Still “Anchored” At Elaine’s

Bob Drury

In the mega macho days of reporting, Bob Drury personified the game. Drury began as a copy boy, then a sportswriter, then crime reporter and eventually as an editor of a well-groomed men’s magazine. He is the author/co-author editor of nine books.

ELAINE’S WAS AN anchor. It always was; it was the place I would go.

Elaine’s served so many purposes. When I was a police reporter for New York Newsday in the mid 1980s, if I needed to get something out of a detective, I would take them to Elaine’s. This was in the middle of the crack wars.

I would call Elaine’s and I said “the usual.” I’d come in and she’d make a big deal out of whomever I was with and offer us a front table. I’d say, “Elaine, do you mind? Can you hold that table for us? I’d like to go in the back and talk to Detective Shapiro here.”

Of course, his eyes were all sparkling because she had made such a big deal over us. This had been all planned. We’d go in the back and talk for a few hours and then she’d put us in the front. I swear, it worked like a charm with every homicide detective I ever interviewed. This was pre-planned.

She liked me.

We went back to the early eighties. I had a literary agent, Jay Acton. He had an old Yankee ballplayer, Ryne Duren, and Ryne was an obstreperous type. People knew him as “the man with the coke bottle glasses.” He was blind and half drunk when he played and everyone knew it. His warm-up pitches were a hundred miles an hour. He never knew where they were going.

He’d gotten sober and he’d gotten God. So Jay said, “Listen.” (And I was a kid, I think I was a sports columnist for the New York Post.) “Could you go live with this guy for a month in Minnesota and polish his book? I’ve got most of it.”

I did. Anyway, the book comes out eight months later. Jay calls me and says he has a check for twenty-two grand, something that made my eyes bulge at the time. Jay said, “Why don’t you come up? We’re having a book party at Elaine’s tomorrow, before she opens.”

Elaine’s! At this point, I’d never been to Elaine’s.

So I go there, and there’s Jay standing at the door and he pulls out the check. I knew no one there. Tommy was at the bar. I asked for a Bud. I took out some money and he said, “It’s a book party, pal. Don’t you know anything?” I left a two-dollar tip on the bar.

This went on for a few hours. I didn’t know anyone there, so I just kept drinking.

I noticed that there was this kind of daunting woman sitting at the bar and she was kind of watching me. I said, “Hi, I’m Drury, I’m one of Jays clients.”

She said, “I know who you are. I saw the size of the check you got. I’ve been watching you give two-dollar tips to the bartender every time he gives you free drinks. You’re fucking welcome in here.”

I said, “Who are you?”

She said, “I’m fucking Elaine.”

It was the beginning of a beautiful relation.

When she hit that time in the late 1980s when celebs weren’t really coming in any more, things were emptying out, and I think the newspaper guys, especially those who covered cops, really kind of buoyed her.

When she got hot again in the 1990s with the celebs, she never forgot me, Esposito, McAlary, and Moran. She always had a special place for us, because we maybe bridged a hollow period for her.

Everyone used to compare Elaine to Toots Shor with that whole irascible thing. Was that an act? I don’t think so. I think she was pretty irascible, but she was also loyal. She was like a mean old junkyard dog, but once you got her on your side, she was loyal. I can’t think of another place that had such a strong female owner. She knew her stuff about journalism; she treated the early SNL guys as her own. I’d heard that men had fucked her over in her life, but once you had given her loyalty, she gave it right back. She was really mean to women, she was jealous of women, especially pretty women.

Like it or leave it, she liked me; I used to be a big handsome strappy guy. I don’t have a clubhouse in the city any more, and that was our clubhouse.

I entered it one toe at a time.

She was always good to me.