It was 1954. The world was
suffering from unrequited love, a big post-war baby boom and an insatiable
craving for sweet solace.
In the heart of Little Italy, sharing a cold water flat with creepies, crawlies
and things that go bump in the night lived Serendipity 3. Princes under their
frog suits, they waited, lips pursed, for the kiss that would reveal their
true selves. But it took a magic word to open the palace door.
Days, they hounded producers’ offices. Nights they built skyscrapers
of ice cream at Howard Johnson’s. One of them became a lead dancer
in “Catch a Star,” and Jose Limon said he might have reached
Nijinskian heights, had destiny not called him to the kitchen.
He was Calvin Holt of the sassy ass and incorrigible ways. Fresh from
the cornfields of Arkansas. Full of beans and Aunt Buba’s sand
tarts. Uninhibited by grey flannel rules. Lit up with crazy electricity
that outshone Broadway.
Fast as his heels came Stephen Bruce. Two black, slanty, Slavic eyes
in league with the devil. Sly and shy, saucy and sweet talking. A wittily
mustached
enigma, he could be a son of a B or Pola Negri’s love child. Mixing
fantasy and innuendo, he dressed windows at Macy’s and dreamed
of draping the stars.
It was Patch Carradine who found The Word that would turn their fortunes.
Composing salacious song lyrics and comedy routines for tiny Village
boites. Tossing around a vocabulary that wandered from obscure to obscene.
Able to
do the whole Times crossword puzzle weekly, the London Times on off days.
One day he uncrossed a word that rang a bell. A word that you couldn’t
find in the dictionary of common usage back in ’54.
The Word was Serendipity. The art of finding the pleasantly unexpected by
chance or sagacity. Invented by eighteenth century wordsmith Sir Horace Walpole,
it evoked the ancient legend of the three princes of the island no longer
known as Serendip.
“ Hey,” said the boys, “that’s a good name for a place
of our own.” The rest reads like A Thousand and One Nights. The Serendipity
3 pooled their entire fortunes of three hundred dollars and staked a claim
to a tiny principality in the basement of a tenement on East Fifty-Eighth
Street.
It was New York’s first coffee house boutique. The first Tiffany lampshaded
meeting place since the days of Diamond Jim Brady. Serendipity had come
into the world four tables, sixteen chairs and a towering espresso machine
strong.
In no time, [patrons out numbered the facilities. Nightly the line formed,
stretching around the block and under the old Third Avenue El.
Before he was anyone, Andy Warhol declared it his favorite sweet shop,
and paid his chits in drawings. Photographers discovered the charms of
Tiffany
glass set against whitewashed walls. New York’s avant-garde caught
on that nineteenth century junk was suddenly twentieth century chic.
The Serendipty 3 lost no time learning how to cook, design, whip and turn
on the frozen hots. They rolled in the loot and rolled around the corner
to the cozy brownstone on Serendipity Street. The entire Silk Stocking community
squeezed into its tightest jeans and queued up.
The kitchen buzzed to all hours producing never-before extravaganzas.
The general store and boutique grew trendier with every passing Hebrew
Eyechart
dishtowel and Little Red Riding Hood’s jigsaw puzzle (365 pieces
all of them red). Swivel-hipped waiters balanced trays overflowing with
calories.
Everything was for sale, including the waiters. Frozen Hot Chocoholics
were nurtured and Apricot Smushniks were sated. Palates pampered with
caviar developed
a list for Hard Times fare like Lemon Ice Box Pie and Texas Chili.