A THROW OF THE DICE
There is probably no street in the world that has the same number and style of restaurants as Broadway, New York, especially the kind that are within the bounds of the Tenderloin. Chuck Conners would call them feed joints; the irreverent might refer to them as hash houses, and the slangy man or woman who wanted to designate them might be pardoned for dubbing them lobster palaces. But there would be a lot of sense and reason in the last if you were only on, or took the time to think it over.
There is nothing to them in the daytime, and the heavily carpeted floors and snowy-clad tables burdened with silver and glass are practically out of commission. There are a few waiters on duty, but no one ever heard of them being overworked, even with the rush of the merry-merry after a matinee.
These money-makers begin to rouse up a bit about the time the average man of business affairs is finishing his quiet dinner at home, but the time to go there if you want to see things, and by things I mean the sights and celebrities, is after the theatres have let out the evening performance. Then, if you amount to anything, you will have a table where you can see and be seen, and you will feast upon a bite that will cost you nothing less than a ten-dollar bill, not including wine.
It’s only a dream after the lobster course
The shining lights of this world are in a class by themselves, and include the bookmaker with a loud voice—a trifle heavier than his bank roll; the gambler, soft of hand and manner; the sport who has done something or other at some time or other to entitle him to a passing recognition; the detective sergeant, who is a necessary evil, and who mixes in for business purposes of his own, and not for the purpose of doing the work for which he is paid by the city; then, last of all, the actor—star or semi-star.
They order as if the cooks in all the world were working for them alone, and the waiters were employed for their exclusive benefit. They are epicures and gourmets by force of circumstances, and the circumstances are a roll of bank bills about the size of a man’s wrist. Most of them have risen to a mushroom-like affluence.
The money came quickly, and they are spending it just as quickly.