Читать книгу Jacobs Beach. The Mob, the Garden and the Golden Age of Boxing онлайн

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The better-heeled among New York's fancy stayed on, for champagne, music, and whatever version of risqué entertainment they could safely be seen to be patronizing. Of the swanky nightclubs favored by the silk-scarf set who slummed it at the Garden were El Morocco on nearby 54th Street and the more formal Cafe Lounge in the Savoy-Plaza Hotel, at Fifth and 59th. There was the mildly notorious Kit Kat Club, on 55th, “Harlem moved downtown,” as guides of the time described it, and “popular in the early hours of the morning.” There was the Stork Club on 53rd, expensive, packed with New York's aristocracy and the perfect place to mull over wages won and lost at the Garden. There was also, of course, the Cotton Club, on Broadway and 48th, the longtime haunt of boxing's inner sanctum; Mob connections with the Cotton stretched back to the twenties, and the neon signs that flashed outside advertising “50 Tall, Tan, Terrific Gals” said it all.

And, for the hardcore, there was always Toots Shor's, the ultimate post-fight den, parked at 51 West 51st Street, a short stroll from the Garden. It was here that many great stories were born (some of them true) and just as many reputations ruined—or enhanced, depending on your view of life. The actor Jackie Gleason, large in every way, threw his weight around here a lot, brawling and boozing until he collapsed on the floor. On more than one occasion the proprietor stepped over him with practiced nonchalance. That was Bernard “Toots” Shor, a rabble-rousing adventurer from Philadelphia, who was big and ugly enough to earn a living as a speakeasy bouncer in the fading years of Prohibition. He met and liked Damon Runyon, whose clout gained Toots entry to New York's demimonde. Toots had found his natural home and, in 1940, opened his eponymous establishment. Like Jacobs Beach, it would live on past a point of dignified closure, a tatty relic in the end.