Enid's

If you used to go here then there’s nothing you need me to tell you about it. If you haven’t then I’m probably not the right person to do so but here's what I do know.

560 Manhattan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11222

PERMANENTLY CLOSED

I don’t remember which of the evenings at Enid’s would have been my first and to be honest the ones I do remember are foggy at best.  I remember being surprised to see a friend behind the bar whom I knew as a bartender at Mr. Fong’s (which was new at the time).

“Bobby! You work here?!”

“Yeah bro you saw me here two weeks ago and said the same thing.”

“I did?”

Or maybe my first time was when I met up with a friend fresh to New York from Long Beach California and we were doing so much poppers on the dance floor the people adjacent to us started to complain of headaches.  Or maybe the first time was the night after work Cam and I stopped by his house on the way to Enid’s and he came out of his room having changed into the same thing I was wearing: white pants, red Hawaiian shirt, black Chucks.  

“Really dude?”

“What.”

“We’re not going matching.  Put back on what you had back on.  You looked fine.”

“No dude this’ll be fun.”

“We look like a cartoon version of The Birdcage.”

“So?”

Wait - then we went to Enid’s and met my friend Yvette from Long Beach.  Did we then do poppers?  Was that all the same night?  Or was that every night I went to Enid’s?

Enid’s was a favorite of everyone that could be considered a Greenpoint’er back in that time, which was different then what it would be today.  Tattoos, because they know all the artists, skateboard, because they were out filming that day, motorcycle, that they built themselves, graff, because duh, and let’s say vintage, because it was still cheap and late aughts hipsterism hadn’t fully worn off.  As opposed to today: tattoos, paid for expensive stick and pokes, skateboard(long), because that’s how they get around this 4 block section of the neighborhood which is seldom left, motorcycle, but like a new one, graff, actually probably stickers with QR tag to start up website, and vintage, because they own a boutique.  Enid’s was a spot for the almost 30 version of the almost 21 year olds across the street at bar Matchless.  This was a different place where A Bar was called No Name and Pony Boy’s was a piano bar/resto called the Manhattan Inn.  Since Enid’s closure I suspect its old clientele must have to settle for Pony Boy where at least you can dance or rough it at Twin’s where you cannot.  Although, to be honest they are all close to 40 now and probably all live in Crown Heights.  Enid’s was not a place to stand idly.  It had a large L shaped bar at the far back left, looking in from the front door, which was for the most part for ordering quickly and scurrying back to the floor or sneaking a quick shot with Bobby.  Behind the bar in the back center was a couple graffiti and sticker ridden bathrooms that were also mostly for doing drugs or hooking up.  Let’s say 33.3%-33.3%-33.3% drugs-pee-hookup.  The rest of the room was I feel like made all out of wood.  Old wood?  Paint that hadn’t been touched up in a while?  Have you been to London?  They have many pubs that fit this description: corner store front, big, old wood bar, highish ceiling, etc.  The L shape of the room created by the L shaped bar jutting out meant the dance floor and bar and front door to bar to bathroom lane never interfered with each other.  To the right side under a wall of window were a series of tables and chairs that serviced the restaurant during the day and were pushed up against the wall at night if it was busy with dancing youths which it usually was.  Something about rents being cheaper seems, now in retrospect, to have made dancing spaces more prevalent.  The need for higher prices and more drinkers wasn’t so high so perhaps more space could be used for dancing, an activity that requires no purchase and therefore nets no profits.  Somewhere was a DJ station I don’t remember where and as far as a menu I only ever ordered Pacificos and shots of Tequila so I really couldn’t tell you.

I do however remember the last time I was at Enid’s.  I met up with a girl there that I had known for about two years.   She was back in town, from London, visiting and we met there for brunch on her last day in town.  

“How is it I’ve been back three times in the last two years and you haven’t visited us in London once?”

I was on my third drink and pulled out my phone and bought a one way to London right then and there.  The reason I hadn’t sooner was I never had had the money to do so but since I had just received an insurance payout at the time, from when I got hit by a car, I was flush; but that’s a different story altogether.  We met one summer day two years prior, through another English friend, in McCarran Park and spent most of her last month in New York together.  She had spend a year here in culinary school then stayed for a summer to stage at the restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns.  When she left she promised she’d be back in a couple months so it never really felt like goodbye. 

We spent the first few days of this trip together as well until ultimately the water boiled over.  I met her at Clandestino after her and her girlfriends had a birthday dinner at Estela.  I found them at a back table giggly and tipsy.  She was in a patterned aqua and turquoise halter top and trouser set that made her look like a mermaid if not for the long legs. She was already at least as tall as me so she towered over me in heels as we scampered over to Beverly’s for another shot and back to my place for what was probably twenty minutes.  We paddled out onto enticing azure waters only to be called back to shore. Sorry, what I mean is she remembered she has kinda started seeing someone back in London.  “We should really be being much more responsible than this.”  In retrospect I think it wasn’t so much a “thing” rather they had been dating dating for a bit of time.  I did not know the context of their relationship but I would get a bit of an idea of it when I went to London 2 months later.  I never met the man.

Even after she had left town, all of my little buddies at the bar asked me one by one “who was that tall blonde you were in with last week?” Or “I hear you brought a mermaid here on Thursday?”  I didn’t originally come up with that mermaid comparison.  Only for this do I mention that before chefing she was a model of some repute.  She told me stories of tabloids and the guitar collection of a Beatle offspring.  She told me how a single day of work on an ad for a middle eastern airline paid her entire year’s rent while here in New York cooking.  I was brand new to New York and dazzled by her.  Not that I wouldn’t have been otherwise that just happened to be the chronology of it.  Once she said “sorry I’m late I was just coming from my friends apartment and I know Taylor Swift lives in the building so I kept riding the elevator to see if I would run into her.”

“Your friend lives in the same building as Taylor Swift? Who are they Orlando Bloom?”

“…. Who told you?”

“I’m right? I was guessing.”

Someone tries to scout her for a shoot as we sit eating Huevos Rancheros and drinking Bloody Mary’s at Enid’s.  We have quite a few rounds of these and Pacificos and tequila shots.  To be honest I thought I could hang but when I do eventually see her and her friends in LondonI realize what a difference the drinking training of those who grow up English with warm pints and Desperados truly makes (she informs me many an English child’s first drunk is on Sambuca).  One night in New York we went out and I wanted to introduce her to Four Loko.  We split one.  I puked and she remained, at least outwardly, sober.  

“Are you represented by anyone?”

“I used to be.  I don’t live here though I live in London. If you’re able to pay my full rate and fly me out here then I would be interested but otherwise.”

“Ok right sorry we don’t have that in the ….”

She affected a seriousness of tone and a stiff intonation I had not heard come from her before.  We ate and drank and talked.  We kept telling the server we’re still working on it when asked if we want our plates cleared.  I let all the ice in my Bloody Mary melt and drank it further making it stretch like adding water to the last bit of dish soap.  We ordered beers and then another that sat there getting warm.  Neither of us was prepared for this meal to come to its terminus.   I had to go do something important at the time which is entirely unmemorable now.  She had to go join some 2nd tier friend’s birthday party that would culminate with a trivia night in south Brooklyn somewhere.  “If you want you can definitely join us if you are done with (whatever I was doing) in time?”

“I’m not sure if I’ll be done with (some dumb unimportant thing) in time but yeah. If you wanna get a drink after though when you get back to my neighborhood let me know.”

“I will do. I have to fly out pretty early tomorrow morning but I’ll let you know.”

We paid the bill at Enid’s and walked out onto Manhattan Ave.  As we walked closer to Nassau, and further from Driggs, the empty spaces in our conversation grew longer and more frequent.  We arrived at some invisible but seemingly previously agreed upon X on the sidewalk.  We both landed on our marks, turned to face, and held that moment in abject stillness.  What could we say?  We both knew this was the end of the past and the last moment before whatever the future was to be.  Sure I would see her in London in a month or so’s time but there we would be playing two different characters in an unrelated play sharing no locations, sets, nor even a story universe; merely talent for a different credit.  I welled up inside with all manner of expression and could from the look in her eyes sense she did the same but out loud all we said was “see you later”s knowing well this was the last time these two versions of ourselves would exist.  With a hug and a kiss, then another and another, we parted, turning back to look again just to make sure a few times on each end, each more gut wrenching than the last.  Steam building in my body gurgling up little burps to my mind popping cartoon bubbles with the words “turn around” and “go back.”  Instead the pressure leaked out as a salty trails down each cheek.  I got on the subway.  I stood there for a time outside of time and slowly heard the sounds of the city returning to my ears.  The bing bonging door of the G.  Someone’s iPhone playing music.  The rushing wind of an incoming Brooklyn bound train.  Soon I would be hitting my alarm to snooze before work tomorrow.  Soon I would be again stretching my cash tips till the next invoice gets filled. Later I’d get on a plane to Heathrow and exchange some of that cash at an airport teller only to find out they rip you off massively.  I would see her there but she’d be someone else.  This would be the London version of her not the one on vacation in New York.  We would drink on the tennis courts in Peckham and I’d have my first Desperados like a highschooler.  We’d go bowling at Elephant Circle and get pissed in London Fields while pasty pale English men lay shirtless in the sun because the weather, I am told repeatedly is “never this nice” and how “lucky (I am) to have come this week.”  We’d have vegetarian Sunday roast but we’d never experience again a moment like the one we had set on that spot a stone’s throw from the front door of Enid’s.  Those people we didn’t know any more but I do remember that was the last time I went to Enid’s.  I was saddened to hear Enid’s left without me having been able to properly say goodbye.  To express want for reckless abandon one more time without having to confront the explanations of ourselves and whether we’d both feel better having things said out loud.  Not sure what’s popped up in its place now.  She went on to marry that boyfriend and they have a little toddler now.