“Backgammon is the most brutal game, much of it is based on luck,” said Joe Urso, one tournament away from winning the Grandmaster title, but dropped a few points in his game last month on a recent Wednesday night.
Urso, 41, and several other backgammon enthusiasts were meeting the Clinton Hill Backgammon Club weekly games at Funny Bar, a new jazz bar restoration event on the east side of Manhattan. Backgammon clubs are usually convened in the restaurant's conversation pit in the center of a space that once housed mechanical bulls.
The venue on Essex Street lived some life before the funny bar. It was once a Western-themed barbecue joint and then a hip-hop brunch spot. And for 40 years it housed Schmullcaucinstein, New York City's first kosher Chinese restaurant. The current owners, Tom Moore and Billy Jones, have designed some relics from these different incarnations into interesting bar designs. However, they confirmed that the new version had no identifiable themes.
“Many restaurants and clubs in New York present these very complete ideas to their customers,” said Moore, 30, whose parents work in the hotel industry in Chicago. Over the past few years, the rise of overdesigned clubstourant has homogenized Manhattan's nightlife aesthetic.
The cavernous 2,800-square-foot interior of the funny bar, designed by Safwat Riad, reflects the cheeky, Lynch sensibility with kitschy glass bricks, a smooth grand piano and just US lighting. The dining room walls are deliberately lined with empty shelves. The crayon and paper tablecloth add a playful touch to the large, low-haired leather booth. The server with a face tattoo wears slimy, buttoned uniforms that enhance a sense of dissonance, mischief and mischief. The overall effect may make diners feel like kids stealing their parents' credit cards and going out for a martini.
“There are a lot of couples who are being fooled by each other, but when businessmen start eating together and doing math at the table with crayons, I really like it.” The funny bar passes around 600 crayons a week.
The owner didn't mind the drink menu. “We're not really special,” said Raphael Wolf, head chef at Funny Bar. The restaurant's menu is suitably simple and crowd-pleasing, including salads, steak fries and brownie Sundays. Usually there are vegetable dishes on the menu. Of the decision to serve steak only, Moore said he didn't want his meals to get bloated or his breath smelled. He wanted to keep the night sexy. “And there's nothing more sexy than steak,” he added.
Moore and Jones opened the popular nightclub 101 just a few blocks away, but they were reluctant to overpublish interesting bars and, then, preferred to find patrons slowly. The hidden side of Essex Street that most New Yorkers avoid, deems it “If you know, you know.” The bar doesn't promote the scheduled music performance and has fewer than 3,000 Instagram followers.
Despite being sincere about attracting attention, Funny Bar has found an eclectic fan base. At any time, the crowd includes young fashion hounds, baby stock brokers, middle-aged couples dating, musicians such as King Princess and Dare.
During a typical evening, tables and parties tend to merge, with guests eventually spilling into the conversation pits, reflecting the bust and spontaneity of live jazz. (It was a commitment to this genre and was also working on the restaurant's phone number 212-516-Jazz.)
Some patrons compare it to the social whirlwinds of the bar depicted in the first season of Sex and the city. This is a comparison that proves itself whenever someone writes down a phone number on a crayon, tears it from the sheet, and hands it over to a cute stranger.
