Elegy for Ye Olde Tripple Inn
Followers of my blog know Ye Olde Tripple Inn is being sold to make way for luxury condos.
The following was written for and performed on 6/28/05
at my last-ever Tripple Inn comedy show.
by the immensley talented (and widely-published)
M. Sweeney Lawless.
28 June 2005
Elegy for “Felber’s Frolics” and Ye Olde Tripple Inn
263 West 54th Street New York, New York 10014
by M. Sweeney Lawless
Come, o yellow backhoe
Dig deep the gully along which shall run
The bathwater of bankers
And what becomes of a three-star Michelin dinner.
Here were a thousand comics launched.
(Long live Ye Olde Tripple Inn)
Paxton’s Crystal Palace, Ebbets Field,Live on in endless tribute.
But what will become of the hallowed memory of the place
Where once Liza Minelli and the Beatles and Freddie Prinze
All came – not at the same time, of course – and the drink prices were not unreasonable?
(Long live Ye Olde Tripple Inn)
Arise, o infants of professionals, and howl
Vomit and get out of school
The reek of flop sweat gives way to waft of microwave pizza.
The rows of celebrity photos rolled over by Sherman Williams;
I only hope the construction crews are union.
(Long live Ye Olde Tripple Inn)
Seek, o denizens of New Jersey and Long Island!
Seek, ye folk of Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx!
Wander up and down, swear it was here that time you came to the City with your cousin.
Curse the Google search that told you we would still be here.
Damn the Internet, where advice never dies.
(Long live Ye Olde Tripple Inn)
Yankees games on the big screen will give way
To the Yankees games on roughly 40 big screens -- flat screens with High Definition.
But when the men in pinstripes ever score a run,
There will be no back-slapping or clinking of glasses;
Nay, 20 women and 20 men will raise a Lite beer and nod, each in their own blue light.
(Long live Ye Olde Tripple Inn)
Let us all meet here in one year’s time to see the empty lot.
In two years’ time we’ll come to watch the flick, flick, flick of all those TV sets.
Ten years from tonight, let us meet outside the condo at midnight, and before the doorman calls the police who used to come here to throw darts,
We will bow our heads and observe a moment of silence
Marred only by the thought of 40 pairs of Yuppies quietly humping.
(Ye Olde Tripple Inn is dead. Long live Ye Olde Tripple Inn)
Link to her original posting of this here.
Note: M. or Meg, performed at my 2nd-ever show at the Tripple, in January of 1997. The more I read this elegy, the more I love it.
