Word: bleeck
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Schrafft's. If not Shakespearean, the conversation was at least spirited, thanks to Bleeck's ban on radios and jukeboxes. Also barred were French fries and ice cream. Customers gauche enough to request either were caustically advised to try Schrafft's down the street. Furnished in what historians of the day termed "early Butte, Montana" style, Bleeck's boasted mahogany-paneled walls and clustered electric globes, a suit of concrete-filled armor on which many a combative drunk broke his knuckles, a stuffed sailfish that had been caught by J. P. Morgan, and some...
...guessing the total number of matches held by all the contestants drops out, and the luckless fellow left at game's end pays off. With customary flair, Lucius Beebe played with a set of solid-gold Tiffany matches while other customers settled for the plastic matches that Bleeck gave out by the thousands...
Rows were rare, but a memorable fight shook the joint in 1938 when an enraged playwright named Jack Kirkland stalked in and pasted Trib Drama Critic Richard Watts Jr. (now with the New York Post) for panning his latest creation. Bleeck rushed to the scene shouting "We don't allow overly intoxicated people here, and no fighting neither." With that, he beat a smart tattoo on Kirkland's skull with a blackjack he just happened to be carrying...
Steaks & Mayonnaise. Prohibition's end robbed the speakeasies of their glamour, and in 1935 Bleeck renamed his joint the "Artist & Writers' Restaurant, Formerly Club" (Dorothy Thompson dubbed it "The Formerly Club"). To the horror of regulars, Bleeck also began admitting ladies. Groused one male: "There'll be mayonnaise on the steaks next week...
...Jack Bleeck sold out to a couple of Manhattan restaurateurs and retired. The name is the same, but not the clientele. "Buyers and lacquered models from the garment center outnumber newspapermen," said the New York Times last week, with a trace of regret. "There are more dress designers than cartoonists. Some of the current waiters even speak unaccented English...