the remaining three of us locked our valuables in the car trunk. We’d heard about pickpockets in this block, too. It was then the Captain noticed that his gasoline cap had been stolen. Truly this was treacherous territory. The only other time this kind of perfidy had been perpetrated had been in front of his own house.

            Undaunted, the party proceeded to T’s Tavern at the corner of Main and Virginia. T’s has the indirect lighting and paneled décor of a postwar supper club. It used to be almost as popular among Courier-Express staffers as Ray Flynn’s Golden Dollar down the street, but the advent of the hookers and the hustlers has hurt. The door has an emergency latch. To exclude unsavory visitors, it’s kept locked late at night.

            Early evening, however, found the place filled with senior citizens serenely sipping 60-cent Schmidt’s and Old Vienna drafts.

            Next was Richie’s. Only it was closed. “You Canadians?” a grizzled old gent perched on the sidewalk in an aluminum lawnchair rasped after taking another pull on his can of Genesee. He and the woman sitting next to him lived upstairs. We assured them we were merely curious. “Well,” he said, “Richie ain’t open. Who knows when he’s coming in. Last night he opened late and he was giving everybody their first drink free.”

            So we pressed on to Clancy’s next door at 852 Main, which seemed like a dressed-down version of T’s. The bar was lined with young and old, black and white, sullenly contemplating 55-cent drafts of Koehler’s and Ballentine’s. The pistachio nuts were soggy. The old-fashioned shuffleboard alley was sticky. To play the antique pool table with the carved wooden legs, it took not only two quarters, but also a $1 deposit on the cueball, which was guarded by the barmaid.

            When we emerged, Richie’s was open. Richie Radice himself was behind the bar. Otherwise the place was empty. Serving up Molson’s Golden at $1.25 a bottle, Radice complained that he was a victim of police harassment. The cops, he said, had even come in with guns drawn on occasion. He further claimed that he’s prevented robberies in front of his place and sometimes patrolled the sidewalk, chasing away undesirables. But what was he supposed to do? Not serve women because they might be prostitutes? Get drawn into phony fights while accomplices of the bogus brawlers leap behind the bar?

            The State Liquor Authority brings him up for a hearing Tuesday. He was resigned to losing his license. Though the place is the most recently decorated of any on the corner, he has no prospects for selling it. He didn’t have a lawyer. “They picked my bar,” he lamented. “It’s a tragedy. I’m a victim of circumstances.”

            Outside Richie’s, we encountered Jon Simon, summer photographer for The News and a resident of the Main-Virginia area. A crew of News folks were supping in Sebastian’s, he said. We joined them, ordered another round of chicken wings and heard of a wild and crazy barmaid named Mary at Chin’s Islander next door at 888 Main.

            But first, Simon proposed, we had to go back to Richie’s. Still no one there. We watched TV news and talked more with Radice. He brought out an album filled with club photos of his foxy black barmaids. Occasionally, some hustler would flash in and ask for change for $10 or a glass of water. Radice shooed them out. “We’re gonna close this … down, Richie,” one yelled. “That’s the robbery squad,” Radice reported as five young women paraded past his front window. “They aren’t prostitutes. They just take people’s money.”

            They were gone when we trekked to Chin’s. The fabled barmaid turned out to be a funloving colleen named Mary Thompson and she was no stranger to the expeditioners. She had moved into the Captain’s old West Side apartment when he moved out three years ago. As Cantonese-born David Chin reiterated the lament of beleaguered Main Street businessmen – fewer customers, declining neighborhood, no prospects for selling the place – Ms. Thompson augmented the safari’s beer diet with a round of Alabama Slammers.

            An Alabama Slammer consists of vodka, orange juice, sloe gin and Southern Comfort. It tastes like adult-rated Hawaiian Punch and it packs quite a wallop. Before long, the expedition was merrily exchanging rounds of drinks with the guys at the other end of the Oriental bar. David Chin produced crispy, tasty 80-cent egg rolls just before the kitchen closed and Ms. Thompson revealed her method for dealing with prostitutes at the bar. “They ask for a Coke,” she said, “and I charge them $4. You work the street, you pay street prices.”

            When Chin’s closed at 3 a.m., Mary Thompson proposed a nightcap at Ray Flynn’s Golden Dollar. The expedition followed, meeting a hearty welcome from proprietor Tom Flynn. A Courier copy editor on the next stool tried to explain his theory of Sturm und Drang in the hippie movement, but it was all lost on the Lost Expedition, which was fading fast. Fortunately, home, like dawn, was not far away.