There was a coconut on the bar.
Not one of your piña colada numbers with an umbrella. This coconut was out of place. It was shaved down to its white husk, uncannily conical on top. It had a small hole in the top in which an ordinary straw still bore the tip of its wrapper. It was swaddled in the kind of thick foam mesh used to protect fruit at the market.
Has the Fairweather started serving tiki cocktails? I wondered, puzzled. The Fairweather, a newer bar, is otherwise working off an idealized 1920s jazz dive theme. The furnishings in the narrow room are tastefully-chosen old iron fixtures. The owner and bartender is also the artist behind the brightly colored paintings on the walls, which depict scenes from New Orleans: a curly-haired woman in a Baron Samedi hat wrangling two alligators; the church in Treme with a cross tilted by Hurricane Katrina.
The owner had just held an “Industry Night” at the Fairweather over New Year’s. We never get to celebrate, she told me, as she mixed me a non-alcoholic drink and one for someone else down the bar.
Which industry? I asked.
People in entertainment and hospitality. I also invited some hairdressers, she said. Everyone who has to go all out over the holidays and doesn’t get a break. I worry about everyone. It’s hard out there, and we never get acknowledged.
The band on Thursdays is the Titanic Orchestra: “Getting Down Since 1912,” its motto. We’re developing a pleasant little swing dance scene there, flavored more on the foxtrot side of things, while the clarinet-and-banjo quintet works through an older set of jazz standards.
I like this, said my friend. It feels right for the historical moment we’re in. The Twenties.