Chumley’s is dead. Long live Chumley’s.
Le roi est mort, vive le roi!
Chumley’s cleared another checkpoint last night with the approval of its SLA resolution by the CB2 board. Now it goes to the final arbiters, the State Liquor Authority for the deciding vote. You can read my post on the first meeting, here.
“Chumley’s is gone. It’s dead and it’s not coming back,” the CB2 Chair said before allowing the body to vote. It’s a strict viewpoint based on the premise that Chumley’s was an immutable configuration of atoms that ceased to exist on April 5th, 2007. It’s an opinion that fails to acknowledge other integral parts that make up the whole, like location and the people an establishment attracts. It ignores the intangibles, the heart and soul, that make a place, a place.
Started by Lee Chumley before prohibition and ran by his wife Henrietta after his death in 1935, Chumley’s was an oasis for independent thinkers and artists. During the ’50s, in the middle of an increasingly less bohemian and more bourgeois Village, Chumley’s was the counter-balance to the gentrification of that era. By surviving and thriving, it came to represent a facet of the New York attitude. It was artistic, it was stubborn, it didn’t care what you thought about it. It had personality.
Restaurateurs, kitchen staff, saloon keepers, actors, artists, dancers, writers, firefighters, cops, and those who skewed towards a more bohemian lifestyle found others of like mind and it became a magical, interesting mix. Like all great places, Chumley’s became about the people. And that concerns those fighting against the now-probable reopening — spoken on more than one occasion was “The type of clientele it will attract.” I share that concern, but for different reasons.
At some point during the 1980’s or early 90’s, Chumley’s crossed from the realm of the real into the realm of romanticism and New York legend. The expectation of the experience partially created the actual experience. Fortunately, the core was still there. The heart was still there. The spirit that attracted the thinkers, the eclectic, the eccentric, and the interesting was still there. It is unknown whether those people will return. I hope so. If not, Chumley’s risks becoming a caricature of itself, much like Bush Gardens is a facsimile of Europe. I don’t know if the owners will navigate around that particular shoal and maintain the proper balance, but I do know it’s worth the attempt.
Will Chumley’s be the same when it reopens? No. Instead of the constant evolution that goes unnoticed, a picture here, new paint there, the addition of another dust jacket from the book of a patron, it will be a wholesale renovation. But Chumley’s was not the place we remember when Faulkner drank there. It was not the place we remember when Steinbeck dined there. And it will not be the place we remember when we once again walk through that famous speakeasy door. Not until we find the sleeping, still beating heart, and nurse it back to health with our presence. Then, once again, it will be Chumley’s.
Long live Chumley’s!
