Inside The Old PEACOCK CAFFE
GREENWICH VILLAGE
1958
The ESPRESSO MACHINE
FRIENDS HANGING
At The PEACOCK
The Menu
Cappuccino .35 Cents
Italian Pastries .45 Cents
Outside The Peackock Caffe
Greenwich Village , NY
Peacock Cafe. This cavernous Greenwich Avenue cafe seems to exist out of time, the quarter-century charm as undisrupted as the dust. The effect is heightened by the place’s quietude. Its patrons are always alone, contentedly spending the afternoon with no distractions, happy to be pouring over linear optimization equations or their latest sonnet. 24 Greenwich Ave.
The PEACOCK CAFE
GREENWICH VILLAGE
De Wolf sneaks hip-level shots of patrons with a 2-1/4 Rolleiflex, and there's your time machine.
The shot with the guy lighting his cigarette while his companion chats with her hand on her hip is just excellent.
A cafe could never get away with that decor today. Or could it? Point is, all that Baroque stuff is so uncool it's cool.
But the storefront current occupant, an eye opener. By way of stating the obvious, check out all those government warnings posted at the entrance. Signs of the times. Next warning poster: super-sized drinks.
Once upon a time in New York…
There was once such a place. Remarkably, it was in the country which had the world’s worst coffee and later established the largest chain of cafés in Europe for its terrible liquids. Yes, America. The Peacock Café in Greenwich Village, in the days when it was in West 4th Street, came perilously close to the ideal. A number of rather expensive but definitely drinkable and interesting coffees, a range of good cakes, not too sweet, unspoken permission to linger for as long as you like….One could be at ease because genuinely no one was in a hurry; the customers were never there for less than an hour and usually much longer. The coffee was good because the variety came from the coffees themselves, not from the amount of milk. Only one thing was missing: a waitress with a mole by her adorable navel, like Scheherazade. One had to bring her along.
At about half-past one in the morning the café would be full when there would enter Rupert, Prince of Bohemia. A man of uncertain age with a large, greying beard and wearing, in winter, a coat much too large for him which made him seem enormous, he would offer in his deep voice a selection of magazines. Not a remarkable selection in any way: Time, Life, Mad Magazine, last Sundays New York Times Book Supplement, The Village Voice…. at prices above their normal selling price. But then, he was delivering them right to your table in the early hours of the morning. No pornography- he never offered us Screw, for example- but was that because we were not the right kind of customers?
When he stopped at out table we would greet each other like long-lost friends, consider his magazines, buy one, and then discuss and share in his dream: to have his own little shop in the Village. This was the dream which kept him going as, over the long years, his modest income kept him alive. He had no other job and we never discovered where he lived.
Once we were in a bar when Rupert entered. We were distressed to witness the stupid clever wisecracks that greeted him, entirely lacking in that real humour based on an acceptance and love of humankind with all its frailties. We were, in any case, ill at ease there, too respectably dressed. I had an ironed shirt with tie and jacket, my lady a skirt and no benefit of cleavage. When he saw us, Rupert’s face relaxed, and so did ours.
I was last in The Peacock more than twenty years ago. The Village was already much changed, and The Peacock had moved to Greenwich Avenue. The same friendly proprietor was there, the coffee and cakes still good, the ambience… somehow different. But can things not change? If The Peacock still exists, the proprietor, and Rupert, both older than I, cannot possibly be there any more. It had for at least thirty years honourably stood firm against the tide of boutiques until, I don’t doubt, swept away by the latte tsunami.
MENU
The PEACOCK CAFE
''Do you have the Pan by MacMonnies?''
A year ago, this unlikely question was put to a waitress at the Peacock Caffe in Greenwich Village by Donna J. Hassler of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Of course, the waitress said ''No.'' But Ms. Hassler persisted. She was on the trail of an important 19th-century sculpture: an eight-foot bronze of the god Pan by Frederick W. MacMonnies.
''Do you have a statue of a young boy with large ears,'' she asked, ''who's standing on a ball and holding pipes?''
''Oh, yes,'' the waitress answered. ''We have that.''
Within hours of this telephone call, Ms. Hassler began negotiations to obtain the piece.
Today, Pan occupies center stage in The Charles Englehard Court of the Met's American Wing.
To the best of anyone's recollection, it is the first work of art the museum has ever borrowed from a coffee house.
"Pan"
CAFFE REGGIO
photo Daniel Bellino Zwicke
Caffe Reggio
Established 1927
Dominic Parisi and his Epssresso Machine
Caffe Reggio
1945
CAFFE DANTE
1915 to 2015
Mr. Mario Flotta
Of Avellino, Italy
Mario owned Caffe Dante for the last 44 Years of its existence.
with Mario Flotta
Caffe Dante 2015
Daniel say he went to Caffe Dante almost every single day (minus vacations) from 1985 untile the sad day that Caffe Dante closed in 2015, or exactly 30 years. "I first started coming here in July of 1985 after ,my first glorious trip to Italy (Venice, Rome, Florence, Positano, Naples), and I've been coming ever since, almost everyday of the week for 30 years. The only times I missed coming here for my daily Espresso (or Cappuccino), was when I was out of town and some days when I had to work all day and all night, and things like that. Let's just say, in exactly 30 years, I was here 90% of those days. Figure it out (10,950 days)."
"I had so many wonderful times here over the year; just hanging out by myself, reading writing, chatting with the girls (the Italian & Maltese waitresses). Sometimes I came with my girlfriends, or was meeting my friends, either of the two Jimmy's, my buddy Raoul, or meeting up with my Cousin Joe, before we'd go out to dinner and cocktails. This place was like my second home, and Mario and the girls (Ada, Rose, Antoinette, Patricia, etc.) were like family. It may sound cliche, but it's actually true. Rose and Ada are both very good friends, and we still get together several times a year for dinner."
"I'm sure going to miss this place. I wrote my first two books here. It was my second home. Seriously."
SUNDAY SAUCE
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