Preface: 1975

Preface: 1975 Wolf Reiter: I was bartending in the city. One of the partners in the bar, Walter Weiss, owned a huge singles club next to the Amagansett firehouse called Martell’s, so I came out here to work. Groupers—people living in group houses—would go Martell’s. All the houses in the dunes were full of groupers. There were six or eight of us bartenders. The customers had to buy two tickets at the door, and they’d give the bartenders a ticket. So we never got tipped. I mean, they just didn’t tip. I couldn’t believe it—they were rich! The girls were only interested in guys with Porsches, BMWs, or Mercedes, and if they were an accountant, a lawyer, or a doctor. All in their late thirties, early forties, all looking to get connected, so they did very little heavy drinking. I talked to the owner: “We can’t do this, we’re not making any money. You’re going to lose everybody.” So he gave us a quarter a ticket, and then we made a lot of money. Fifty cents a person, and seven or eight hundred people a night coming through. I had never been out here, didn’t know anything about the place. I made friends here, and used to come to the Talkhouse to drink when Buddy Pontick and Tony Hughes owned it. They hired me for the next summer and three summers after that. Back then, the drinking age was 18. It was a great crowd, everybody had fun. There was a jukebox in the corner, a little dance floor, and that was it. It was a small, very charming, cozy little bar. Some of us would come in after the beach at Indian Wells. We’d come in and drink in the late afternoon. 1 But that wasn’t the big scene. The big scene was at night. It was a real big drinking crowd, mainly locals and rich kids. More of the WASP-y set, I guess, is the way to describe it. The girls were beautiful—all blondes. Oh god, you never saw so many good-looking girls. It was always busy, it was fun, everybody was drinking, a great jukebox, hardly ever any fights. Nothing to worry about. _________________ I was working alone on a Sunday after Labor Day, and Allie and Susan, two friends of mine, were hanging out at the end of the bar. Tony and one or two other people were here. Three English kids came in. I asked them what they wanted and they said, “We want some American whiskey. We’re on our way to New York to get laid, we can’t get laid in Montauk.” My girlfriend later said, “Don’t you know who that is? That’s Mick Jagger!” I didn’t recognize him. He was with his brother, Chris, and another Stone—I can’t remember who it was. They were staying at Andy Warhol’s in Montauk. They said, “Where are all the girls?” I said, “It’s the Sunday after Labor Day, it’s rainy, it’s cold. You guys came on the wrong day.” 2 Jagger said to me, “Well, will you dance?” He was joking, but I was embarrassed: “No, I’ve got to work, I’m sorry.” I know he was asking in jest, but it was funny. And I can say that Mick Jagger asked me to dance. Tony recognized them. He was Irish, but had an English accent. He said, “Wolf, I want to buy them something: Wilson ‘That’s All’”—Wilson rye, an American liquor, and the phrase on the label is “That’s All.” He bought them a round, and they ended up sitting at his table, talking. It didn’t get any busier. Finally, I said, “Tony, I’m going to leave. Here’s the Wilson,” and I left. I wasn’t interested. I wanted to get home. Maybe he was exaggerating when he said he couldn’t get laid in Montauk. But that was the year they wrote “Memory Motel.” Introduction Peter Honerkamp: I grew up in Douglaston, Queens. When my brother died in a car accident in 1969 with another friend of mine, a lot of his older friends kind of adopted me. It’s interesting, because it’s like my son growing up in a bar with a lot of older male figures. I had that same experience, because when I was 15, a lot of people who were 20 to 23 took me under their wing because they loved my brother. At that time, those guys in Douglaston went to a new bar in Roslyn called My Father’s Place. Roslyn is probably 15 or 20 minutes outside the Queens line. My Father’s Place used to be 3 a bowling alley that I bowled at when I was 12 years old. I don’t remember the first name of the guy who owned it, but the last name was Lenihan. When he gave up the bowling alley, his son Jay opened a music club, and he called it My Father’s Place. This was the early 1970s. Jay did whatever he did there, but his partner, Michael “Eppy” Epstein, was really the booker. Eppy got all these amazing acts in there. I know the Stones were there. Everybody who was up and coming was there, and in the middle of Roslyn there was this amazing club that they snuck me into a couple of times. When you walked in there was a bar, and then you walked into a narrow room where there was the music. But he got all these great acts, and they came because it was that kind of place, and it had that kind of cachet. _________________ Reg Cornelia: I grew up in Brooklyn, and I lived in the city a long time. I moved out here about ’74, maybe ’73, when Buddy Pontick and Tony Hughes owned the Talkhouse. There was one of the best jukeboxes, a small dance floor, but whatever combination Buddy had really worked. I’m not prone to dancing unless it’s my only chance at getting somewhere [laughs], but this place just made you do it. I did the only cartwheel in my life in here. I think tequila had something to do with that. 4 Wolf Reiter: I worked at the Talkhouse for three years, then I got a great job in the city at the Buffalo Roadhouse. After three years there, I opened the Sea Wolf, in East Hampton, in ’79. Back then, every Sunday—my biggest day—I had five bartenders. There were so many people that I started charging at the gates. It had an outdoor barbecue and an outdoor concert every Sunday afternoon. It was packed. When it slowed up about 10 or 11 in the evening, I’d get my three biggest guys and a Budweiser case and get all the large money from the cash registers, put it in my trunk, and come to Talkhouse and drink and carry on, have a good time, usually realize I needed a ride home, and leave my car here with the money in it. But nothing ever happened. I met Peter at the Sea Wolf a few years later. He was selling ambulances and fire engines, I think. Nick Kraus: I thought this was a cool story for a long time, and then decided maybe it wasn’t so cool, but the night that I was born my father was at the Talkhouse. He’d been at Southampton Hospital earlier, and I guess those were the days when, kid’s born at 11:30, let mom and the kid go to bed, and by one o’clock in the morning he was here, apparently handing out cigars because people his age and older used to come up to me and say, “The night you were born, your father gave me a cigar.” For a while I thought that was cool, and then realized it’s probably why my parents aren’t together anymore, because of that kind of behavior. My grandmother originally met Peter: He was lying on his back on the bar at the old Laundry restaurant on Race Lane. Somebody accused him of having had too much to drink. My 5 grandmother walked up and said, “Stop what you’re saying. I don’t think he’s had enough.” She was a big drinker herself. That’s how he met my grandparents, and then he met my parents. So I’ve always been associated with the club. I was always a music fanatic—I worked at Long Island Sound from the time I was 12 years old to early, mid-twenties, at different times and in different capacities. As I became old enough to do something here, I’d always try to get in. I always loved live music. My parents used to come to the Talkhouse all the time, and they became friendly with Peter, and then he took it over. But before he did, he was selling ambulances. He used to come over, driving the ambulances to my parents’ house. I used to clean them—the outside, not the inside. I guess at the time, they were switching over from the old “Ghostbusters” kind, the Cadillac ambulances, to the box ones. He had all these old Ghostbusters-type ambulances, and my father bought one. He used to drive around to bars and stuff, back in the early Eighties. They talked about buying a Hearse at one point, but I’m not sure that happened.

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