The Dove
THE DOVE
THE ONLY REASON I'm writing this is to get a second date with Jennifer. Not that the Dove isn't a great bar or anything. Where else in the West Village can you get a pint of Newcastle for five bucks? Not to mention the leather couches, the candlelight, the Clash playing constantly. Hell, I've got half a mind not to write this. The last thing I want is the place to be overrun with undergrads. But there will always be other bars. There is only one Jennifer.
I met her about a month ago, after a catering gig for this political action committee Downtown for Democracy. You paid $125 for a ticket to John Sayles' new movie, Silver City, plus cocktails with the director afterward. The reception was at a swanky Sullivan St. townhouse, but there was also a separate event that the volunteers attended around the corner at the Dove. The D4D kids were nice enough to invite us waiters, and even though the last place we wanted to spend our Friday night was Bleecker St., the prospect of free Brooklyn Lager was too good to pass up.
I spent most of the night on a couch near the door, staring out the front picture window at the paradoxically fit calves of some chain smoker in a blue-and-white polka-dotted dress while bullshitting with this D4D guy Dave. Dave was a writer and eager for gossip about Dale Peck, a member of the D4D steering committee and my former thesis adviser at the New School. At one point, Dave went to get us another round. When he came back, he told me he was in love with the bartender.
"Which one?" I asked.
They could've been sisters. Both had the same pronounced cheekbones and dark eyes and long, black hair with shortened bangs. Whoever the owner was, I wanted to shake their hand.
"She told me her name," Dave said. "But the music was too loud. I couldn't understand what she said. It sounded foreign, though."
The next time she came around to collect empties, I stopped her.
"Word is, you have a very exotic name," I said.
She looked at me strangely.
"How do you pronounce it exactly?"
"Jennifer?" she said.
Embarrassed, Dave came clean, but Jennifer was a good sport about it.
I left that night happy to finally have a good place to drink near NYU-my catering company's biggest client being the Stern School of Business. A couple weeks later, after an alumni mixer, a few of us went back to the Dove. To my surprise, Jennifer recognized me. She even bought me a shot. Before leaving, I asked her if she wanted to grab a bite sometime.
"I'll meet you for a drink," she conceded and gave me her email.
I later learned that Jennifer and her doppelganger own the place. Had I known, I never would've had the balls to ask her out. But what the hell-that Sunday we met at the Beauty Bar.
Jennifer brought a few friends, including Henrietta, the other owner. They both grew up on the Upper East Side and knew each other from grade school. After college, they came back to the city and bartended for a couple years, then got fed up and decided to open their own place. So here's this drop-dead gorgeous, ultra-chic native New Yorker entrepreneur having a drink with me, a jeans-and-sneakers kid from Ohio, $40,000 in debt and nothing to show for it but an abandoned novel and a part-time job passing hors d'oeuvres.
When we rolled over to Lit, I didn't think twice about doing karaoke. I didn't have a chance in hell, so I decided to have fun and be myself. After five beers and a whiskey sour, I'm belting out "Never Tear Us Apart" while writhing on my back, pretending to autoerotic- asphyxiate myself with the mic.
Apparently, I didn't make a big enough ass out of myself. It's been about a week since I last spoke to Jennifer. I know she's probably busy, what with operating a small business and all, and I know I should just play it cool. But that's the thing: I'm not cool. Jennifer is. So is her bar. Go check it out. And please, tell her you heard about it from me. o