HOW TO START A SUPPER CLUB

You think that the housing problem in New York is pretty critical, don’t you? Well, that just shows how much you know about it. The problem isn’t how to take care of all the people who live in New York; it’s how to take care of all the people who dance there. Night clubs are springing up like mushrooms (not exactly like mushrooms but near enough) and still there is a shortage. A lot of people have to go home every night without dancing. And you know what that leads to.

A man can’t turn his back on a block between Fiftieth and Fifty-ninth Streets without three new supper clubs appearing before he looks back again. I left my house in Fifty-fifth Street one Wednesday morning (it was the Wednesday morning I left my house in Fifty-fifth Street) and after a hard day at the office returned Friday night to find that four stables on our block (I am a horse writing this: “Black Beauty”) had been transformed into “La Vache Noire,” “Sally Sobel’s Cellar,” “The Old Oaken Bucket,” and “Club O’Hara.” It has got so that you can’t leave your ice box out on the back porch without someone coming along and turning it into a night club.

The process of transforming a stable or an ice box or a fair-sized umbrella closet into a supper club is pretty simple, once you get the hang of it.

First comes the coat room. This has to be the first feature on the way in, in order to be the last one on the way out, so that the coat room girl can get that last fifty-cent piece that the patron has been holding out for taxi fare. You wouldn’t believe the number of cheap skates that try to sneak out with fifty cents or a dollar hidden away in their clothes. It kind of makes you lose your faith in human nature.

From the coat room you arrange a hidden step so that the guest stumbles down into what used to be the place where they kept the mops and brooms and into the arms of the head waiter. This gives the head waiter the chance to accuse the patron of being drunk and refuse him admission.

The choice of a head waiter is very important. Go down to the wharves when a fruit steamer is docking and pick out a stevedore who is less polite than his fellows. Take him uptown and teach him how to put studs into a dress shirt and station him at the entrance to your club. Tell him that he has just been unanimously chosen governor of the State of New York and that it is up to him to maintain the prestige of the office. Also tell him that any patron is a bum until he proves himself otherwise. Show him what you mean by proof and then put it back into the cash drawer.

The choice of a head waiter is very important.

The interior of your club need cause you no worry—or expense. Hang some old awnings from the ceiling—good and low so as to shut off the air—and paint the walls red and yellow, with perhaps a figure or two in Russian costume, if you can draw—or even if you can’t. In the center of the room build a dance floor just big enough for a medium-sized man to lie down on and roll over three times. Not that any medium-sized man is going to do it, but those are the standard measurements for night club dance floors. Fill the rest of the room with small tables which wabble, erect a platform for your jazz band, and you are set.

Now comes your big problem—the entertainment. There was a time when the patrons were satisfied to mill around on the dance floor and bump each other’s hips. Then some foolish proprietor started in giving them a little show in between dances and they got spoiled. Now they all want a show for their money. This injustice to proprietors is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the patrons don’t care what kind of show it is, so long as they don’t have to dance.

There has to be some sort of master of ceremonies, and the proprietor can save a salary right there by doing this himself. All that he has to do is wear a dinner coat and act as if he believes that he has a good line.

“Ladies and gentlemen—and Gentiles. I have the very great honor to present to you tonight two of America’s foremost ballroom dancers, two very charming and very talented young people who are filling an engagement at this club before beginning in the new Ziegfeld ‘Follies.’ They come fresh from a very successful season on the Riviera and I am sure that you will find them very, very delightful. So’s your old man!... Come on, now, give these charming young people a good hand!... [Lead the applause.] Delacroix and Feeney, ladies and gentlemen!”

For Delacroix and Feeney it will be necessary to procure a young man and a young woman named Hyman and Gatz, respectively, who can waltz holding each other at arm’s length. The young man must look at the young lady while they are waltzing and smile as if he really liked her, and the young lady must smile modestly back at him, just as if she were not thinking: “You big bum, I hope you trip and fall and break your shirt front.” At the end of the waltz she curtsies so low that she has a good chance of not getting up again—which would be small loss. The master of ceremonies should then lead the applause again, what there is.

The entertainment over, you can turn the patrons loose again, with instructions to the orchestra to play so long that the dancers will fall exhausted by their tables and have to order refreshments. For food a forty-cent chop suey can be served for two dollars and a half and a ten-cent lemonade for a dollar. This will help you to clear expenses and maybe make a little profit.

Now in the matter of dispensing alcoholic drinks a great deal of caution must be used. It is, as many of you know, against the law to sell liquor, a fact which complicates its sale and makes for considerable inconvenience. The authorities are more and more on the alert and consequently the risk of getting caught remains about the same. A night club proprietor cannot be too careful to whom he sells strong drinks. For instance, if a man in the uniform of chief of police, with gold braid and a sword, comes in with a friend who has a flag in his hand on which is written “U. S. Revenue Service,” no drinks should be served to that table until it has been definitely ascertained that the men are “all right.” As for regular patrons, always wait until they ask for liquor before serving it, as a lot of people have their own with them and don’t like to be bothered by representatives of the house standing at their elbows every minute trying to get them to buy. The chief thing to find out about a man before you sell him any illicit beverage is whether or not he has got $12. Once this is made sure, the thing is not so foolhardy.

With these few suggestions to those of you who might be in a position to start a night club, it is to be hoped that more and more citizens will lend a hand to help solve New York’s big problem.