The Last Valentine

My parents George and Bebe were born and raised in Washington DC, but this isn't really a DC story so much as a love story that happened here. As far as I know my parents have always celebrated Valentine's Day. Maybe it was because they had the rarest sort of love- the kind that lasts. They met while still in high school at Western and weathered deep family disapproval over their multicultural backgrounds. My grandfather forbid all his local business friends to hire his son in an effort to thwart the young couple's chances long enough for George to come to his senses.  He never did. George  stayed in love with Bebe for over seventy years. And it's not too dramatic to say that only death id they part.

That's a lot of Valentines.

Though my father was a warm and funny man, he rarely showed his romantic side, but I have written proof. (Get the Kleenx now) Here is a note my father wrote sometime in the last 10 years when he was in his eighties:

"Dearest One,

Why can I not say the words I can write? At least once a day and sometimes more often I think how much I love you, not only as a wife, but as a friend and companion....My love is 60 times stronger as each year has gone by."

Or this one written when they had been married over 65 years:

"As we sit night after night watching T.V. I often think what a beautiful woman you are not only in body, but also your mind."

Most of these he signed "George", but I liked the one that ends "Love, Your What's His Face- GPC"

My father died shipboard one year ago today, but he had thought ahead and bought my mother what would be a last valentine before they went on the cruise. We found it unsigned. It was one of many such trips that my father worked so hard for all his life. On one of their first cruises, my mother spotted a clause in the contract that stated a child could stay in their room for free. I was the baby of the family, but ian the time I was in my early 20s and not up for bunking in with the parental units. My older sister, however, had raised a family and divorced by then, and she was happy to go. (She was here after known as "the child.") On their last cruise, my father tripped on the stairs and that was pretty much that for him. My mother blames the sneakers he was wearing. We still find it easier to pretend he isn't really gone, but he is.

My dad loved many things starting with his family. He loved dogs, and cars and Home Depot. He loved to travel especially to Greece. He loved the beach. He loved chocolate, Tootsie Rolls, half smokes and Greek chicken with tomato sauce and thick macaroni with brown butter. He loved to tell stories. He sang and sneezed very loudly and, as a former grill man, could make a great egg sandwich. He loved practical jokes, and getting a bargain. He loved to make people laugh.
And now I know he loved my mother with a fierce and steadfast heart that continues to inspire me even after he is gone. That unsigned valentine speaks volumes now.

Why I Miss the Places That Are Gone

One after one they fall, those old school places that no one will ever be able to replace because they belong to another time. The Market Inn is the latest casualty in the name of progress. I know I'm a little weird, attached as I am to the rock holes and restaurant relics, but I also recognize when history is being obliterated, and that the value of these lost places has no price tag. Well, maybe pieces of it have a price tag which is how I came home with the upright piano from the Roma on Connecticut Avenue. The piano is a great old work horse that needs to be put out to pasture according to Bobby Lee Birdsong, but I can't bring myself to do it and so it sits, moldering in my living room- still reeking of cigarettes and its past life on hot summer days. The Market Inn auction will be later this month.

The new trend towards reviving the concept of having a town center is a good idea, but how did we stray so far from the original? The answer is cars. We built our lives to suit the automobile, and that meant shopping centers with plenty o' parking which lead to the shopping mecca we called malls,  Silver Spring, Rockville and Hyattsville all fell victim to the concept.  They were all once beautiful towns in their own rights, but all fell victim to" progress."  Now their new "down towns" have a plastic interchangeable feel.  I just can't imagine people working their whole lives in a Baja Fresh as they once did in the old family run restaurants. Hyattsville now boasts an arts district, but part of this includes a sterile line up of "urban row homes."  (Somebody needs to go in there with a case of spray paint. )

 I doubt any of the new restaurants will be collecting nude paintings, suits of armor or hunting trophies like they did in the Market Inn, the Orleans House and the Roma. Ulysses Auger, of Blackie's House of Beef once built an annex called Lulu's which was dedicated to his wife's one time experience as a Queen of Mardi Gras. Now that's what I call a theme restaurant!

Sprinkled here and there the old and the odd places are still clinging to life- establishments like Martin's Tavern, Tastee Diner, Crisfield's, Vincino's and god bless Roger Miller's African Restaurant. Franklin's is a great blend of new and old housed in an old hardware store and serving some of the best beer in the area. And one of my all time favorites is The Hitching Post where you can get a "fried chicken sandwich" featuring at least five pieces of bird and, almost as an afterthought, two pieces of Wonder bread on the side. Here's a picture of my mom on her ninetieth plus birthday (you heard me) and her "sandwich." It just doesn't get much better than this.

I hate to agree with George Bush on ANYTHING, but I have to say even though I live on a shoe string myself- now is the time to go out and shop!

Not at the mall and not for a car, mind you, but we need to support all the little places that make this town unique. I'm not too worried about our beloved Ben's Chili Bowl. (1958) They are feeding the Obamas, and I'm glad they're getting the publicity.  I am thinking about Sullivan's Toy and Art Supply (1954) on Wisconsin Avenue in Cleveland Park and  Magruder's  (1875). The one near Chevy Chase circle has great liquor prices and incredible weekend wine and booze tastings. Then there's "Hoppy Dave" over at Rodman's (1955) trying to keep the free world stocked with the best beers available on this side of the pond. Paul's Liquor is right across the street- both conveniently located near Gawler's Funeral Home (1850) another DC institution.

I often write about places that we've lost, but we still have the chance to keep places like this going.

Look for postings on local favorites soon.

The Mobile Party Unit by Alice Despard

photo by happy monkey

When I set my mind back to my early teens, it seems to me that live music shows were at the center of my life. In the early 1970s there were plenty of places in DC for the young hippies to congregate and hang out. Cheap wine was plentiful, but you wanted to stay away from Strawberry Ripple and Boone's Farm Apple wine--those sickeningly sweet concoctions would make you ill in a heartbeat. (Marketing alcohol to the young is no new thing!)

I attended--somewhat sporadically and between bong hits-Maret School- but all my friends were from Sidwell Friends and St. Albans. We were all preppy hippies. We hung out at the
St. Albans coffeehouse every Friday night. Our "Mobile Party Unit" (as we dubbed ourselves)
would go to the local liquor store and buy a gallon of cheap Chablis wine. No problem, even though we were only fourteen years old! Times were much more relaxed back then. We would head for Bishop's Garden gazebo on the Cathedral close, and it was a perfect place to get high: hexagonal benches in a stone structure with arched open windows all around overlooking the rose gardens.

After awhile, we'd wander over to the coffeehouse in the parish hall at St. Albans where a light show was already sending wild patterns onto the ceiling, and the band was in full swing.
The light show artist was really into mixing the oil, water and food colors and swirling them around on the overhead projector. Wow, man! (This is how we entertained ourselves before the video age arrived.)

I remember the Alice Cooper cover band called Tinseled Sin playing there many times.
Other bands, I don't recall their names. It wasn't important because the main thing was just hanging out together with friends and enjoying the whole scene, and maybe snaking around a little bit (hippie dancing--I call it "snakin")

I remember a St. Albans student setting up a candelabra on the piano downstairs in the parish hall basement, and playing Keith Jarrett-style improvisation for hours. I thought he was brave to play solo by the seat of his pants like that. Nowadays, I'm so jaded, I'd rather be shot in the head than listen to pseudo-jazz improv on the piano. Back then, it was all new and full of wonder: "Wow, he's just playing music without any sheet music or even songs to hang onto!"

During the endless, muggy DC summers, we'd hang out at Ft. Reno Park-a major destination for the underage and street-wise. Bands cranked while we sat in the grass or boogied on the basketball courts, wine and weed travelling constantly through the sweaty, hazy throngs of youth. I heard many, many R&B and roots rock bands there---countless Little Feat and Grateful Dead hits were covered. Everyone knew all the same music back then, as it was much more homogeneous than it is now. DC was a Little Feat town, no question.

(Alice may be a reformed party unit, but she's still a wonderful musician.

See her at the Galaxy Hut October 12.)

Do You Know What It Means To Miss...

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I'm sorry to report that Tom Sarris' Orleans House, a somewhat nutty DC area landmark, will soon be razed to make way for "progress."  The restaurant today feels like a cross between a traffic island and a time capsule caught as it is between Wilson and Clarendon Boulevards in Rosslyn. My father George was a friend of Tom's, and he told me the story of how the restaurant came to be.

According to my father, Tom grew up in Washington with Ulysses "Blackie" Auger, and they were good friends. Ulysses created his own landmark with "Blackie's House of Beef" which started with a Western theme, but when others started copying his style, Blackie built a New Orleans inspired courtyard.  Blackie's success and style inspired Tom to want his own "Orleans House," and his old friend gave him his blessing and advice.

Tom took what once was a Giant food store and transformed it into a two story New Orleans fantasy complete with antebellum columns and wrought iron. His claim to fame was a bargain prime rib served up with a brand new concept at the time - the all you can eat salad bar. Both the rich and famous as well as the little guy on a budget liked to dine here. Blackie thought giving away salad was a bad idea, but Tom stuck to his guns. My father always raved about the salad bar and called it "beautiful."

When my family heard the place was closing, we wanted to go back once more. Everything was frozen in time including one of the waitresses who had been there over 45 years. The salad bar was still tricked out like a river boat and still "beautiful."

The food, I have to admit, was just okay, but it was well worth the trip to memory land. Tom collected things you are unlikely to see in most restaurants these days. Chairs which resemble thrones and a knight in full armor. A clock from the Willard Hotel lives here, too. The Orleans House will officially close on January 15th which doesn't give us much time to say good bye to a lot of history and memories.

The Ambassador Theater and How It Rocked DC

Around 1927, my mother remembers walking with her Dad from Mozart Place to the Ambassador Theater on 18th and Columbia Road to see something new. It was "a talkie" featuring Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer. Now flash forward forty years to 1967 when the shuttered theater became a home to something new again - an amazing place to see rock n' roll. I, unfortunately, was only about eight at the time, but this past weekend, yet another forty years forward, I went to a reunion of those who made it happen. Jeff Krulik our local film maker (and hero) helped bring these guys together from all over the country for this event.

In 1967 Tony Finestra, Court Rodgers and Joel Mednick were three young guys selling fire extinguishers of all things when they heard about the Summer of Love out in San Francisco. Out there they went, and when they came back to D.C., they came with a vision to make things happen here. They rented the Ambassador Theater, fixed it up, and booked The Grateful Dead. The Dead's equipment arrived, but unfortunately the city pulled their permit at the last minute not wanting a hippie project to move forward when things were getting touch in the anti- war movement. But our boys fought back and finally opened on July 28, 1967 with a local band, Natty Bumpo, and headliner The Peanut Butter Conspiracy.

The Ambassador was an enormous space. All 1500 seats had been removed. The Psychedelic Power and Light Company took over the balcony and used multiple projectors and black lights to fill the room and cover the walls with colors and images- a stand alone show of its own. Tickets were $1.50 on week nights, $2.50 on weekends.

The mezzanine level boasted a head shop selling lava lamps, posters and well, you know, hippie stuff. What a scene it must have been. Not only was it a concert hall, but neighborhood kids were invited for special matinees. It was also used as a staging area for the march on the Pentagon. Even Norman Mailer showed up on stage
.

A young guy named Jimi Hendrix had been touring with The Monkees that same summer, but his style didn't quite fit that double bill. His manager begged The Ambassador folks to let him play there for 5 nights that August, and Pete Townsend of The Who came to see him. (I'm not making this stuff up- ask Nils Lofgren) This all happened here.

More From Nils Lofgren:
"The room was humming, not only with the expectation of seeing the Jimi Hendrix Experience, but that Pete Townshend was in the audience, and it was just an extraordinary pivotal night for me. Hendrix came out and said he was going to dedicate the first song to Pete Townshend and he was going to do a rendition of 'Sgt. Pepper.' Now being naive, and being a huge Beatles lover, a lot of us thought 'well, you're only a three piece band, how can you play 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,' there's all these other guitars and strings.' We just didn't have a clue of what Hendrix was really about. He counted off the song and I remember he kind of disappeared, he just did one of those things where he fell to the floor, sitting on the floor rocking with the guitar between his legs kind of doing a 'Purple Haze/ Sgt. Peppers' riff, then he sort of bounces back up and does an insane version of 'Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.' And when he dropped to the floor everyone just jumped up to try to see him, and from that moment on everyone was standing and mesmerized by obviously the greatest rock and roll guitar player that ever lived... There were just a lot of inspired moments like that at the Ambassador; it was this dark, beautiful, haunted, inspired room that you could go to and get lost in the light show and friends and the camradarie and the excitement of being in the audience discovering all this great new music; it was this real pivotal place in Washington, DC for all of the music scene, young and old."

Canned Heat, Moby Grape, John Lee Hooker, Vanilla Fudge, The Fugs, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band and more all appeared at The Ambassador. Our own Joe Dolan of The Beatnik Flies mopped the floors there. His cousin, Patty made this hoe-down poster.

The sad thing, as often happens in this realm, the scene wouldn't last. It was partly a matter of bad publicity and partly the atmosphere of the times. (Even I remember how threatened people were by the hippie thing.) At the reunion, stories were told about police who gave parking tickets to legally parked theater goers and waited outside to arrest kids who had violated the D.C. curfew.

The experiment ended about six months later, and the theater was torn down not too long after. Today the site is occupied by a vapid, non descript plaza. The next time you are in Adam's Morgan, you might want to walk by there-and remember Jimi plus all the others that once played music or danced in the light shows.

Remember the ghosts that once were dreams.

P.S. Speaking of ghosts: The Ambassador once stood on the site of The Knickerbocker Theater which collapsed under the weight of snow in 1922. Ninety eight people were killed.

Old School Family Affair at Wilson

Our family has had a decent showing at Woodrow Wilson High School going way back almost to the very beginning when Wilson first opened its doors in 1935. My uncle Nick Cokinos, who graduated in 1939, was a running back on Wilson's inaugural football team in the fall of 1936 and helped win their first exhibition game against St Alban's played in the pouring rain. The team had only one experienced player that year, but somehow managed to win two games before their lack of experience caught up with them later that season. Never one to be to be daunted, once Spring came, Nick played baseball as well.

Nick seemed to be a stellar player. As far as I know he only got into trouble when he wore his brother George's beloved red football jersey from Western The coach gave him hell and made him turn it in.  My father told me this story many times. He must have really loved that shirt.

Nick seemed to be a stellar player. As far as I know he only got into trouble when he wore his brother George's beloved red football jersey from Western The coach gave him hell and made him turn it in.

My father told me this story many times. He must have really loved that shirt and now that I've found a picture of it I can see why:

Leaping forward my brother Pete Cokinos became a Tiger in 1952. Like his uncle, he signed up for as many teams as possible- in his case- football, track, and wrestling. The football team had plenty of experience by then and ended the year undefeated. The Tigers went on to beat Western for the Inter-high Title which took them to Griffith Stadium in December to compete for the City Title. In front of a crowd of thousands, Wilson trounced St John's 24-6 for its one. Our sister and future Tiger, Patsy was there to root them on.

Go team.

Pete Cokinos #37

Now my daughter Zoe is a Wilson Tiger, too, though soccer was about it for her.
Thus the reunion of the champions of 1952 and the Homecoming game this year became a family reunion for us. Brother Pete drove in from Michigan, while my parents who went to Western, my sister and my daughter all dug up their green and white gear. We convened in the bleachers at a school which structurally hasn't changed much since 1952 although Chuck Brown wasn't playing over the PA during time outs back then.  The bleachers and the field are in the same place, but a new "press box" has been somewhat awkwardly erected, and everyone tripped over the footings.

My brother Pete, and what was left of the team paraded out at half time.  Even a cheerleader was able to make it back. A lot may have changed over the years, but what hasn't changed is a stand full of kids cheering on their teams. Even though Wilson was trounced 34-13, camaraderie saved the day.

Ad from The 1953 Wilson High School Yearbook

Farewell A.V. Ristorante

(photo by bethhowe1 @ flickr)

Augosto Vasaio opened his landmark Italian restaurant "AV" in July 1949 on New York Avenue, and it became a magnet for all who love to eat. My cousin, Pete adored it for the large portions of comfort food, Italian style. He was in heaven when we had cousin parties there. I remember him ordering platter after platter until we all left groaning. We made sure we used a lot of napkins because the restaurant was a customer of Modern Linen which our fathers ran throughout the 1960s and 1970s. "Modern" kept them supplied with tablecloths and napkins for many years.

cousin party circa 1985

My father remembers that Augusto used to fill a big station wagon full of American things like stockings, toothpaste, and cigarettes- whatever he thought he could sell overseas. He (and the car) would get on a boat to Italy every year, and come back with a load of olive oil, pasta, cheeses and all that Italian yard art that A.V. is so famous for in the courtyard.

Another piece of Washington history is slipping away. The doors close July 28.

Birthday Are Greek To Me

Tomorrow is my father George’s birthday, and it's hard to believe he is in his ninth decade.  He still drives his own car with the top down and acts like a much younger man. The true "Grecian Formula" may be the tradition of Name Days. Your Name Day is set by the saint you are named for and by that saint’s feast day. Traditionally name day are celebrated instead of birthdays, and years are not counted.

I know my Greek grandparents Pete and Pota probably did not know their own ages except that he was somewhat older than his bride.  When Pete had to fill out official documents here in America,  he made himself younger for insurance agents and older for census takers.

When Pete was about eighty in the 1950s, he had to go take the newly implemented driver’s test at the DMV on Indiana Avenue. George took him over there and watched through a little window. He saw his father was struggling. Even after forty some years in Washington, Pete still didn't have a firm grasp on the English language. After a few minutes,  somehow George managed to meet Pete in the bathroom. He proudly recounts that “they” got a 98 out of 100.

Next came the driving portion which involved a lot of orange cones. Pete hit every one. Fortunately, the inspector had been a customer at Churchill’s Bar and Grill, the family restaurant. George took the man aside and promised him that his father would only be driving to St. Sophia’s and to his daughter’s house and only on Sundays. He passed.

At that point in his life, Pete was wielding a large Cadillac which he kept in a tiny garage with tires hanging on the walls as parking cushions. George says he often drove right over the curb into Aunt Catherine’s yard, and she would yell at him from her kitchen window.

George is still passing any driving tests he has to take. He was born in DC where we have birth certificates, and we celebrate birthdays. George remembers he often received a five dollar gold piece on his birthday. He gave them all away over the years, but wishes he had kept one. To this day he gives his grandchildren and other kids he loves "gold" dollars as gifts. His favorite present, however, was the birthday gift that he bought himself at the age of eighteen: a used 1932 maroon DeSoto with black fenders.