Group D Blog 2
March 01, 2018, by Christiana
The readings from this week focused on Greenwich Village as a cultural epicenter, particularly the underground nightclub of the Village Vanguard. In Max Gordon’s reflective work on his time at the nightclub, “Live at the Village Vanguard,” he provides a personal perspective on the influential development of the local spot. Max Gordon opened the Village Vanguard after closing a previous nightclub in Greenwich Village, around the time of Prohibition. I found Gordon’s thoughts and strategies used to avoid the prohibition laws incredibly interesting. He says, “During Prohibition, if you stepped out on the town for a night’s entertainment, you carried a bottle with you. If you happened to forget it, or if you bottle ran dry at midnight, and you found yourself in some joint in the Village, where would you go to get another bottle?” (17). These issues between the entertainment-seeking public and law enforcement proved to be a trying problem that would affect Gordon’s business. He mentions considering obtaining a “cabaret license” when he first opened the Vanguard as a way of legitimizing his endeavor, but ultimately opted not to because of the license’s strict rules, expense, and difficulty to obtain. Gordon’s lack of cabaret license forced him to prove that he was not conducting a business of entertainment, and when he was called on trial he said, “Your Honor, that was no entertainment. That was poets reciting, chanting, declaiming poetry to each other.” (25). Even by 1935, they still did not have a liquor license, so people had to bring their own alcohol to the nightclub.
In Gordon’s chapter on “Judy and the Kids,” his description of the group immediately reminded me of Saturday Night Live; both are groups aimed to comment on the current events surrounding the show, in a way that was humorous and entertaining, forcing the audience to think more critically about their surrounding world. Much like modern New Yorkers, much of the content performed by “Judy and the Kids” was about their personal problems with New York City (called ‘beefs’). I found it amusing that, even in 1935, there were comedians cracking jokes about how horrible the L train is. Gordon says, “Up steps Better to announce the next ‘beef’—the 6th Avenue L is being dismantled and the scrap sold to Japan. She’s against it and hopes New York is against it.” From there, the skit includes a social commentary on tensions with Japan, but ultimately, to express public frustration with the MTA which the crowd found vastly amusing.
My favorite part of the reading is certainly Gordon’s descriptions of life in the Village, weaved throughout the chapters. There is a resonance in his descriptions that I find relevant today. He describes a “Cafeteria society” which reminds me of my own late nights spent at Waverly Diner. Gordon describes his time at Stewart’s Cafeteria in the Village, “When I’m through eating, I sit and I wait. I’m in no hurry. Some days I got to sit there longer than I like. It’s a good thing Stewart’s is open all night. It never fails but somebody I know will drop in, somebody who’s got sixty cents, and bail me out.” (12). This community sensation, a 24-hour spectacle, reminds me of the characters that I encounter when I visit the Waverly Diner late at night. In the chapter about “Judy and the Kids,” Gordon actually mentions visiting a diner on 6th Ave and 8th Street, which is the location that Waverly Diner resides on today. I wondered if it is the same one? He says, “So on Mondays at noon, we’d gather in the diner on Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street, and over hamburgers and ketchup, the writing of next week’s show would begin.” (35).
The Village Vanguard was an un-bourgeois and welcoming host to emerging artists, poets, or any performer who wanted a platform to freely express their talents in the Village. One of the most intriguing aspects of this nightclub is in its ability to withstand the test of time, still remaining on 7th avenue today. Gordon’s work emphasizes the cultural importance of the nightclub, equal to that of the emerging performers who began playing there. The nightclub was un-exclusive and a genuine melting-pot of interesting individuals at the time of its creation. Gordon describes the crowd as, “a lot of guys and gals who didn’t belong in the place began to find their way to the Vanguard. Stags from New Jersey and the Bronx, dropouts from MacDougal Street, Irish kids from Hudson Street, all walked in carrying brown paper bags. (I still didn’t have a liquor license).” (32). The uniqueness of the nightclub had the ability to bring together a rare grouping of people. This is exhibited in the presentation of the blues performers at the Vanguard, Leadbelly and Josh White. Both performers represented contrasting poles of the blues genre (one represented the city-blues, while the other was a rural performer), but the Vanguard provided them with the platform to explore their differences and similarities within the genre and develop even more nuanced sounds. The Village Vanguard became a welcoming home to all underground creatives in New York city, providing the perfect cultural mixing to occur for new sounds, thoughts, and styles to emerge as a result.