Among the after-hour clubs operating at this writing are the Top Side, 501 12th Street, NW; the Guess Who, 811 L Street, NW; the Acropolis, 719 9th Street, NW (patronized by Greeks); the Culinary Arts, 307 M Street, NE, and the Yamasee, 1214 U Street, NW. The last two are colored clubs.
The most notorious of the after-hour-spots speaks, the Gold Key, was closed by Committee revelations. It has since reorganized as the Downtown Club, with some of the same characters. Most of the others are patronized by unimportant transients or night workers, such as musicians, waiters and bartenders.
The Gold Key got the cream and they’re back again. Among its regular patrons were local sports, including playboy Senators and officials. Waitresses there made as much as $150 a week in tips, whereas they are lucky to knock down $50 in other places. When lawyer Charlie Ford drew up the papers for the Gold Key, its original organizers were Albert Glickfield, alias Al Brown, Patsy Meserole, and Harry Conners, his brother-in-law. Meserole is a former New York gangster, one of the last surviving members of the late Legs Diamond mob. Glickfield is a gambler and associate of Frank Erickson. The accountant for this after-hour club was Henry W. Davis, a division head in the Accounting Division of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, an agency of the U. S. Government.
Meserole left the Gold Key to open the Stagecrafters, 433 3rd Street, NW, and took a lot of the top political and theatrical business with him. His partner is Dominic Ferone, another ex-New York mobster. General Vaughan is a patron. It sells liquor openly and provides gambling, and waitresses will get women for them as wants ’em. Meserole testified under oath that many Congressmen and Senators were customers.
When Congressional investigations indicated the club was operated illegally, it was shuttered until the heat was off. But so heavy was the influence of its owners, through business ties with members of the New York Syndicate and the exalted position of its patrons, that as soon as the investigation shut down, the club reopened, not quietly, but brazenly.
We have before us an ad in a Washington daily which reads:
NOTICE.... Members and Their Guests STAGECRAFTERS CLUB NOW REOPENED Same Place.... Same Policy.... Same Committees.... Same Benefits.... Membership Drive Now On Help Get New Members! EDWARD P. MESEROLE, Secretary
The Stagecrafters is the haunt of unsavory “introducers” who make contacts with wealthy chumps there, offering girls and gambling. Police recently arrested a lout, who, they charged, had become acquainted with William H. Engelmann, a photo-lithographer from Baltimore, out for a fling with friends in the Stagecrafters. The prisoner suggested a blackjack game and took him to a room in the Ambassador Hotel, which is owned by Gwen Cafritz’s husband. Engelmann was soon a $1,500 loser, and asked his host to cash a check. He said he would, at the hotel cashier’s booth, and left with Engelmann’s check. Engelmann became suspicious when the man didn’t return after an hour. He found the man had checked out. When the fellow was caught, police said, they found on him a deck of marked cards.
Another bottle-club that opened after the adjournment of the Congressional investigation is on the site of the Palm Grill, at 14th and Q, under a new name, the Sunrise.
The shuttered Turf-and-Grid was reborn as the aforementioned Amvets. The Turf’s owner, Richard O’Connell, has been employed by the government since the beginning of the New Deal, in such agencies as the original NRA, the Department of the Interior (under “Honest Harold” Ickes) and more recently in the Red-infested Wages and Hours Division of the Department of Labor.
Another club that operates on and off is the United Nations Social Club. When we visited it, its chief social activity was a crap game. Another is the Crystal Cavern.
When George P. Harding, a 39-year-old gunman and underworld fingerman, was shot to death by Joe Nesline, notorious Prohibition era bootlegger, in the Hideaway--an aftermath of last year’s conquest of Washington by the Mafia--Washington’s bottle-clubs took another shellacking.
Congressmen beat their breasts, newspapers shrilled, the DA promised action and the cops vowed to close all the joints. For a few days a couple of clubs went easy; at this writing most were again in action.
The Hideaway, scene of the crime, was reported “closed for good” by the precinct captain, but Joseph Horowitz, an owner, announced “business as usual” while the cops were telling everyone the premises were empty. At press time, the present and future status of the club was in doubt.
Legitimate clubs are a necessity until the District authorities amend the outmoded liquor laws. One which we liked is the Lyre’s. Most members of this club are night-workers whose hours are such that they could never get a drink or relax if they had no place to go after 2 A.M. Among them are musicians of the big hotels and night clubs, waiters, waitresses, hatcheck gals, government swing-shift people and visiting entertainers. We spent considerable time at the Lyre’s and noted everything was on the square. No patrons were permitted to enter who weren’t members or their guests, and no drinks were served except out of members’ bottles.
The Lyre’s is chummy. There’s a mainfloor bar and lounge and a basement dining-room and dance floor. Most of the musicians in town hang out there and put on jam sessions all night long. Its hosts are Vince and Mildred Carr, former Baltimore and Philadelphia night club operators. They have many friends in show business. The Carrs won’t tolerate hookers and drunks, allow no soliciting, gambling or hoodlums. But unfortunately the Lyre’s is unique.
Not all who want to drink late can afford to or can get into or know about bottle-clubs. Those who spend an evening in a licensed cabaret and find themselves still sober or out for fun at two, or at midnight on Saturday, are up against it. Licensed clubs and cocktail lounges can’t sell for off-premises consumption. If you tip your waiter liberally he will dig up an empty Coca-Cola bottle and let you fill it with the remaining liquor at your table.
Some people who run dry at midnight Saturdays drive to Maryland, where bars and package-stores close at 2 A.M.
Washington is loaded with bootleggers and blind tigers. We have already referred to the gin-flats in Black Town, where home-made gin--raw ethyl alcohol flavored with juniper and sometimes diluted with apple cider--is sold. Prices are reasonable, as low as 50 cents a drink and $3 a bottle. The flats, usually five- or six-room affairs, have juke-boxes. Parlor floors are cleared for dancing. Beds are handy. If cops come, it’s a private party. But cops don’t come.
We pulled up in our cab to the NE corner of Popner and U Streets, and waited five minutes. A colored man came over and asked us what we wanted. He had gin, Scotch and corn. We bought gin, trade-marked, $2.50 for a pint.
David Douglas Davenport, self-styled “Union Station bootlegger,” has been selling booze in the railroad terminal for years. He charges $5 for a pint of whiskey, which he keeps stashed in an automatic coin locker. Davenport has a record for court appearances, 115 in one year. He lost to the law once, and did two years in the District jail. The day he got out of the can he was in business in Union Station again and still was at this writing, though arrested again and out on bail.
Many after-hour bootleggers sell legitimate stuff, which they buy at Washington’s low prices, and retail at 100 or 200 per cent profit. Hundreds of other bootleggers, especially Negroes, dispense moonshine. Most of this is acquired from mob sources in Brooklyn and New Jersey, where the Mafia operates gigantic stills capable of producing thousands of gallons a day. According to Carroll Mealy, capable and efficient head of the Alcoholic Tax Unit, the rum-runners take this stuff to Washington in 1940 Fords, with Cadillac or racing motors in place of original power. This model is preferred for its carrying capacity, maneuverability and inconspicuous appearance. The souped-up motors can hit 120 miles an hour against pursuit.
Much moonshine is made in Washington, though none of the raided stills was found with a large capacity. The stuff is cooked at 2nd and G Streets, NW. But legitimate Washington sources supply liquor to be run into nearby dry and semi-dry states and counties.
Not all who buy from bootleggers get drunk. Some get robbed.
“The tough part about it was that I never got the whiskey,” Army Sgt. Filmore M. Broom, 41, moaned to police.
He said a Negro offered to sell him a bottle, but when the sergeant pulled out his wallet, containing $190, to pay, the Negro snatched it and ran--with the whiskey, too. This happened at 5th and Neal Streets, NW, and police are looking for a Negro with red suspenders and a white straw hat. No winter description available.