After a long, lovely evening of dinner & drinks with an out-of-town friend, I got a call from Belkys, who was headed to my favorite spot, the soon-to-be-gone-forever Sweet Water Tavern.
Thank God I'm back, I thought, hurrying along the sidewalk, thank God I'm back in New York at last -- rushing along & repeating it to myself like a prayer.
Sweet Water lived up to its name last nite; tho Bittersweet Water would have been even more accurate. It was not definitively the last nite of its existence, but it was certainly the last Monday nite ever, & I've always had a soft spot for Sweet Water Mondays. The same old people were there, people I hadn't seen assembled together in months, maybe years. Everybody was pretty drunk & I was snapping photos, finishing up my Miami roll, getting one of Belkys wearing lovely red lipstick that matched her headband, one of Lucky & Jake behind the bar, & a shot of the graffiti covering the ladies' room. There was this hot skinhead chick (before last nite, I used to think that was an oxmoron too!) playing pool who would probably have been beautifully photogenic, but luckily I wasn't drunk enough to find out.
In honor of the Sweet Water, I'm posting the only picture of it I can find at the moment. For some reason I think that might be Lucky sitting at the bar, but that's just a guess.
