Beneath the Collegial Surface
For all of his characteristic joie de vivre, it only made sense that the fifty-two-year-old raconteur was aching beneath his jolly, playful surface, especially on Sunday night. Not that you ever could sense it, much less prove it. The iron wall he threw up long ago around his personal life has kept Mr. Handal well defended against all potential invaders. He opened San Gennaro at 3 on Sunday afternoon, Mother’s Day, and the crowds began. Some did not know they were in a funeral procession. All they knew was Mother’s Day. No matter how many tentacles Mr. Handal has placed in how many corners in this community over the past eleven years, he could not forestall darkness. Closing time was closing in. The harder the reality approached, the more Mr. Handal seemed to be enjoying himself. It was a terribly conflicting moment for customers who were fond of him. They didn’t want to go. Worse, they didn’t want him to go. The owner was so busy that it was 11:25 into the evening, New York time, before he reached his mother on the Other Coast to wish her Happy Mother’s Day from Culver City for the last time.
One month before launching his sixth season as the impresario of the Summer Sunset Concert Series on Thursday nights in the courtyard of City Hall, Gary Mandell came by with his family to pay his respects and celebrate Mother’s Day with his family. Something of a regular, Mr. Mandell was shown a ringside seat.
You Cannot Return
Like a cheap pair of pants, though, the hours kept shrinking. Soon there would be no sand left in the hourglass, not even for a miniature do-over. The perspiration-soaked crooning, soul-searching and nostalgia noshing by the marvelously talented Michael Carlton King, with technical amplification, boomed and exploded into every cranny of the dying dining room that wasn’t humanly occupied.
“You should have been here Saturday night,” Mr. Handal, the peripatetic maitre’d, called out between seatings of guests who were special. “Like an old-fashioned Irish wake. It never stopped.”
A Funeral Policy
My mind raced back twenty-five years to my mother’s funeral. The posture looked, felt familiar. Surrounded by well-meaning relatives, I kept talking fast as I could, probably a little more loudly than was necessary. I didn’t want to stop talking. I didn’t want to give myself a chance to think or grieve. The more you talk, I convinced myself, the faster this ordeal will end. Then it won’t hurt so badly.
By 7:30 Sunday evening, the sun and San Gennaro both were going down for the last time. Mr. Handal was talking fast, as usual, when a new round of guests entered. “You should have been here,” he was saying. “Friday night, the Education Foundation held its Tribute to the Stars, and Saturday night, the city had a tribute to San Gennaro. We had every organization represented here. We had Lions, Rotary, the Downtown Business Assn., Friends of the Dog Park, Friends of the Library, the Exchange Club. It was a wild, wonderful sendoff. They took over my stage about 9:30, shut my stage down, and it became a tribute to the stars night.
“I feel great. It’s all good. I had the Vice Mayor (Alan Corlin) here last night and the Mayor (Gary Silbiger) here tonight. What a great weekend. I should have announced this every four weeks for the last four years. It would have been a beautiful thing. Like one of those rug sales where they go out of business every month for five years.” Someone asked Mr. Handal if any landlords were in the room. “I am sure there are,” he cracked. “But certainly not mine.”
A Gaye Old Time
Necessarily, Mr. Handal’s voice had to keep climbing steps to be heard over Michael Carlton King’s magnetic warbling that sparked rhythmic vibrations across the crowded room full of booths and small dining tables. He seemed to know, and sing, every pop song written after 1900. When my wife, Diane, asked for “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” she was certain Mr. King exactly replicated the late Marvin Gaye. The panoramic view of San Gennaro looked like one of those grainy supper club films from the 1940s with one important update. Black and white guests mingled and mixed at numerous tables, and on the dance floor, in front of Mr. King and the control booth area, in the center of the room. Everywhere were diners the owner had met and befriended since 1995.
He identified a few. See that smallish couple on the dance floor? Barely moving. They are in their mid-eighties. Here every Friday, Saturday and Sunday since ’95, pizza, one drink and dancing. She doesn’t feel good these days. But, then, how many women her age do? Just as they did in the 1940s, they dress up to go out dancing. No jeans or tee-shirts for them. Several couples had their first dates at San Gennaro. Love was born in a wall booth. Now their favorite restaurant was tumbling over the cliff. See the two very tall men and the one tall woman in that booth? Every Sunday here for dancing. The gentlemen alternate dancing with the lady, and no matter how strenuously she dances, her equally tall hat never tilts. At a happy table near a post on the east side of the room were four young women out for an evening of live, energizing music and dancing. They, themselves, were an entertaining show. Never stopped breathing with their arms and their legs. Sometimes they didn’t even have to leave their chairs to celebrate the rhythms of Mr. King, raising their hands high as they would reach, just not quite to the ceiling. In booth No. 1, the transportation enthusiast Ken Ruben was hoping that Mr. King would sing softer so he could more closely follow the final episode of “West Wing” on his had-held television.
Catering to Fan of Entertainment
As one round of farewell diners started for the exits, everyone interested received a Handal Hug from The Man in (Mostly) Black. In return, the huggee promised to follow the signs and their Entertainer in Chief to Beverly Hills. If one party didn’t say it, Mr. Handal did. No place like San Gennaro exists on the Westside — every form of entertainment for every diner is available at a reasonable price, whether it is mystery theater, comedy, vocals, dancing or a more modest piano bar. Choose your night. You were equally welcome whether you preferred to dress up or dress down. Some men were suited, with white shirts and comfortable neckties. A couple chose vests, and a few said tee-shirts and jeans described their comfort level. The Mayor, Gary Silbiger, comfortable in a short-sleeved white white, and tieless, was in a special booth with his family, his wife Barbara Honig, his eighty-eight–year-old mother Alice, who came over from her longtime home in Beverly Fairfax, and his sister. The elder Mrs. Silbiger has lived in the same home since Mr. Silbiger and his chum Stew Bubar of the School Board graduated Fairfax High in 1965.
Not everybody was hugged because sometimes Mr. Handal was standing in front of another booth, gyrating to Mr. King’s irresistible sounds. Snapping his fingers, churning his grey crewcut head, mimicking a rubbery soul whose every part was designed to move, Mr. Handal was in liquid motion all evening.
Postscript
Everywhere a guest looked, the scene was being shot at a speeded-up rate, the singer, the waitresses/waiters, suddenly informed guests, all moving at accelerated paces. If you looked inside the owner, so was his heart.
