The Tadich Ethic Redux

It was several weeks ago that I promised part two of my San Francisco sortie. I believe my promise was… “The next day.” Its dilatory arrival speaks to the paucity of time that I have these days to devote to telling stories. And remember, the core of this twaddle was written as a second installment from my trip to Baghdad by the Bay about a year ago. So the one year old stuff is italicized and my current commentary is; well, not. I'll make my current, co-mingled comments parenthetical as well. Parenthetical...I've always wanted to use that word. Shut up.

My recent San Francisco trip was last minute—so quickly planned that there was no room for thought about staying over or going early to enjoy myself personally. I had to get back east and so my San Francisco experience was limited to the city itself and experienced in little pockets of free time that I had over two days between meetings that I sat in on and the day that I actually spoke. And I loved every little flurry of available time that I had to run out and sample a bit of this unique city… a city that I’d had only a small taste of previously. I think I mentioned in my other San Francisco post that for whatever reason; unlike every other major city in the States and quite a few in Europe, my San Francisco experiences to date have been identical to this last one. Fly in…head to a large hotel downtown…attend a meeting and fly home. With of course, some client arranged dinner at a nice restaurant. Oh, and I did have a drink one time at the Top of the Mark.

One of my readers shared this in an email to me after reading my Cable Car Clothiers post… “L_(his wife) and I visited Cable Car Clothiers on a Saturday morning when we were last in San Francisco two summers ago.  Monument to cultural preservation that it is (and British at that), CCC with its over-stuffed woolly windows was downright other-worldly on the August weekend morning when we swung by.  Still, it makes some sense in the context of a city that prizes its past (the Tadich Ethic, or so I think of it) better than any this side of London.”

I’m digging the comment on many levels but mostly because I like history and I love the back story and I want to know about places and things. And it’s also no secret that I grieve the passing of things that I think shouldn't go away. My blog is peppered with the maudlin-mawkish twaddle of lament for things no longer valued or relevant or…just flat-out not here anymore. But I try not live in the past and I incite change for a living. I’m not scared to move forward but there are things I regret that we don’t take with us. (I lied last year when I wrote that—leastways I think I did—about not being scared to move forward. Perhaps I have a pathological attachment to things past...a low-grade addiction to patina. Maybe even an attachment to my idea of how things were but weren’t, ever, really. Contrived Maudlinazation? I’ll have to check the new DSM-IV-TR to see if it’s designated. Am I pining for shit that perhaps never even existed? Palestine?)

(Maybe I am reluctant to move forward. Thursday January 24^th was my birthday. It was also the tenth anniversary of the first moving company arriving at my marital home to whisk away LFG and her mom to their new home in Old Town. I remember opening my sleepy and not well rested eyes that birthday morning—greeted by a still almost bald headed two year old little LFG…standing bedside watching me sleep. She grinned sheepishly and handed me…a cupcake. When I returned that early evening from my agreed upon daylong exile to the office; the house was empty save my earthly goods that would be picked up the next day. I’ve moved somewhere obviously since then. Maybe all of it’s been more lateral than forward.)

But how old is San Francisco? I mean…the place pretty much burned to the ground in 1906. I don’t even know what the "recently old" San Francisco was like other than what I read courtesy of Barnaby Conrad, Lucius Beebe, Herb Caen and of course, if you wanna define old in a slightly older context, Jack London and John Steinbeck come to mind. Oh, and I enjoyed Armistead Maupin’s less-old… Tales of the City. But Tadich I suppose, is a wee-bit of old former San Francisco and I’m glad LPC suggested that amidst the serendipity of our schedules, we meet up there for lunch. No surprise—I loved it. I’d say Tadich is the culinary peer to its sartorial cousin, Cable Car Clothiers.

And it is indeed a small world--even in San Francisco. I’m standing out front of Tadich and I notice a guy, probably close to seventy years old, in a UNC baseball cap. He was waiting for his buddy to show for lunch. I asked what his connection to North Carolina was, letting him know that I was from South Carolina. And out came one of those syrupy eastern North Carolina accents that can only be made elegant by people of his generation. He’s been in San Francisco for over thirty years and now retired, he and his wife enjoy going back to North Carolina to visit friends and family but he never intends to leave his now, City by the Bay.

And if we’d talked for another ten minutes, we’d have known people. We didn’t argue over the differences between our state’s barbecue or the schools... Carolina(s) or whether or not the Shag—our tribal dance—originated in his or my Carolina. He admitted that as a teenager and a student at Chapel Hill, Ocean Drive Beach South Carolina was his destination. Why? He came to Ocean Drive to dance…to shag. And I told him that I spent summers in an old wood frame beach house just a few blocks down from The Pad. And then the proverbial question popped…"Who was your daddy?” Here I am in San Francisco and by happenstance, an eastern North Carolina accent is carrying me back to North Myrtle Beach and I’m twelve and sitting on the screened porch of our beach house, mildly sunburned and tasting salt in the air. All of this, standing in front of Tadich. Nice.

So folks, with the exception of a few strands of non-italicized filler midstream, you’ve now read what’s been sitting in a folder on my laptop for a year. I’ve got another dozen half-baked, unfinished piles somewhere on my computer. Maybe someday soon I’ll dust ‘em off and throw ‘em at you. Oh, and after I traipsed recently with the ghosts of Conrad and Caen and Doda, I ordered and devoured both of Barnaby Conrad's memoirs.

It's an understatement to say that this man has lived a life in full. If you suffer from even the vaguest symptoms of Contrived Maudlinazation, you'll love reading these two anecdotathons. 

Onward. Awaiting the emergence of one LFG…a gal who once again made her parents proud with all A’s on her second academic reporting period. I remain however, on academic probation.

ADG 2

Tadich Ethic—Part One

As the DC area decides this morning whether or not to delay or cancel the various events and happenings that will impact my LFG chauffeuring duties today, I’ve found a moment to finish a story—one that I began almost one year ago. While I’m pleased to pick up the ball on this blog story, I hope that things won’t be delayed or cancelled today. I’d really like to see my child.

I began a story last year about my very last minute speaking engagement in San Francisco and for some reason, it just fell aside. As I now gather enough fodder to reflect on last week’s slightly less impromptu but still last minute San Francisco reprieve, it’s easy to dovetail the year-old draft story herein. The year-old stuff and the Tadich Ethic meaning will appear tomorrow.

I think it was Longwing who commented or asked over at my tumblr about how could/would  I be at the Mirage in Las Vegas the first of last week…then San Francisco mid-week and back at the Las Vegas MGM last Friday. Well here’s the deal. I did a session last Tuesday at the Mirage. Another business unit within the same company asked me to do a session to close out their week-long meeting on Friday. The client company is so large that they essentially filled three different hotels in Las Vegas. It made no sense to return home Tuesday evening and return to Las Vegas on Thursday for my Friday MGM gig.

My Las Vegas loathing is well documented. There exists no place on earth I’ve experienced thus far that elicits in me the same level of revulsion. Las Vegas renders me repulsed to the point of physical and psychological discombobulation. Wayne Newton rather sums it up for me. And I rolled in there Monday before last amidst a wobbly recovery from a 36 hour tummy bug to boot. I decided that there was no way I could survive the Wednesday and Thursday downtime between talks by just hanging out in Las Vegas and I was in no mood to rent a car and do some kinda Hoover damn Dam sortie or similar. 

So I contacted clients in Los Angeles and the Bay Area and decided I’d decamp to one or the other, based on what client; first come-first served, responded. I’d simply create a business but mostly recreational reason to be in another city. And I was delighted that the first ping-back originated in Baghdad by the Bay. Feeling mildly knocked around after my full-on session in Las Vegas, I was still more than ready to knock around San Francisco.

And the Fairmont atop Nob Hill along with The Mark offered me rooms at a buck-fifty a night. So the Fairmont it would be. I don’t think I can describe the efficacy…the cleansing salve of San Francisco’s crisp-blue skied winter air as I walked out front of the Fairmont on Wednesday morning. My two days in San Francisco were bliss. Cable cars may be touristy but I rode ‘em with glee.

And I liked standing at the corner of  California street on Wednesday evening after dinner at the University Club…when things were quieter…and you could hear the hiss of the cables running just under the street's surface.

The sartorial rounds were brief. There isn’t much to see in San Francisco clothing wise, that a clotheshorse like me hasn’t or doesn’t see in other cities. I will make it a point to get over to Union Made the next time I’m there. Tasty, eclectic, high quality goods for a younger crowd perhaps. But their website alone is enticing enough for me to wanna have a look-see in situ. Alas, I did go to Cable Car Clothiers' new, smaller digs. Let me just say that unless there’s a dramatic reimagining of what CCC was…is…aspires to be—they won’t be—for much longer.

Certainly my bucket hat and wool challis bowtie purchase won’t keep ‘em afloat.

I held no hope that these framed Vanity Fair prints of Bret Harte and Rider Haggard, along with their personal letters, would remain available at Brick Row Booksellers in that building on Geary Street where art dealers and rare booksellers have long since been ensconced. I’m generally not so lucky but alas they were there and I decided to not pass on them again. Rare book dealers and antiquarian print purveyors are a quirky lot. And trust me—I know quirk when I’m amidst it…having learned to embrace my own idiosyncrasies. Or as one of my dinner mates from the University Club on Wednesday evening declared regarding the proclivities of his high end, persnickety clientele… “I’ve made peace with crazy.” Now don’t get me wrong. None of the dealers in the 49 Geary Street building are crazy—just a bit—and delightfully so—quirky. And quirky played to my favor in that for some juju-esque reason, both of the framed images cost me less than what one of them was quoted to me a year ago. And God knows I need some framed caricatures.

With a bit of unexpected extra time on Thursday I ventured over to North Beach and traipsed the mild underbelly of a part of San Francisco that gives me more reason to love the entire city. Unlike the frenetically loud, neonelectrified smarm of Las Vegas, San Francisco’s smarm is patinated. I just wish that I’d a been there when the El Matador was still serving hooch and jazz and hosting the smart set from all over the world when they rolled in to San Francisco. The thirty something year old Barnaby Conrad was told to “do something with the money” that came pouring in after his novel Matador took off…so “I opened a bar.” 

And boy did he “open a bar”. The El Matador hosted not only the smart set but also some pretty good jazz musicians during its heyday. It seems that North Beach was a jazz destination “…in 1963 the jazz scene moved on. North Beach, with its reputation as a louche entertainment enclave, emerged as the San Francisco jazz epicenter and reigned as such in the fifties, sixties and even into the seventies…”

Here with Conrad at the El Matador is Tyrone Power who starred in Blood and Sand…as a Matador. And I suppose that Power’s role in The Sun Also Rises gave these two imbibers a bit more conversational fodder.

Caen and Conrad. Good clean fun fronting the El Matador.

I tracked down the old El Matador location. It’s vacant and man-oh-man if the walls therein could talk. Wanna re-open it or something similar? “Maxminimus” Yep. That’s what we’ll call it. And I’ll open it—from the proceeds of my first novel.

Look at the abandoned El Matador and ponder what once rounded that corner… “Part saloon, part salon, Barnaby Conrad's El Matador was nestled in the heart of San Francisco's cabaret and nightlife district. There, within the space of a few blocks of North Beach's Barbary Coast, one could catch Johnny Mathis singing at Ann's 440 Club, cross the street to the Swiss American Hotel where Lenny Bruce once thought he was a bird and attempted to fly out of a second-story window, and walk a couple of blocks to the Hungry i to check out newcomers like Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, Barbra Streisand, and the Smothers Brothers. Still, despite the accumulation of dozens of bars, restaurants, and night spots, the area lacked "a truly chic and comfortable (club), a place where attractive and interesting people could congregate over a martini". Conrad's El Matador stylishly filled the void. On any given night, one might find Noel Coward, Marilyn Monroe, Truman Capote, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, or Tyrone Power in the club, or hear Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Eva Gabor, George Shearing, or Andre Previn take over the piano.” 

What will be longed for in another fifty years? Large Escalades pulling up in front of some loud-ass club…Cristal drenched bling-blingers and an upskirt shot courtesy of an iPhone? Where are the El Matadors today?

Barnaby Conrad Jr. has lived one hell of a life and I’m gonna delve into it a bit more when his two memoirs arrive.

Here’s a little glimpse… “At nineteen Barnaby Conrad vaulted into a Mexican arena and waved his Brooks Brothers raincoat at an enraged bull. At twenty-one he escalated from code clerk to vice-consul in twenty-four hours and was sent to Spain where he became El Nino de California (The California Kid) of the bull fights. At twenty-five he was selling books on the subject.”

  And of course there’s Carol Doda and the Condor amidst City Lights book store and the Beats. I’ve yet to stand at the corner of Haight and Ashbury and haven’t made erudite my Hippie studies but is there truth that the Beats felt like their call to action was more worthy than the Hippies?

And was Doda’s topless-bottomlessness plaque worthy?

I can tell you unequivocally that my plein air solo dining before heading to the airport and back to the Las Vegas smarm was plaque worthy. Stay tuned for round two of my San Francisco sortie.

Onward. Having just learned that all is open for business in DC…now I’m gonna go fetch my young’un.

ADG II

Trad-Ivy Friday: San Francisco’s Cable Car Clothiers

The moment I walked in, a resolute olfactory waft took me back to Singletons Men’s Shop circa 1968…the little Trad goods haberdashery in my hometown of Florence, South Carolina. Within two feet of my entry, a comforting aromatic déjà vu hit me. And what made it so powerful was that I hadn’t smelled it in thirty years. But it was unmistakable. The place smelled just like Singletons. Clyde Singleton, creator of the joint in my home town, opened his doors in 1927. Charlie Pivnick created Cable Car Clothiers , declaring it open for business in 1946. And in both cases, it was very good.

But waft...to me at least, denotes movement and impermanence and so my characterization in the case of Cable Car is slightly incorrect. The smells didn’t need to move towards you. They were deeply permanent. Odoriferously patinated I’d say…just like the hyper-air conditioned Singletons of my youth when I’d go there with my dad on a July Saturday when he needed to pick up something he’d bought a week earlier. Bay Rum, wool, oxford cloth, leather, fifty year old fixtures and displays and cabinets and cases…glass topped or fronted…anything but fragile. Add sturdy to the broth and I’d say I’ve given my best effort to describe the key ingredients that constitute the aromatic legacy of such stalwart institutions as Cable Car Clothiers.

Alan Flusser had these things to say about Cable Car Clothiers in his 1996 book Style and the Man… “Much like its namesake, this is the type of store that gives San Francisco an irresistible allure. Step through its doors and you step back in time—way back. Cable Car Clothiers is an anamoly in an age where museums or old photo albums are often the only medium able to connect one with his roots.” Further from Flusser…“Charles (Pivnick) is the Sir Lancelot of the herringbone grail.” That’s Charlie and his grandson above. And here’s a link to their story.

So I took advantage of one of my limited little windows of free time amidst my recent San Francisco meeting and walked over to Cable Car Clothiers. I’d seen their mailings a few times and had been to their website but I had to see first-hand, this Trad-Prep-Anglo outpost for myself…in situ. In addition to its tenure, its spoke in the wheel of an essentially extinct Old San Francisco…there’s gravitas. A tight little paucity of words to convey something ain’t part of my ability but I’m gonna give it a try. Cable Car Clothiers is (was) “J. Press West” – but different. Its clutteredness says hallmarked sterling and cucumber sandwiches, effortlessly offered where J. Press’ dishevelment is an equally uncontrived badge of electroplate and a Kraft cheese saddled Triscuit. The American Trad offerings abound but a key differentiator for Cable Car has been their commitment to British Goods. And yes, the previous sartorial genus-species categories deserve to be capitalized.

When I think of what old San Francisco might have been, I speculate that Herb Caen could have easily been a customer of Cable Car Clothiers. I mean where else would one want to go for the goods necessary to achieve this level of pinned particularity?

Same with Lucius Beebe but only for the panoply of accoutrement to complement his bespoken Henry Poole togs.

And one of my best buddies in the world knows exactly where to get some of the most authentic three button Ivy-Trad swathings. Here’s Toad replete in Cable Car-ness. Context is here.

BarnabyConrad, Jr. for sure, coulda kitted out courtesy of Cable Car Clothiers, for his evenings as Lord of El Matador, his North Beach whiskey hole. And Herb Caen was on many an evening, Conrad's wingman at the bar. Conrad said this about his El Matador… “It was an extraordinary time. Imagine, Noel Coward in my little rotten saloon."

Conrad would be a natural for Cable Car Clothiers. San Francisco native…prepped at Taft in Connecticut and then captained the freshman boxing team at Chapel Hill. Flirted with the painting curriculum at the University of New Mexico for a bit and then went back East to Yale and finished up. And Conrad was a fairly serious bullfighter…having faced hooved opponents in Spain, Mexico and Peru.

Conrad and Cable Car Clothiers have both been the proverbial real deal. Conrad…the antithesis of new moneyed WASP poseurs who buy more horse than they have skill to mount, then end up getting thrown and busting their asses while trying to ride with whatever Hunt they've bought their way into. Cable Car Clothiers…the antithesis of the slave-labor, sweatshop artisanal-heritage-authentic, spray-on-tan patination of the current gaggle of Trad-Ivy knock off artistes. You don’t “spray-on” the stones necessary to go toe to hoof with a freakin’ bull. The requisite stones aren’t adjective heavy like my stories and they damned sure aren’t fused and glued in a sweatshop. Cable Car Clothier Calibre Cavalry twill, hooked center-vented-lapped seamed balls. That’s what Conrad had on beneath his girlie looking matador pants in the photo above.

Oh, and the music that you hear when winnowing through the hallowed crannies of Cable Car Clothiers? It isn’t loud enough to dance to. And it’s coming from a radio. I saw it. It looked old enough to have tubes. Knobs on the face of it—not buttons to press or switches to flip. Knobs…you know, the things you turn to find a station. Probably a Public Radio station because it was playing really decent stuff that was just a bit too elegant and durable for commercial viability.

I’m in such need of clothes that my list of potential Cable Car Clothiers purchases was endless. I kid, I kid. Shut up. But I’d decided before I rounded the corner and entered the place that I’d like to have a token…a talisman from Trad-Ivy West. And much to my surprise, everything and I mean everything, in the store, was thirty percent off. You see, Cable Car Clothiers is decamping. Yep…walking away from the patinated vessel whose legacy befits the melange of Anglo British and Trad-Wasp American goods purveyed therein. They're downsizing…moving to smaller quarters. I hope that the reason for the move isn’t related to the declining appetite for…really decent stuff that was just a bit too elegant and durable for commercial viability.

I’d love to be more hopeful about such things but I can’t. I don’t have any attachment to Cable Car Clothiers per se. I mean really, I’d never been there before but now I can say that I saw the old-ish place at least once. Certainly I have a mawkish load of treacle for all of these once great places that are disappearing; sometimes abruptly evaporating or occasionally, in the case of Cable Car Clothiers, opting for Hospice as a step-down before calling it quits.

My hope is that they’ll flourish in their piccolo version of the original sanctum. But you can’t replicate decades of layers deep everythingness overnight. Sure, you could call in Ralph’s “visual team” or some of the slapdash, twee talent found via the “tumblr inspiration boards” … you know, one of those self-anointed “stylists”. My worry is that you’d get one of two things as a result. Either the dissonance that’s so painfully obvious in the new (relatively new) J. Press store on Madison Avenue. Dissonance manifest in what’s still a fairly decent pile of J. Press legacy merchandise that looks like it somehow ended up getting delivered to the wrong store. Merchandise sitting uncomfortably on the edge of a terribly sterile and brand-new chrome examining table, tentatively, in a paper gown, nervously awaiting the customer doctor. Awaiting the doctor while being attended by a jittery salesperson nurse. An attendant who feels just as out of place and tentative. Perhaps having needed to retire thirty years ago. Oh, and the other thing you'd get--music. Loud enough to dance to. Once the tubes warmed up.

So here’s to Cable Car Clothiers. To olfactory remembrances. And Patina. And music--not loud enough to dance to.

Onward. In my Cable Car Clothiers striped button down. I needed one.

ADG II