American jazz pianist, composer of "The Joint is Jumpin'," entertainer, born Thomas Wright Waller, May 21, 1904.

       159 West 10th Street.  "Originally a speakeasy where Fats Waller sometimes played." [New York Songlines]. 

Julius' -- described by Gawker as "the worst and most amazing crapbhole bar in New York City, a place of such filth that one was reluctant to touch even a bottle of beer" -- was seized earlier this week by the Department of Taxation and Finance. 

As a very young fellow, in those tie-dyed t-shirt and long hair and puka-shell necklaced days thirty years ago, I can remember going to Julius' for cheeseburgers and pitchers of beer.  The next thing I remember, but only dimly because it was sometime in the early 80s and I don't really remember the early 80s, the wall with the window facing 10th Street collapsed, and it looked like the whole place was going to come down.  Perhaps it should have. 

According to Songlines, (see above), Julius' was the oldest gay bar in the Village "where people like Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and Rudolf Nureyev hung out [and] Edward Albee met a young man ... who inspired 'Who's Afraid of Viriginia Woolf?'" -- a phrase, I might add, that Edward reportedly found written on the bathroom wall at the Ninth Circle, another bar in the next block where I once met Gregory Corso.

As for the crowd at Julius', I don't remember seeing Truman or Tennessee or Edward -- Rudy pushed his way past me and Skip at Keller's one winter night down on West Street, sweeping by us in a full length sable coat and hat so it was a little hard to miss either the entrance or the exit -- but I do remember the late Arthur Bell at the bar, the Village Voice journalist who, (for you kids today), wrote with an idiosyncratic gay perspective, was mean about Ann Miller and got parodied by Doric Wilson in a play I once saw put on at the Spike.  Arthur also covered the story of the gay bank robber John Wojtowicz who got caught up in a hostage crisis while stealing money for his boyfriend's sex change.  Wojtowicz was said at the time to resemble Al Pacino and the rest was, as they say, Dog Day Afternoon. 

In 1972, John Wojtowicz lived at 250 West 10th Street, at Bleecker, just up the street.  If Sarah Jessica Parker's nanny strolls the kids that way, just think of the convergence of it all. 

So Skip would chat with Arthur, and I would stare out the window at 10th Street and drink, and I like to think this was long before the place became as bad as Gawker describes it.  The "sip-in" by the Mattachine activists that resulted in the lifting of the ban against serving liquor to homosexuals was before my time anyway, and like I said, Julius' probably outlasted itself, if also its clientele.  It might have been better to close when the wall fell down.  I can only think of one or two people (you know who you are) with whom I drank in there who are still alive, which says more than I need to about my drinking career and the times in which I pursued it.

Why, if I hadn't found a connection to 1904, I wouldn't have brought it up.

History and memory are funny.  I don't know if the right word for Julius' was "Jumpin."  I don't remember that.  But if it ever was, it ain't no more.