Above is my
Navy buddy and cube mate Ray Shultz
opening the door of Chumley's about 1964. Ray could not do that today, the joint is
closed.
Chumley's
was speakeasy back in the Roaring 20s and you had to know someone to get
in. It stayed in intact until many years
later when a wall caved in.
We were
stationed in Lakehurst, New Jersey, and Greenwich Village in the lower part of
Manhattan was just a hop, skip and jump away.
We went there a bunch of times over about a two year period.
They want to
reopen this year but there are hurdles to jump over and hoops to jump through
and probably some building inspectors to "be nice to" before it can be
opened again.
I
returned in the early 1970s and brought
my wife Anna with me.
This past
week while going through some old forgotten stuff we came across a Chumley's
menu that we must have accidentally swiped when we were there then. Truthfully, we forgot we had it.
The menu
texture seem to be the same type of paper used in sketching. The dimensions of it is 6" x
9.5". It is folded over and
over. If you unfold every fold you would
have about a 24" x 9.5" sheet of paper in front of you. One side appears to doodles and the other
side the printed menu.
Apparently, management once placed these sheets of paper
as place-mats on tables hoping some of the creative people that patronized the
joint would doodle, which they did. Then they took them up at the end of the day
and carried it to a printer to print the menu on the other side. Walla!
Chumley's
was known to be a magnet for writers and artists. Here is page by page of the menu. Some of these original doodles might have
been done by someone famous.
Maybe I
should take this to the Antique Road Show.
click on each image to see it better.
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