Stuff That I Have Noticed #15 Broadway Restaurant
A few years ago (actually more than a few) before my partner Eric Brown and I got ourselves an office (actually before I even met Eric) and before my wife Elizabeth and I separated (actually before we even thought about it) and before the Video Casting Source studio (actually before we even thought about that, too) I was freelancing as a producer/AD and Elizabeth was working as a singer. We shared our one bedroom penthouse and when I wasn’t on a job I needed to clear out for a while so she could vocalize in private.
That’s when I discovered the Broadway Restaurant.
There are several nice diners on the Upper West Side and I’d hardly noticed this little joint even though I’d walked past it scores of times. The windows were a tad cloudy not appearing to be washed with great regularity and it never seemed to have a lack of empty tables. So once the place was truly noticed, it called out to me. This looked like a spot where they wouldn’t mind a reader (or a writer) loitering over a cuppa.
Broadway Restaurant
So one afternoon – book and notebook in hand – I strolled in, found a table, ordered a cup of coffee and inquired as to what pies were available. The coffee was drinkable, the coconut pie was tasty and the quiet ambience was pleasing to my purpose. So I sat for an hour (and three refills of my cup) while I enjoyed Tom Robbins’ latest novel.
The place, as they say, grew on me. Over the next year I must have spent fifty hours in my new reading/writing room.
One of those days found me again scribbling in my notebook. This is the first (and last) draft of what I wrote that day
The Broadway Restaurant
by Ben Bryant
15 January 1987
Two eggs any style
A good place to sit and wile
Away some time… writing
And biting
Hot platters.
Thick batters
Singing on the grill
Give me a little thrill
Of memory.
I like the greasy smell.
It seems to fit so well
At the Broadway Restaurant.
Tasty sandwiches
The sign declaims
In bold red letters.
Colorful sweaters
Drape the shoulders of the
People I see
Sitting around,
Nowhere bound
To go or do.
I like the tile floor,
The clear glass on the door
Of the Broadway Restaurant.
Soups of the day
Orders to take out
The price is cheap to pay
To sit an hour, about
And write my thoughts all out
In my new neighborhood haunt,
The Broadway Restaurant.
So should you find yourself on Broadway in the vicinity of 101st street, stop in for a cup o coffee and a slice o pie.
Tell them that their poet laureate sent you.
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