Stefan was a genuine East Village character. He had a long life and was a keen observer of the neighborhood, having settled in New York in the early 1950s, a Ukrainian immigrant and DP (that’s dispossessed person) from World War II. About 1965 he started renting the bar at 70 St. Marks Place and called it the Holiday Cocktail Lounge and he also moved into an apartment in the building. A few years later, the owners, who used to run Giuffre’s fish market around the corner on 1st Avenue asked him if he wanted to buy the building and the bar. Lutak scraped up the cash, probably with a mortgage, and became the owner and operator of the bar. I first noticed that bar through the window in 1963. Around 8:30 in the morning, the counter would be filled with older Ukrainian men downing shots of whiskey or vodka—were they getting ready for work or unwinding after work? It was a bar during the 1950s when the poet W.H. Auden lived in a book-darkened apartment next door (which he kept till his death around 1974). Auden would send his boyfriend Chester downstairs to the bar to pick up tough young Ukrainian men to bring back upstairs for brandy and conversation. When the young toughs realized what else the weird Englishman was proposing, they occasionally beat up him and Chester. That’s the old history of the bar.
I occasionally observed the recent history of the Holiday, from about 1993 to 2009. Often wearing colorful Hawaiian shirts, Stefan was in his element and the tiny semi-circle bar was crowded every night of the week; on weekends the tables in the back would be packed with young tourists. There were neighborhood regulars who were characters, some of them artists, musicians or would-be writers—quite a few painters, in fact: almost all of them have died, of booze, of cigarettes, of AIDs, of heroin ODs, of suicide, of old age. Some of them were lucky enough, or finally had money enough, to move away from the East Village and probably survived. In those days, Stef was drunk most of the time—his wife of about 30 years had died of cancer in the 1980s (there are two sons, now in their 50s)—but he seemed happy and sometimes sang in a terrible voice to the prettiest girls. He loved to talk about history. He would say, in his difficult-to-understand accent, “You only read history. I lived history.”
One day a young man wrote an article about Stefan’s history for one of the free newspapers. It detailed his experiences in World War II. Unfortunately, due to the language problem or more likely bonehead stupidity on the part of this aspiring journalist, he got the facts of Stefan’s history completely reversed. Stefan liked to talk about how he fought in the Battle of Stalingrad (July1942-Feb 43) which was perhaps the most significant battle in the European theater. The Germans besieged Stalingrad with a huge army but the Russians fought back fiercely. It ended with house-to-house fighting, a total bloodbath for civilians and combatants alike. Despite Hitler’s orders to fight to the death, the army of General von Paulus, 600,000 strong, surrendered. Very few were ever seen again. Perhaps 2 million Russian, German and their Axis allied Romanian, Croatian, Italian, etc. soldiers died in the battle and later in labor camps, along with who-knows-how-many citizens of Stalingrad. Stefan (who by an accident of geography was a Ukrainian born technically in Romania) was in the thick of that battle, but escaped by fleeing on foot. In the harsh winter, he claimed, he and another soldier trudged west on foot and eventually made it back to Ukraine. Where the young journalist got it wrong was in putting Stefan on the wrong side of the battle. Stef was a volunteer in the nationalistic puppet armies set up by the Wermacht that recruited anti-Bolsheviks and then pushed them into their battle with the Soviets. Not that it really matters much, but when I mentioned this to said aspiring young journo he acted shocked at having got it wrong. Three years later he wrote a retread article for another free newspaper using the same incorrect “facts.” He probably works for The New York Post today.
Stefan was very generous, not just with the liberally poured drinks. When someone needed money he would “lend” $100 that was rarely repaid. He ran many tabs for people; when they died without having paid the tab he would sometimes complain about how much they owed. But then he’d run a tab again for another mortal customer. He would complain about customers who were rowdy, or talked too much. Sometimes, he even 86ed a regular, who would likely as not be readmitted to the select bar group in a couple of weeks. Sometimes not. Some people were permanently banned.
More later.
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