THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING Podcast
Nick Bodor on Strangers & Institutions
Descripción
Nick Bodor [https://www.curbed.com/2022/11/baker-falls-opening-east-village-pyramid-club.html] is the founder and owner of Baker Falls [https://www.instagram.com/bakerfalls/], a live music venue and bar at 196 Allen Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He previously created some of the East Village’s most influential independent spots — Alt Coffee, Library Bar, and Cake Shop, which booked early shows by MGMT, Vampire Weekend, and the Strokes. A first-generation Hungarian-American from rural Connecticut, he’s spent 30 years building communal spaces in downtown New York where emerging bands, downtown clowns, and anti-folk musicians find a home. Nick is building the kinds of spaces we need. This piece makes the case we should be subsidizing this kind of social infrastructure: “Why ‘Cost Disease’ is The Secret Froce Behind America’s Toxic Solitude [https://www.derekthompson.org/p/why-cost-disease-is-the-secret-force]:’ There is a strong economic argument for subsidizing health care, education, and even child care. But should we also subsidize sit-down restaurants? Bowling alleys and the local dive bar? Coachella! Of course, I’m joking about Coachella. (Kind of.) But my serious point is that if solitude has a social cost, it’s not crazy to think that local, state, and federal governments should be thinking about creative ways to make it cheaper to hang out. Some policy solutions would be familiar, such as local governments providing more public pools and community spaces. Others might sound a little odd, like making pro-social businesses, such as restaurants, qualify for tax-deductible donations, the same way that Puccini fans can write checks to their favorite opera house. Cost disease is real, and it has a known cure. Today we’re seeing that one price of a successful economy is the rise of anti-social businesses. But if we want our rising living standards to include friendships and shared experiences—and not just a nation of couch potatoes scrolling on their phones for 10 hours a day—then we’ll need to choose our social future. And pay for it. So I start all these conversations with the same question, which I borrowed from a friend of mine. I use it in all my conversations because I haven’t found a better way of getting into one of these conversations out of the blue. And it’s a big question. So I over explain it the way that I’m doing now. So before I ask it, I want you to know that you’re in absolute control and you can answer or not answer any way that you want to. And the question is, where do you come from? Yeah, it’s interesting because it is so open-ended. Where do I come from geographically? Where do I come from on my parents’ side that was somewhat formative? And full disclosure, it’s this funny thing that as... I basically came to New York City in the early 90s and I’d been hanging out there since the 80s. And I opened this coffee shop on Avenue A in 1995 across from Tompkins. And everybody was like, hey, Nick, where are you from? What do you do? Well, it was such a what I call exploratory question for people you don’t know. So with the backstory of I opened this coffee shop when I was 27, I think 27 years old. And it was just me and a business partner. We weren’t well funded. It was this very back in the day, we call it do it yourself, DIY coffee house that happened to have internet access. So we were very early internet cafe, but we wanted to be the cool internet cafe. I always called it an online coffee house, not a cyber cafe, which we were opening up at the time. So when people asked me that question, I was very gun shy because I was very proud and I had worked since I was 13 years old, working in restaurants and having coked out chefs throw pots at me, but then bring me under their wing and mentor me. To answer the question where I’m from in that environment was I was like, I’m in New York. I’m a New Yorker. And that doesn’t fly. To answer the question realistically, I think this will be me almost coming to terms with it is I’m from Connecticut. And when you say in 1990s East Village, Avenue A, gritty rock and roll and cool alternative culture, you’re from Connecticut. Everybody just thinks you’re from Westport or Greenwich and you’re a rich kid. Especially being a younger person that opened a coffee shop. Everybody would just assume you’re a rich kid if you say you’re from Connecticut. So I always had this chip on my shoulder about answering that question. But ultimately, it formed me and it formed a lot of what I’m doing now in 2026, many decades later, 30 years later. Yeah, so the way I explain it is not being from Westport or Greenwich. But from an area that’s much more rural. People don’t realize that Connecticut has rural populations like Easton and Georgetown. Where I’m from had literally an abandoned wire mill in the town, and my road was called Old Farm Road. So I grew up thinking everybody had a backyard with woods and an abandoned farmhouse that you could just walk across two neighbors’ yards and be in this giant field that was abandoned and fly kites and make model rockets that we would shoot off and just be young kids in the 70s and 80s. Your parents just said see you for dinner time and you just roamed around. And I thought everybody could kick in the door of an abandoned farm outbuilding and fall through the staircase with rusty nails and everything. Super lucky we didn’t get killed. But that formed a lot of an aesthetic of the woods and abandoned buildings and just exploring and just walking around. And that transferred into New York City, which was a choice that I made to move because I was inspired by the East Village and Lower East Side when I was part of my growing up where I’m from. I’m first generation. My father escaped in a revolution in Hungary in 1956 and came to Bridgeport, Connecticut, which is a factory town. And the Upper East Side had a Hungarian enclave. And the other one was in Youngstown, Ohio, which Jim Jarmusch made a movie about called Strangers in Paradise about Hungarians, New York, Hungary, downtown Hungarians going to a Hungarian enclave in Ohio. All of that formed a lot of what I’m doing these days. And I started working in a restaurant when I was 13 called the Georgetown Saloon. That was where all the working folk, all the working people hung out. But it was also, there was some people that had some money. But it really was the place where people had Harleys and they cut the lawns for the rich people and had really successful landscaping businesses. But they drove Harleys and wore leather vests and stuff. Honky tonk in the middle of everything. So that’s where I’m from. A lot of it, that restaurant, the Georgetown Saloon formed me because there was always one of the owners in the kitchen, one of the owners on the floor, one of the owners behind the bar. And I worked for them for 10 years and they really brought me up. And when I was 18, I said, by the time I’m 28, I want to open a restaurant. I put myself long-term goal there that again is all where I’m from. And if I didn’t have that job at Georgetown Saloon, I probably wouldn’t have been inspired to do my own thing. I probably would have tried to get an office job or something that was the norm if you could make it happen. That really influenced where I’m from. And put me in a position to open. I started getting really into coffee culture when I moved to New York and what I would call a coffee house versus cafe. I was romanticizing 1950s beatnik Greenwich Village coffee houses, but then I would travel to Montreal and I loved the coffee house scene there. And so when I moved to New York, 1992, I was 21 at the time and I got into the coffee business and I was like, oh, I don’t need to open a restaurant when I’m 28. I could open a coffee shop. And so I was able to put myself in a position there where we opened up Alt Coffee when I was 27. But I don’t know if that’s a long answer to that first question or if I should break to let you ask me a question. No, I mean, the answers have their own, they come to their own end. I mean, it’s beautiful. But I do want to go back, because the next question I often ask is, as a kid, maybe before you got that job at the Georgetown Saloon, as a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? Do you have a recollection of what young Nick wanted to be when he grew up? Well, yeah, that again, it’s where are you from and what are the dates? And I was born the day they landed on the moon, is what I say. So this is also what I love about me being totally frank and honest, because I used to make up backstories for myself and that was such an interesting time. Where you can just make s**t up about your background and there wasn’t the internet to fact check, right? So I thought the Ramones were all brothers. You didn’t fact check it. So I’ve put bits and pieces of things out there, especially being in the cafe business and the bar business where I’m chatty, it’s hospitality. I love talking to various people. I’ve made some s**t up. I’ve dropped some exaggerations. So I always say I was born the day they landed on the moon, July 17th, 1969. But I have to be careful, because if people know, they actually landed on the moon on the 19th, and I was born when they were in space. Because people don’t always realize — other than now we’ve been back to the moon this year, which is coincidental — people know it takes multiple days. So I was technically born while they were on their way to the moon, but I always say I was born the day they landed on the moon. Apollo 11 landed on the moon. So I always wanted to be an astronaut. I’ve always been fascinated by space. I was a sci-fi kid. Star Wars, I was eight years old when Star Wars came out. That was hugely influential. So yeah, I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, for sure. It’s amazing. I’m really connecting with, well what a choice to make that choice to say the day that they landed on the moon as opposed to being in the moon. Where does that come from, do you think, that instinct? I think again, it’s exploratory questions or chit chatting with strangers. It’s just much easier to say you were born and it sounds cool to be honest. It sounds cooler. I was born the day they landed on the moon. Then, they were in flight. It took them three days to get to the moon. They actually landed on the 19th, but then when a friend would be like, you were born on July. I would say I was born on the day they landed on the moon. Let’s say 20 years ago, they’re like, you were born on July 19th. I’m no, I was actually born on July 17th. So that was just so interesting being caught on it. It was really just easier and I felt more, again, it’s like, hey, it just sounds great. I was born in the day landing on the moon. And how did you, I’m curious about that job at the Georgetown Saloon, because it sounds so formative. How did you get that job? What would that have must have been like as a first? Yeah. So, literally 13, 14. My old man, again, very old world, very Eastern European, taught us a good work ethic. He literally escaped from the bottom of a truck in a revolution and hid and made his way to Germany. And he didn’t talk about it at that time, but he was really scrappy and very cheap, even though he worked hard and built up a good life. So we didn’t really have an allowance or pocket money, and we did tons of chores around the house. He was the guy that would lay his own concrete, and we thought every kid had a concrete mixer at home and would help your dad mix up concrete. But we never got paid for it. So a buddy of mine had a job as a dishwasher and he was getting paid — probably two fifty, three dollars an hour maybe. Before that, I had been raking leaves for neighbors and cutting grass. And the raking leaves, I remember it was so formative because I would literally be raking leaves for an hour, let’s say two hours, two fifty an hour, so for five bucks, and I would have blisters from raking leaves. And that was formative, but also God, this sucks to do this work for two dollars. A dishwasher, five an hour — let’s do that. Because a friend of mine had been working there and it was literally in walking distance. It was rural, but this saloon was in walking distance. It was a long walk, but walking distance to my house. I could ride my bike down there. And it was because my friend had the job. His dad was also, he was first generation, but his parents were actually South African and English. But he basically got me the job. And around that time in high school, a little later, more like 15, 16, other friends of mine had restaurant jobs. And it was a good way to have your own money and buy records and come into the city and go to CBGBs and everything. That was all because I had my own money. As a young 14, 15, versus having to ask my parents for it. Yeah. And what would you go into the city for? What was that scene you mentioned CBGBs? What stories can you tell? Yep. Yeah. So I was a pretty good high school student. And so I was allowed to just hop on a train, at that time it was probably five, six dollars. And an hour, an hour and a half later, you’re in Grand Central Station walking downtown. I used to always just walk down to Washington Square Park and see what was going on. And then I started getting a little bolder and heading over to Avenue A. And First Avenue was always the line back then. And as I got a little older, I’d get more, Avenue A and Avenue B. And I would just walk around the city, sometimes with a friend, sometimes alone, and just walk 80 blocks — well, it was 40 blocks downtown, then east and west, south and north. It was easy to get your bearings and just explore around. We would just walk around, hang out in the parks, do the stuff you do as a teenager. CBGB’s had all ages shows, and I never really had a fake ID, so it was all ages shows. Then when I got to be a little older, maybe you wouldn’t get carded back then as much. Around 17, 18, 19, I really started going out and going to coffee shops and going to bars if I could, or getting a drink if I could, or getting a 40 ounce from the bodega and going to the park, which was the thing to do. But yeah, it was a lot of wandering aimlessly. And then when you discovered cool spots, you would bring a friend there — you got to check this spot out. And for me, a lot of it was going to whatever shows were all ages and rock and roll, indie rock, alternative places where it all resonated with me. And at record stores too, that was the other thing. I would go to a record store, that’s how I discovered, I mean, bands fall in and out of fashion, but I had a Beastie Boys seven inch before they had a record out because I would just be in a record store on Bleecker Street or something and the clerk would be playing and I’d be like, oh, who’s this? It’s Cookie Puss by Beastie Boys, a 12 inch remix. Yeah, that was a really cool part of it too. So catch us up, where are you now and what is the work that you do? How do you describe what you do and what you’re up to? Yeah, I mean, I had this long-term goal — I want to open a coffee house, I want to be part of coffee culture. And good coffee was just coming to New York at that time. Everything was bodega coffee, there was no Starbucks. There were the Italian espressos in Greenwich Village. And this guy Gene had a place called the Bean Bar that was an independent coffee shop. And he was opening one on the Upper East Side. He’s like, I want you to come, I’ll teach you the business, and you can be the night manager on the Upper East Side. And I was living downtown — I had my first apartment, a railroad. I hate to be the back in the day guy, but I probably couldn’t have done what I’m doing now if I didn’t have a railroad apartment on East 13th Street with four other guys. The shared room was the kitchen, and people had to walk through my room to get to the exit. A typical railroad, but it was cheap and it allowed me to get into the coffee business and go to shows. Basically, once I felt I had learned enough of the business, I found this abandoned dentist office that had been vacant for 14 years on Avenue A. I had staggered out of Doc Holliday’s, the honky tonk, and there was a handwritten for rent sign on the window of the space. I had never noticed it before because it looked like an apartment on street level, but it hadn’t been anything. And we wound up being able to just go to the lumber yard that used to be on 14th and buy wood and build a counter. And so we opened in 1995 — Alt.coffee, an internet cafe with a T1 line when people had 28K dial up modems. But we were the funky one. We would just find couches on the street. There were no bed bugs in New York City at that time. Coffee, computers, and comfy chairs was our tagline, and the comfy chairs were wingback chairs we’d find from a dead 80-something in one of the tenements. We would just find all this cool old furniture, and we had fuzzy lamps with baubles hanging down. That was our shtick. And you could smoke in cafes. We didn’t even have a beer and wine license and we were open till 2, 3 a.m. just doing coffee and computers. It was really a very cool time. And I was a drunk. So I was like, I should get in the bar business. And so in 1998, three years after Alt, I open Library Bar on Avenue A, which is a rock and roll dive bar that I loved. I loved places like Downtown Beirut and all these little spots — Z Bar and all these places that I used to go to in the East Village. No Tell Motel. I mean, there’s so many. Brownies was very influential as a live music venue. There were just all these amazing rock and roll bars with jukeboxes. And I was like, someday I’ll have the best jukebox in New York City. And I would write down on a napkin oh, I got to put the Tom Waits in there. I never see Tom Waits in a jukebox, or all this stuff. Then we open the Library Bar in 98. The next year when people actually read The Village Voice, we got voted best jukebox in New York City. I was like, that’s it, my career is over. That’s all I ever wanted to do. And then I always thought of myself as curating this 99 slot jukebox that, it’s funny about Tom Waits, because I was so excited to have him in there. And the first time he came on on a mellow, we were open noon to four, seven days a week, no food, just a watering hole. First time Tom Waits came out on a Sunday afternoon, we’re all freaking out, this is so great. Then it comes on on a bumping, loud Friday night, high energy, just brought the whole room down. I was like, Tom Waits has to come off the jukebox. And it formulated this: what sounds good at 2 p.m. and what sounds good at 2 a.m. And curating this 99 slot jukebox is something that I just took a lot of pleasure in and I know it brought a lot of pleasure to a lot of different types of people. And that was so exciting. That really fired me up and we did that for many years. And then in 2005, I was like, well, I’d love to open a venue. There’s all these great venues that I love that have great bands that I haven’t heard of. I’ll go to see three bands and discover two new ones. I might go for the headline and discover two bands I’ve never heard of that are amazing and that was the mid aughts which was a good time for new bands in New York City. Basically, we opened Cake Shop as a record store, cafe, taking what we knew from the cafe business and the bar business at Library and opened a place that became a real communal hub because of the cafe and the record store upstairs and the music venue was downstairs. So if you wanted to pay the cover to go downstairs and see early shows by MGMT and Vampire Weekend, we booked their first shows, or you could hang out upstairs. It was accidental, but the social interaction and the community building was just so rewarding. So amazing. We were there for 15 years. I didn’t think we had to close before COVID because our model didn’t work 15 years later where we needed cheap rent and either we raised our prices and everything was breaking down at the same time. The HVAC units are expensive. Insurance went up. Con Ed went up. So we decided we closed. To me, it seems two years ago, but it was actually quite a bit longer. So it was 2005 till 2019, so 14 years. But I never thought I’d be able to do a venue again in Manhattan, which is my neighborhood. East Village is my neighborhood. It’s where I moved, it’s where I got the first railroad apartment. That’s home. Brooklyn didn’t feel home to me. Everyone’s open in Brooklyn, open in Brooklyn. I’m like, I don’t know. We wound up opening a short-lived place called Brewer Falls in Williamsburg that I had a bad partnership and it just soured me even further, but I was like, okay, I just never thought I’d be able to open again in the East Village. And then after COVID hit, the Pyramid Club, which was a legendary club back in the day that hadn’t been very relevant, was available. And I was like, who owns this? And I did all this detective work. Who owns the Pyramid? Because it was a very mysterious thing. And I was able, long story short, to partner up with the Knitting Factory and get the space at 101 Avenue A. And I thought, my god, this will be great. But the layout was so different from Cake Shop. I wanted to bring it back because it hadn’t really been relevant. It was just this place where you’d go dance to an 80s themed dance party in the 2000s, and that was it. It wasn’t where Nirvana’s first show on the East Coast was, which is what Pyramid was. And also RuPaul lived in the basement when she moved to New York because she was in a band called Wee Wee Hole, a punk band. The manager of Pyramid was like, “Hey, Rue, you don’t have to go back to Atlanta, Georgia with Wee Wee Hole. Come live in the basement.” And she was so inspired by that community there that she became RuPaul. And that’s what I wanted was the rockers hanging out. When I was coming up, it was Don Hills and everybody in the Pyramid Club, everybody straight LGBTQ, whatever, everybody all hung out together with no judgments. And that’s what the coffee shop was. That’s what Cake Shop was. I missed that. And Pyramid Club — I was too concerned with trying to preserve the history, that it didn’t really have its own identity as Baker Falls, which is what we had called it. And I had developed this idea of this decrepit manor house in the woods vibe in the downstairs lounge, the second bar downstairs that I called the Fever Dream. That really was the Baker Falls vibe — this decrepit manor house in the woods, part Grey Gardens, but also this weird town, part Twin Peaks. I wanted Baker Falls to be this whole thing, and that’s something I haven’t had the bandwidth to develop. But of course that was all Old Farm Road and growing up with these abandoned buildings — how fascinating that would be in a city environment. So when we wound up parting ways with Knitting Factory and at the same time, the Rockwood Music Hall space became available. So I was able to immediately move Baker Falls into that space, which was much more conducive. I call it wood, glass, and iron. It has wood all over it, these iron. It’s got an iron mezzanine and it’s glass. And we could really trick it out with our decrepit town, weirdo oddball who lives in Baker Falls, who’s our kin, who’s a resident, who are nomads passing through Baker Falls. We could really execute that concept at Baker Falls. So now we’re at 192 Allen Street right on, I call it the borderlands of the East Village, Lower East Side. But it’s a struggle because it’s a beast and we were underfunded. I just wanted to get open so bad and I really believed that it would all come together and instead what’s going on is we’re underfunded and struggling. But people love it, so we’ll keep it going. Yeah, that’s beautiful. I had an experience there. That’s when we met. We met at the Breakfast Club in Brooklyn through Bendits and happened to be in the city and experienced, I think, is it the clown night? Yeah, yeah, Idiot’s Hour. I’d seen this scene bubble up in back room, back rock bars — Cobra Club and these back venues — and I was seeing this avant-garde, modern clowning, but also traditional. Very smart but very silly. These are fucked up times, let’s laugh about it. And sometimes heavy. It was just such a great scene. I was like, okay, we’ve got to be the Manhattan home for the downtown — I just started calling it the downtown clown scene, but Matthew and Ryan, who are the hosts, they call it Idiot’s Hour. But it was floating around in these back spaces of Bushwick. And I’m like, no, let’s make it the downtown clown home. So week one since we opened Baker Falls in January last year, 2024, every Wednesday we’ve been fostering and encouraging and exposing new people to this really amazing scene of avant clowning. And I’m so happy. I just feel I’m very proud that we identified it, was able to execute it and give it a home. So that’s been super rewarding. And in general, Baker Falls is known as, I get emerging bands, Indie Rock Club, the way Cake Shop’s booking style with the addition of the Downtown Clowns. And we wanted to bring back the anti-folk scene, which had started in the East Village. It’s this sub-genre where Moldy Peaches came out of and Beck would, Jeffrey Lewis and all these people came out of this open mic where Beck would come to town and be influenced his whole sound. So we’re like, we’ve got to bring back anti-folk. So we do that every Monday as well. We’ve done these residencies since day one on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. And the other one is we had this friend and artist that we really liked, Torture the Desert Spiders. She was actually one of my ticket people at Baker Falls at 101 Avenue A. She grew up — her mom was a long time door person and booker at Mercury Lounge — and she grew up in it the same way my 22 year old son grew up in it. And I wanted to bring back this idea of, man, the Strokes before anybody knew them would be at Mercury Lounge for a six week residency, and we’d be at the Library Bar like, oh, we should go see that band, the Strokes, next week — and we just never went that six weeks. We tapped Torture to be our first resident because she’s so talented. She loved it so much, had so many great friends, that we’ve been doing that for 65 weeks now as well. And it’s this great thing where bands that can play at Bowery Ballroom and much bigger venues do stripped down sets with us every Tuesday. So that’s another thing. There was a while where I was like, can we keep open? And it’s very well publicized that we could close any day. But because of stuff like this — these residencies are important to people — it really makes us keep the fight going. And then we’ve got to maybe book some bigger shows on Friday, Saturday. There’s always issues with startups — our air conditioning didn’t work last summer, so we never really could do any late night parties because it was hot in there. And so all of this is based on what we started being something very special, and we really need to keep it going. It’s wonderful. There’s two things that I want to—there’s two big buckets that I want to get into, one because I’ve never lived in New York City. So I’m curious about and you’ve been in the East Village for so long and you described it as your home and it’s a neighborhood you’ve been working in for such a long time. So I’m really curious to hear you talk about the neighborhood. But before I ask you that question, what do you think that you do? What is it that you do? How do you think about what you do? Yeah, I’m somewhat introspective, I know what I do. And I’ve always thought of myself as a social anthropologist, being fascinated by people, human interactions, no judgments. There’s nature, there’s nurture, there’s environment. People form for various reasons. Let’s have a discussion, whatever. But so what I think I do very well is set up an environment where I want to hang out. And luckily, it’s very authentic and it’s very organic and all these terms that marketing people use, I know is what I do. I mean, my place resonates because my environments are not over designed. It’s not H&L architects coming in to design this retro bar in Greenwich Village. That’s the old world New York with dark wood. It’s just all that’s not what I do. I just set up a place, design it. Maybe I have some collaborators. I mean, at Library Bar, it’s this rock and roll dive bar that has mine. I have Funk and Wagnalls encyclopedias I grew up with. It was always in our basement. We just put them behind the bar and all of this stuff. Tapping artists to do a mural, all of this stuff is what I think I do really well. And I think I want multi-generation. I want the 22 year olds the way I was at Doc Holliday’s because I had no money and I drank—it’s funny because the owner of Doc’s says he never did this but what got me in there because I was not a country music guy was they had $2 mugs of Guinness and I felt it was so deluxe. So I’d be in this honky tonk drinking and talking to a guy missing a tooth who’s telling me amazing stories and a cute bartender who’s turning me on to why country music is storytelling and amazing. I loved hanging out with the old timers when I was young and then it stopped with millennials only wanting to hang out with themselves and hang out and drink wine and smoke pot on the rooftop or whatever. What my places have always, I think, appealed to is multi-generational people, and then we’re all hanging out together. So that’s what I think I do. I think I create environments where people feel comfortable and can meet a stranger or they can meet up with a friend. But what I don’t want is you bringing 40 friends for your 30th birthday party and hanging out. And I don’t really see that at a lot of my places. If you’re solo, you’re comfortable no matter what your orientation is, no matter what you identify as, you’re comfortable, we look after safe space, and you might meet your best friend and it happens. I have so many people — if it comes up, oh, I own Library Bar — oh my god, I met my best friend there. Oh my god, my friend group is all from that bar. That happened at Cake Shop, that happened at Alt Coffee. That is something that I do, and I don’t always make the most money. I mean, as I’m getting older, I need to start thinking about retirement a little bit. I’m 55, I’m not making a lot of money, and so I have to calibrate: how do I do what I do and make some money on it so I don’t have to work till I’m 80? Although, full disclosure, my exit strategy is to be the 75 year old day bartender shuffling around some weird bar opening Budweisers. That’ll be okay for me too. What’s it, yeah, talk to me, how is it different now than it was, whatever, 20 years ago, trying to create that space, to create the opportunities for, I this is something that we fixate on all the time, or at least I do, that how hard it is to connect or interact with people that you don’t know, what, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. What have been the biggest changes that you’ve noticed in terms of how hard it is to do that now? Yeah, I mean, because things are so cyclical, it’s been interesting for me to be an observer over 30 years in New York City. There was a time where there weren’t any good rock bands and everything was electro clash or whatever. It just wasn’t. If it’s not your scene and you’re not feeling it, you can’t fake it. It’s interesting now with the Internet and social media. There’s, retro’s always been there. I mean, for me, romanticizing the 1950s cafes in 1995, or bands or whatever, but now with social media, it’s very interesting to see how trends come out. So my son is in the East Village. He was born in a railroad, grew up in the East Village, and he’s 22 years old. And now him and I are working together. He’s a bartender. He got into the business on his own, which I was proud of because I didn’t really want him to be just a nepo baby thing. But he totally got into it on his own for many years, and then I brought him in to work with me. And he grew up in a household that had indie music. He could have gravitated to pop or hip hop or EDM or something, but he didn’t. So now we’re able to work together and connect on that and go to shows together. Now he’s over 21, we go to shows together. But more importantly, working together, we’re seeing how the kids — younger kids, when I say kids, 20-somethings — are fascinated by us old timers the way I was fascinated by the old timers at the honky tonk, Doc Holliday’s. And I didn’t see that for a while. You didn’t see a band with a 25 year old drummer and a 45 year old guitar player. And now you are. And the conversations are so enjoyable. My whole thing is get people off the screens. That’s another part of what I do. I don’t have TVs. You walk into a bar in Midtown and everyone’s watching sports and you don’t have a sports conversation. What are you talking about? Right. That’s why music was always good for that for me — talking about the music, or a playlist, or so the young people now are asking us, my God, you own this place? How did that happen? And then they ask super fascinating questions. If I was, let’s say I was 35, bartending at Cake Shop, and a 22 year old band from Montreal comes through — it was different. It was a little different. But now they’re so bold, I guess because they’re used to having their whole lives be televised on screens. Maybe 20 years ago it would have seemed a weird question to ask an old-timer. But now they’re just curious and they almost don’t have filters on it, which I find endearing, but also really amazing. So when I first noticed this, it was me just being behind the bar. A young man, and they’re just so chatty, and a gal asked me, you own this place? Do you have any regrets? And I was like, whoa — this is the first, third sentence maybe that we spoke with each other. And she felt comfortable enough to ask me that question. Number one. Number two, I actually have a tattoo that says no regrets, but I have some. Sure. It just sparked this really great conversation with a 20-something when I was 50-something, and it was just learning from each other. And all of this stuff is a very fascinating, exciting time, I think, to be social. They’re all figuring it out. I have this conversation all the time with my son’s age group. They’re like, yeah, we spent too much time on the screens. There was quarantine, which meant he didn’t make any friends. He was a teenager during COVID. So instead of doing stupid s**t at Union Square that I did, or Washington Square Park or Tompkins, they were on a headset with their buddies from elementary school. Weren’t dating. Weren’t experimenting. Weren’t doing it. And so now they want to do that. But they’re so curious. And I think a lot of parents my generation maybe — I have to say, I didn’t, I never really liked doing this, but I probably did it with the video games. But other parents would just give their kid a screen to keep them quiet in the restaurant or to keep them quiet. So parenting, I think, is shifting — like, s**t, maybe we shouldn’t have that either. So that’s very interesting right now. Yeah, I’m sure you’ve been an independent, you’ve been independent. I mean, what you’ve been doing is unbelievable that it began with the I love the T1 line before there was internet cafes, but you’ve been independent in that place in that neighborhood for so long. The success you had at the Cake Shop, and then what you’re doing now with the clowns. And I’m just wondering, do you think about culture? Do you have thoughts about what it means? How do you choose what to include or who to invite or what to... You have a sense of something that’s happening in East Village with each of the things that you do. What do you feel you’re either responding to or experiencing in the East Village when you create a space and invite clowns to come in or invite Yeah. I mean, again, it’s funny, as this cis middle-aged white guy, not the most popular group of folks. But I’m an ally. I do good stuff, it just sort of, and it really is, I think Ben Dietz actually even made fun of me one time. This whole idea of gatekeeping or tastemaker, it’s unfashionable now, but I always did think of people with taste, that’s why curating a jukebox, who the f**k would think about curating a 99 CD jukebox? But I gave it so much thought and so much testing and experimentation, when I’d swap things in and out, or I’d have a discussion. I love it when people don’t know I’m the owner. That’s ideal — if they just think I’m a bartender, or they just think I’m a guy sitting at the bar. The conversations are very different. Knowing it just became something over time. I believe, and I’ve always said this — writing a business plan for what I do, there’s all these intangibles that I do really well that are very hard to put into a business plan. Vibe and decorating, whatever. So a lot of it is gut reaction. And during COVID, obviously I watched a ton of music documentaries, and it was always about these gut reactions of these A&R people, these label heads. Gut reactions. And sometimes people would tell them, this band will never do it. They’re like, no, this band’s special. I was like, I would have f*****g killed it in that role. And going out to see a million live shows, seeing a band you’ve never heard of, the hair in the back of your neck stands up — that’s so special to me. And I experience that all the time still because I go out a lot to small venues, and that’s what I love. But it’s this intangible. And I do think for me, it’s what resonates with me that I may or may not have experimented with or explored or had loads of conversations with people at an airport bar in Tampa or whatever. I do that all the time. I love it. That, I think allows me to have a unique perspective. Plus the fact that I’m this indie DIY struggles, ups and downs, every year is different. Very fluid operator in that sense that, yeah, it just does that answer your question? I might have lost track a little bit there in that one. What do you love about the work? Where’s the joy in it for you? Yeah, I mean, for me, it’s having a conversation with a stranger. It’s also that conversation leading into a new acquaintance or a new friend. But I also love — that’s the whole thing about airport bars. Having the greatest conversation with somebody that you’ll never, ever see again is always fun, too. And when I heard that airport bars started putting screens at every seat, I was like, no, that’s going to kill that. But now I heard they peeled that back, and it was just interesting culturally. But the joy for me is 10 years later, somebody telling me that they met their partner there, or they fell in love there, or they wrote their screenplay — all of that. Or they saw the best band that they’d ever heard, or they discovered this band from f*****g Milwaukee or whatever that they just loved and became a fan of. That’s the reward. And anytime I’m feeling like, oh my God, how am I going to keep this open? I’ll have that conversation. For me, it’s almost daily. And that really is why I keep doing it. And I’ve tried to get out of it. I’ve tried to do other careers. When I moved to New York in ‘92, I wanted to be maybe a journalist working for Details magazine or something like that. I loved Paper magazine, the Village Voice. But I didn’t have any portfolio because I just never knew. Nobody said go get an internship at a magazine or an indie label. That’s probably something I should have done. It just wasn’t in my wheelhouse, or it just wasn’t an experience that anybody had directed me towards. Having people — I know I’m doing really good work, in the sense of the way an artist does, but I’m not an artist. I’m the least creative guy. I’m a very good editor. I’m very good at taking things that work and putting them all together. But I tried to get out of the business, was my point, and then I’m like, s**t, the Pyramid Club is for sale. Let’s go do that. And then I jump in, twin barrels burning, and next thing I know I’m back into it. That also did come from, maybe I should work in an ad agency. I’ve always thought I would have been this organic marketer — then it’s becoming experiential marketing, experiential things, which is again a way I might be able to make a lot of money in the future. Because it is so hard now with a brick and mortar. Insurance is a big one — insurance in the past five years makes it cost prohibitive. And a lot of my models were based on cheap rent, building it up. Making a fan who tells 10 people instead of making an enemy who tells 100 and you can’t do that now. You have to be a splash and you have to splash quickly because the overhead at least in New York and I think probably all over has changed so much. That’s why everybody leans on social media to get this splash and get people in the door. I mean that’s what’s frustrating about what’s changed over the decades is you can’t let it germinate. You can’t have this authentic place where you want to hang out and just hope everybody else comes. That’s the trick now. What’s your sense of the difference between those two things? Letting him germinate or squash. Yeah, you’re painting a picture in which the economics mean you have to do this big splash, you’re describing an alternative form of growth. Yeah, it’s basically like I wanted to be the way CBGB’s was around for decades. What happens is you open this cool restaurant and you spend a lot of money on somebody to your Instagram. And then I don’t think you’re going to be popular two years later, because I think there’s only certain people and they’re going to go check out the next one or the next neighborhood or the next whatever. Versus being that institution that you can bring your kid to when they turn 21 or the coffee shop where you can meet your daughter who’s away at college come meet at the coffee shop and have a coffee. Everything is shorter lived, I think, because of the splash of social media or the hipness or if you are able to even do it. Well, I love you just use the word institution. Is it that you feel like you’ve been trying to build these little local institutions? It’s really beautiful. I do, yeah, yeah, definitely. Is that cocky? Is that too cocky? But it’s so grimy because sometimes I’m worried I’m going to pay my rent. And I think that’s what keeps me humble too, to be honest. If I really opened a hugely successful rooftop bar or something that made a shitload of money, I don’t know, it’d be different, right? No. I think. But what makes it worthwhile, all the struggle in the name of these local institutions? What makes it worthwhile? Because I’m having somebody that told me they had a great time 20 years ago or yesterday. It really is that. I’m making an impact on somebody’s life, whether it’s for one day or for decades. That’s huge. That just makes me feel good. I want to thank you so much for spending time with me and telling us a little bit about yourself. Do have any parting thoughts for people on Baker Falls or the village and introduce the neighborhood to them and your place? Yeah. I would say get off the screens. I get there where it’s like, s**t, I’m just going to stay home and watch Netflix, whatever. But then I go out and I’m like, my God, I’m so glad I did that. And I’m excited because I think people even a little older that maybe their kids are 12 or 13, they don’t need a babysitter, just go out and go out a little bit on your own and cut loose a little bit and have a good time and meet a new person. That is really my encouragement. And I think this is an interesting time where I’m starting to see it again. Lots of my friends or my peer group or my age group didn’t go out for decades. And now they’re coming back out and other people are coming back out. I think we need that human connection. It’s something people are talking about a lot now, but it’s very real — finding your community, finding your tribe. I heard an artist get up and talk about Pyramid Club, being a gay person in Charleston, South Carolina, and discovering in the seventies Pyramid Club, where everybody was welcome and no judgment and it inspired you to do things and inspired you to be yourself. That’s happening right now. And I don’t know if it took COVID for that to happen, but it’s really exciting. And support indie bands. I think there’s something to be said — we’re all small business owners trying to figure out what are we doing wrong and why are we struggling so hard. I think I’d like to encourage a level of patronage, whether it’s a GoFundMe or whether it’s a club you like where somebody’s sick or there’s something. I think people should be patrons a little bit more if you do have the money, because there are people that are struggling. Go pay the cover charge — that goes to the bands, it goes to the artists, it goes to the club. And if it says Venmo some more, then Venmo some more as a donation if you love the show or you love the artist. So that’s something I’m trying to be a big proponent of, and it sounds weird because I am this guy who owns places. But everybody needs help sometimes, whether that’s coming in the doors or making a donation or buying a ticket. And in that respect, it sucks what’s going on with the big companies and these high ticket prices that don’t go to the artists. I hadn’t realized that merch is how a young band can make money now — selling merchandise. And I didn’t realize the big companies take a percentage of their merch. That should not be going on. But I want you to have a t-shirt of a great band you saw at Madison Square Garden — but maybe write a letter or express an opinion that this isn’t okay, to exploit artists, whether it’s Spotify, Madison Square Garden, whatever. That’s what I leave people with. Keep it local, keep it small, support people that need support. It’s beautiful. It’s perfect. I love that idea of intentionally becoming a patron, a social patron in some way. It reminds me, I just brought this article up. There’s a piece from Derek Thompson, he talks about how we’re at the end of a decade of anti-social business. And it’s just been the phenomenon. It’s just been overwhelming, which we all know. But the piece here that he shared was about, it’s called, Why Cost Disease Is the Secret Force Behind America’s Toxic Solitude? And so at the end of it, he makes the case for subsidizing social infrastructure. He’s making almost the same argument that you’re making from an economic I like that. That’s great. These things that are hard, you can’t scale up cake shop, you can’t scale up Baker’s Falls. It’s an intimate, handmade, unbelievably constrained piece of wonderful stuff that needs to be supported and it’s been overwhelmed by the antisocial businesses of the last decade. So that’s just a beautiful thought to end on. I appreciate it so much. I will certainly stop by next time I’m down in the city. Of course, everybody’s welcome. Thanks, Peter. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe [https://thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]
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