TRICKY DICK'S COFFEE HOUSE: 3) CREATING THE ZONE
A Throwback Thursday Serial About Living in London in the '70s
My parents "loaned" me 500 pounds sterling (call it a grand in dollars) to whip the front half of One Dollar Bill into Tricky Dick's.
I consulted with Patrick, an Irish contractor who performed various carpentry tasks around the bakehouse; rather, he performed dirty jokes over pints of Watney's Red Ale at the Prince of Wales pub around the corner on West End Lane while Tom, his young Canadian apprentice, sawed and hammered.
Hirsute, balding Patrick dressed in worsted three-piece suits and possessed a charming wit, which he used for charming the panties off the bakehouse clerk.
Patrick's main task was to build a partition that would divide the ground floor into two sections: Tricky Dick's up front, a cake finishing zone behind, then paint the restaurant interior and exterior. He also agreed to build a counter.
We settled on a price, about half my budget, and it slowly escalated as we visited lumberyards, paint shops and hardware stores.
Every time I liked something Patrick would rub his bald head and say, "Gee, I didn't budget for that." And he'd look up to the sky, as if the answer lay up there with God. And I'd eat the bait and inevitably say, "All right, how much more?"
And we agreed not to tell my father about the extra cost since my dad already had at least one major wig-out with this Irish rogue.
After we bought what we needed Patrick would disappear to the Prince of Wales for long afternoons while Tom the apprentice sloshed Congo Brown paint on the woodwork, built four 6-x-6 partitions and papered them with an orange-brown pattern I had chosen.
The large plate glass window was stark but we left it alone. There was no budget for window treatments.
The floor, a red linoleum designed to look like tiny brick, was in appalling condition from the bakers who walked in and out 100 times a day clumping gooey cake mix that hardened and either became part of the floor or ate away at it. (Sugar, I discovered, will eat through anything.) An aging American hippie wandered by looking for odd jobs and I put him to work scrubbing and waxing.
Next, kitchen appliances: The old microwave wasn't much to look at but when you pushed the on button, it crackled and zapped, made food hot—and probably sterilized everyone within 20 yards. We set it at the far end of the counter. A small fridge went beneath the counter.
The tables and chairs were in wretched shape but we salvaged most of them and covered the garish '60-ish Formica table tops with hardwearing orange-and-white vinyl cloth.
The freshly painted white walls we decorated with vintage mirrors advertising Coca-Cola and Grey's Scotch Whiskey plus portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln my father had pen-and-inked when he was an art student three decades earlier.
Dennis, an English baker who had long since replaced Fahmi, took me to Page's, a restaurant supply shop on Shaftesbury Avenue in the West End, to purchase sharp knives, an assortment of utensils, crockery, cutlery and four-dozen blue and white coffee mugs. I wish I'd kept one.
The Widow Applebaum's had gone bankrupt and to pay off their two-month cake bill, Paul, a co-manager, gave me the Bunn coffee maker on which I'd brewed hundreds of pots as a busboy. I carried it down the back staircase on Paul's instructions along with two large plastic dirty-dish tubs.
Then I hired Ron, Applebaum's former counterman, to run my operation.
Tricky Dick's could seat but 30 persons so the two of us were enough: Ron, to prepare and serve cakes and beverages. Me, to bus tables and wash dishes.
Together we devised a menu.
Cheesecake with cherries would be Checkers Cheesecake. As in, Nixon’s “Checkers” (the dog) speech.
Big Business Banana Cake (“The Spiro Special”)—a take on Agnew’s corrupt ways.
Alger Hiss Pumpkin Pie. (Where the microfiche was hidden.)
Watergate Apple Pie.
At the bottom of the menu:
Break in for a (expletive deleted) good dessert!
Limited workspace meant formulating a simple operation: cakes and pies, coffee, tea and Pepsi.
And (we decided a week before opening night) grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches.
Ron and I drove to the old John Barnes department store in Swiss Cottage and bought a home-style sandwich press, the kind that squeezes sandwiches like waffles, melts cheese and leaves striped indentations in the toast. This we set upon the microwave.
We set up a cake trolley and bought filters for the coffee maker.
Finally, the ingredients. My parents had a merchant's card for a wholesale cash-and- carry in Stanmore (on the outskirts of London) where you could buy everything in bulk at reduced prices. We loaded up on Pepsi, processed cheddar cheese, butter, teabags, sugar and napkins.
We bought Wonderloaf bread at the bodega two doors from the restaurant.
English bacon has stringy rinds so we bought Canadian-style smoked bacon retail from Marks & Spencer on Oxford Street.
For sounds, a small stereo cassette player, adequate for our size. Ron chose our first tunes: Paul McCartney's Band on the Run and Stevie Wonder's Innervisions.
The health inspector paid a surprise visit one afternoon and caught Ron puffing on a cigarette behind the counter. The inspector froze in his tracks and glared at Ron, who nervously exaggerated his femininity. (Ron was gay.)
"Put that cigarette out!" bellowed the inspector. He made a notation on his clipboard. "If I ever see you or anyone smoking a cigarette in a food area again, I'll close this place down!"
I was impressed by the inspector's use of authority. Hell, I was only 19 and all I ever did through high school was question authority. But you didn't question this guy, an authoritarian from the real world. And it must have made an impression on me because, decades later, I am incensed if I see someone smoking in a food area. (And I went back to questioning authority—especially in the real world.)
We didn't apply for business licenses or anything like that because if we were supposed to it was unknown to me.
We did apply to some kind of name registration bureau-crazy to call our restaurant Tricky Dick's. I wasn't sure they'd approve the name, but they did. My father carved a large sign and Patrick fitted it with tube flourescent light before erecting it over our shopfront.
It took only three weeks to bang Tricky Dick's into shape. It was makeshift but clean and efficient.
There was no business plan; no strategy, no market research, no cost estimates, no tidy columns with projected expenditure and profits.
We would simply see what evolved. Total spontaneity. Anarchy.
I had no idea what tax was; I had no interest in finding out. I would simply keep score of each night's takings on a pad of paper. I didn't even open a bank account. Everything was cash money, no credit cards, no checks. I would clump stacks of pound notes in the secret compartment of my old bureau desk, earmarked for college come autumn.
Opening night: Saturday, February 9th, 1974.
Mrs. Slanis sent a potted plant, a sweet gesture and a fine finishing touch, bless her.
A chill crept up my spine as I looked the place over from across Finchley Road. The colors I had chosen arbitrarily, without coordination, glowed orange. The color of insanity. Of Van Gogh.
My own place. I hadn't done the handiwork myself but I'd made all the decisions.
Patrick, meanwhile, had pulled a Houdini, leaving his Canadian apprentice unpaid, penniless and stranded in London. He also ran up a huge unpaid tab at a local hardware store. I'd like to say he left the bakehouse clerk pregnant but if that happened I still don't know.
Ron buttered two loafs of Wonderloaf and stacked them inside an orange and white plastic breadbox.
At seven o’clock that evening we illuminated the orange Tricky Dick's sign and hung an open sign on the door.
TD's bustled the first night till two in the morning.
We took 42 pounds, about 80 bucks.