Chumley's: Down But Not Out
Chumley's, whose chimney collapsed yesterday and whose demolition we predicted was imminent, has lived to greet the new dawn. The FDNY and the DOB have decided not to demolish the whole building but rather to shore it up and sally forth with renovations 'n' reconstruction. Tragically for bookish alcoholics, Chumley's will for a while remain in a Schiavo state of unresponsiveness. On the bright side, continuing Chumley's literary tradition, the whole affair did give rise to some memorable cuts of occasional prosody. Surely to be remembered is the work of the Times' Trymaine Lee, whose elegiac images and sonorous prose have earned him the appellation the "Carl Sandburg of Chumley's." To wit: "Snowflakes fell upon the old speakeasy as firefighters stood staring into its now dusty guts." Okay!
