College Walk MARK STEELE

College Walk MARK STEELE eric, red neon “restaurant” sign fans, they experienced Tom’s with became the show’s most visible a “What Would Jerry Do?” atti- New York icon.“It’s like Mecca for tude, though in their case, it was Seinfeld fans,” Kramer says. Elaine they channeled. Peeping at Tom’s Not that the tour group goes “Elaine would have complained inside for a meal. A picture with the whole time!” they said in the real Kramer outside of the real singsong unison. Kenny Kramer has milked a living diner — whose exterior served as Another reason to complain was out of being the real-life inspiration a front for the set of Monk’s Café the size of the place. “It seemed for the Seinfeld character Cosmo — suffices. small,” Casalbuono said. “It looked Kramer and he’s not afraid to admit Some other pilgrims, however, much bigger on TV.” The ensuing it. His tours of the show’s famous like Maria Casalbuono and Betty conversation with the two matron- New York City locales have sold Giordano, sisters from Melbourne, ly women was a bit awkward, as any out every Saturday since 1996. flock to the corner of 112th Street parent who has felt compelled to KHis last tour of the year was and Broadway to breach that barri- puncture the myth of, say,the tooth Labor Day weekend. After that it er between fact and fiction. They fairy, knows:The restaurant’s interi- was off to Mexico and all places open the door and go inside. or was never used on the show. south, the beginning of his annual On a late summer afternoon, the “You just get sucked into it,” seven-month vacation. “It’s been two sisters lunched at Tom’s before Casalbuono said rather sheepishly. quite lucrative,”says Kramer, a for- heading across the Hudson River Usually,the staff is left to console mer stand-up comic. “It’s prev- to Hoboken, where, as members of the bereaved fan who discovers he ented me from having a real job.” the Frank Sinatra Society of Aus- has walked not onto the set of a The 60 seats on the tour bus, at tralia, they would pay homage to TV show but into a real diner. $37.50 a pop, sell out weeks in the birthplace of Old Blue Eyes. “They always want to know what advance.The tour, however, would They were seated in the back of booth Jerry sat in,” said Tom Nola, be nothing without Tom’s Restau- the restaurant, near the bathrooms. a waiter at the restaurant for the rant, the real-life diner whose They ordered salads. The service past six years. “Haven’t people storefront and conveniently gen- was quick, if not curt. Like most heard of Hollywood?” 8 COLUMBIA Its fame, courtesy of a release are family members whose tenure Greek way,” Zoulis said with a form they signed in 1989 when a at Tom’s reaches back decades. shrug. “You come here to the U.S. cameraman and a producer asked to Zoulis won’t say what role Seinfeld to make money and then go back.” shoot the restaurant’s exterior, has has played in the success of the In the seven years since the show been a mixed blessing. Much like restaurant, but clearly it figures in ended, after the syndication of Sein- the scion trying to make a name for the ledger. On the restaurant’s Web feld in 90 countries and amid the himself, the restaurant’s owners feel site, the link is featured prominent- incremental release of all 180 a little bruised by the shadow that ly — along with the connection to episodes on DVD, the distinction looms over them. Suzanne Vega’s hit song “Tom’s between the real and fictional Tom’s “It wasn’t like we were left for Diner.” The restaurant sells sou- Restaurant has become arbitrary, dead and Seinfeld came and saved venir T-shirts and mugs for $13.00, with each camp feeding into the us,”said one of the owners, Michael both portraying the classic exterior marketing of the other. The mem- Zoulis. “We’ve been a mainstay in shot seen on the show.Signed pho- bers of the extended Zoulis family this neighborhood for 60 years.” tos of the cast and Al Hirschfeld are unfazed by the daily stream of Ipso facto, Zoulis points down the drawings of each character hang on tourists snapping pictures outside counter to the lunchtime regulars, the walls. the restaurant or making oddball mostly men who work in the trades The family members who work requests, like when a fan recently and a smattering of students and at Tom’s enjoy a lifestyle not unlike asked for a souvenir menu. neighborhood folk. Kenny Kramer’s. In a typical At the register, Bill Teromona- Tom’s Restaurant has been a arrangement, Michael Teromona- hos, another cousin, who has been Zoulis family enterprise for two hos, 56, a cousin who has been working at Tom’s for 30 years, gave generations, since the patriarchs working at Tom’s since 1971,is sub- the order the same interest he immigrated to New York from the stituting as short-order cook for his would a tuna sandwich. Greek island of Kasos more than son, who has been in Greece for the “One menu,” he said.“To go?” half a century ago. Most employees last three months.“It’s the so-called — Jeremy Smerd ’03JRN ing for wild cherries, raspberries, discovered in May, though no one and acorns, she has inspired much knows her exact origins (turkey- wonder and curiosity. In her rust- rich Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx Return of the Native brown iridescence, her gamebird is a good possibility). “She hangs ponderousness, she recalls a precolo- out on the upper level of the park, nial Manhattan rife with black between 114th and 116th,” he says. She possesses neither brilliant bears, mountain lions, white-tailed “There’s a spring there, which plumage nor an elite address. Pow- deer. She is unexpected, anomalous, is probably where she gets her erful tenants do not call for her yet somehow at home, not so much water.”Parks Department gardener eviction. Celebrities do not rally to an alien transplant as a pioneer of Marechal Brown, who works in her cause (she has no cause). She is resettlement on an island where Morningside, notes that the 30-acre no stylish killer, no media darling, there once flourished, in great num- park is home to a wide variety of no deadly sex symbol. And unlike bers, her species, Meleagris gallopavo birds, including red-bellied wood- Pale Male, the red-tailed hawk of — the wild turkey. peckers, cardinals, goldfinches, a pair Sopulent Fifth Avenue, she does not Brad Taylor, president of Friends of Canada geese, and, down by the even have a name. of Morningside Park, an all-volun- pond, a double-crested cormorant, But to those who have seen her teer park advocacy group founded which arrived last year. poking around in the grass and dan- by Columbia undergrads in 1981, But it is the turkey that has been delions in Morningside Park, forag- says that this specific turkey was first drawing the most attention. “I called COLUMBIA 9 College Walk the Audubon Society when I first Indeed, the mere existence of a lines and into southwestern New saw her,” says Brown, who judges New York turkey is something of a York, and before long, healthy the bird to be on the small side magical event, given the bird’s breeding populations were estab- (adult turkey hens generally weigh checkered history in the region, lished.Today, due to migration and between 8 and 12 pounds).“She was from which it had once been government-sponsored restoration very tame, and I was worried about entirely extinct. projects, there are some 250,000 her. But they told me that it was bet- In 1609, when Henry Hudson wild turkeys in New York State, ter not to move her, since it might sailed past Manhatta (“land of many according to the National Wild traumatize her, and that she’d proba- hills”), as it was called by the Lenni- Turkey Federation. bly come back to the park anyway Lenape people who lived there, But the survival of a smallish lone because that’s where she wanted to wild turkeys abounded throughout turkey in the cliffs of Morningside be.” Photographs of the new immi- what is now New York State south Park is no simple matter, and it’s not grant have appeared on several blogs, of the Adirondacks. But coloniza- just the threat of cars whizzing past such as Curbed.com, along with tion brought the clearing of forests on the surrounding streets, or of comments that reflect the essential for farmland, as well as year-round unleashed dogs, or of some cruel awe that springs from a chance hunting, and by the 1840s, the bird human with a stone: For high up on encounter with wildlife. had vanished from New York. the eastern bluff of Morningside “Only when you see birds up Toward the end of the 19th century, Heights, atop the apse of the Cathe- close do you understand the mys- however, farming began to decline dral of St. John the Divine, over- tery of animals in general and birds and some of the disused farmland looking the descending tiers of in particular,” says Yigal Gelb was gradually reclaimed by brush the park, there lurks, in his nest, a ’04SIPA, program director for the and trees.

Load more