Tommy, the Old Man, and the Belvedere Vodka House

If you look at a bottle of Belvedere, you’ll see that it’s one of those liquors (almost all of them vodkas) where they put a nice picture not on the label but directly onto the bottle. In fact, it’s on the back of the bottle, and you see it through a kind of a window through the front. Van Gogh vodka does this too, and I think a few others as well. It’s very attractive, but to really see the picture well you have to hold it up at eye-level, otherwise the frosting on the rest of the bottle blocks it out. Take a look and you’ll see what I mean. Belvedere’s picture is of a big house, almost Gone-With-the-Wind-like, and the blurb on the back implies that it’s the Polish Presidential Palace. It’s pretty cool looking. The website says, “As Poland is widely recognized as the birthplace of vodka [I hadn’t known that; I had always thought it was the Russians who did it], it is fitting that Belvedere is named after the Belvedere Palace, formerly home to Polish royalty and presidents. Today, Belvedere Vodka offers a luxury experience to a broad international audience of vodka enthusiasts and connoisseurs.” (http://www.belvederevodka.com/main.php) Well, I’m not sure about that, but it really is a nice picture. Take a look sometime and you’ll see.

Anyway, I used to hang out in this place in Hell’s Kitchen. There was a guy there named Tommy, about fifty, who always had on a long overcoat and a newsboy cap (one of those pie-shaped, eight-piece jobs) even if he was wearing a suit and it was ninety degrees out. Tommy was a writer and a quiet drinker; he really didn’t say much, but he was incredibly bright and quite funny. He had some degree of success as a writer, but like any good bar friendship we didn’t talk much about work so I never did find out what it was he had published. It might have been a million-seller, but we didn’t talk about that stuff. Sorry.

Anyway, one night Tommy told this little story: He was sitting at the bar of one of his other watering holes, minding his own business as usual. Next to him was the Old Man. He’s seen the Old Man a million times but he doesn’t know anything about him because they’ve never talked to each other, not even once. This guy was so quiet he made Tommy seem like a chatterbox. He was the type who would stare into the bottom of his glass for the whole night, lost in his own world, thinking about Lord Knows What, and was happy to be that way. He would've fit right in in a pub on the Dingle Peninsula in western Ireland back in the seventies. In a way, he could have been Tommy père, except that he wasn’t a writer and probably wasn’t nearly as funny.

So they sat right next to each other for a couple of hours, drinking away and not saying a word. The Belvedere bottle is sitting on the back bar straight across from Old Man’s face. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Old Man mumbles, “Time to go.” But he doesn’t move. Tommy, startled (and that’s saying something), looks at him and waits for elaboration. “There’s people movin’ around in the Belvedere House,” declares the Old Man. He clambers off his stool, puts on his jacket, and stumbles out into the New York night. Tommy, mystified, is left staring at the vodka bottles and wondering if he's about to have a Close Encounters experience.

After Tommy told that story, it became a catch-phrase around the joint:

“Gotta go.”

“They movin’ around in the Belvedere house?”

“Yup.”

Or,

“Damn. [pause] Belvedere house.”

“Okay, see ya later.”

Or,

"Lotsa movin' around goin' on in here."

And that’s all you had to say. Everyone understood, even the ladies.

It got to where people would walk in to the place and say, "Think I'm going to the Belvedere House," and we'd all know the guy was headed for a bender.

So I really wanted to name this place “The Belvedere House,” but that would have sounded like an ad for the vodka and I don’t even like vodka so I can’t have that. I’m not sure what I’ll write here or what it will become, but Welcome. Pull up a stool and start a tab. We’ll have fun.