RUDIMENTS, pt. 187
Making Cars
At the corner of W12th Street
and Washington St., there used
to be a place called Hogs n' Heifers.
It had a long history, back through
the 1930's and before. It was a
wharfside trucking bar, a butchers'
bar, in the meatpacking district.
In the 1930's and all, nearby
was the Washington Market,
the Gaansevort Market, all these
fresh-air places where meats
and produce came in, were
rendered, and were sold.
Freezer lockers, carcasses
of meat, like in those movies
where the boxer-guy goes in
and starts practicing his punching
techniques on beef slabs. Free
tenderizing. Each meat-packing
guy or company had chain hoists
out front, motorized when I saw
them, and the chains had big
hooks on them, and on each
hook, or every other hook, or
whatever, would be hanging a
side of beef, half a carcass, ribs
and the while thing, less head
- meat, fat, everything still in
place except the internals. I
guess it was delivered clean,
and cold. Someone else I'd
suppose, somewhere else,
had done the slaughtering
and draining and halving and
cutting up. The motorized chains
moved the carcasses around, each
to a cutting station, indoors or
outdoors (a lot of this work
was done right there, on the
sidewalk and street, where
the chains hung out in the
open-air). At each station, there'd
be a white, bloodied-apron'd
butcher, wielding his saw,
knife, or blade. Sometimes
motorized as well - meat-cutting
chain-saw type things. Back in
1967 there were at least 35 of
these places, all along the
meatpacking and market area.
As of today when I walk there,
I can find two or three, at best,
and they've been removed to more
'hidden' set-backs and locations,
and those are consolidations -
other remnants of what once
was who've banded together.
By the end of the 20th century,
mostly, all that was left were
old signs and old metal racks
and docks. The chains and pulleys
were gone, many of the cobblestoned
street areas had been paved over,
and new construction and vast
modernization was the order of
the day. Now, it's unbelievable.
There once were small bars at
nearly every corner. What
became Hogs 'n Heifers had
been an old workingman's bar.
In the same was as Puffy's on
Hudson Street, time had passed
it by - dark, dingy, quiet, morose,
and sullen. Old guys sitting around
drinking. Somehow by, maybe
1985, it was purchased by this guy,
Alan Dell (old money name in NYC,
though NOT the computer company
guy at all). Floyd Dell was a big
literary name in the 19-teens and
1920's. (See 'Hart Crane' era). Old
photos of the era can be found
showing both Puffy's and this
Washington Street bar, by some
other name I can't recall - as
serious, working-men's bars.
Alan bought it and somehow
got it turned into the right kind
of floozy biker bar. In those days
I frequented, with others, both
of these places, but Hogs had taken
off - gotten a reputation as a
Biker hell-hole, loud, loose-women,
heavy drinkers, and motorcycles
everywhere. Which was mostly all
true. Above the bar were collected
a few hundred women's bras, as the
babes there after a few drinks and
some music, usually managed to get
themselves convinced to dance on
the bar and leave their bra behind.
There was a pool table jammed into
very small back area, and one single
restroom - more like a linen closet -
into which everyone piled as needed.
Piles of money were being made.
Alan was very cool about it all, but
drugs were taking their toll. He was
also very fond of deep-sea fishing off
Long Island, somewhere out there, and
that is where he died. About 1997 maybe.
Leaving the place to his joyous and
glamorous wife, Michelle. Michelle
was very cool, very with it. She ran
the place like a tight ship - had the
right underlings and enforcers to
work the place. It hummed, and
then, as well, became slowly famous
in he sense of low-life hipster fame;
movie and theater world people,
stars and models and all, began
frequenting - to be seen doing so.
It began strangling on its own
fame, but lasted a long time.
Michelle eventually moved off,
with lots of money to a second
location, almost a parody of this
one, in Las Vegas. By 1999
anyway, I mostly gotten away
from it all - could no longer
abide the crowd or the noise.
More and newer 'Bikers' came
in. I can remember many a long
day into night there, with a few
delusionary pass-outs at the front
steps; just asleep leaning on the
building where I sat. Two Mob
guys used to came at the close
of each month, the last Sunday,
to pick up their take. I even got
to know and sit around with
them. This is all funny, real
stuff. Nothing with those guys
just 'happened.' It was all
procedure and protocol and
you'd better damn-well have
gotten it right. The two of
them worked in tandem,
one driving and doing 'look-out',
and the other one - the more
spry of the two - did the talking,
the pickup, and the collecting
and terms. Enjoyable bunch.
Mobster pay-off time.
-
Back then that area down there
was all cobblestones, and sometimes
they'd actually be wet, and slippery,
with animal carcass slime and the
hosed-off run-off of whatever was
left. Refrigerator trucks idled, small,
boxy-trucks, and the large semis too,
if they could maneuver around. There
was, really, no law down there - you
could park, walk, or go wherever you
desired. We'd park motorcycles on
the sidewalk, along wrong-way
curb-streets, or just stay there, sit
on them, and drink. The place was
loud and raucous, real B-movie
stuff, and fairly useless too - don't
get me wrong. I'm not here to
glorify a bad situation. I had my
own little posse of ten or twelve,
and we'd always ride in with, all
told, very few bad events taking
place. It was mostly all good.
By the late 90's though it was
mostly all over - whatever locals
there were there, and that was
only a few, had complained
enough of noise and late hours
and booze, that restrictions
were put in place. Weird things,
like cabaret-license stuff - no
more dancing on the bar, because
'cabaret' meant dancing and
without a license you couldn't
- even though they still did. A
guy was posted out front to check
at the door and stop people from
going out and drinking in the
street. Another restrictive, killing
rule. Overcrowding - the place
looked like it could hold maybe
30 people but got 200 squeezed in.
That became a problem. Bad air,
blue smoke, and the rest. I finally
gave it up; no longer for me.
-
Just up the street was another place
much the same, but fancier and larger.
But different; meaner somehow. At
Hogs, if someone ripped your head
off, they'd pt it on the bar and everyone
would get drunk and sloppy over it.
At Red Rocks, by contrast (the other
place), they'd rip your head off, put
it on the bar, and then spent the
rest of the night screaming at the
head about why they'd had to do
that and what you'd made them do.
Now, all that stuff's over. Hogs is
long gone, and Red Rocks is a
place now called 'Artichoke Pizza.'
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