43 years ago today, on 12/06/65, in New York City, Mickey Ruskin gave birth to a bouncing baby nightclub he named Max's Kansas City. Happy Birthday...Larry Poons (Painter)
Excerpt from:
"High On Rebellion - Inside The Underground at Max's Kansas City"
by Yvonne Sewall-Ruskin (1998)[p.24]
The night that Max's opened in December of 1965, only a few people showed up. John Chamberlain and Neil Williams asked me to come with them to the opening of Max's, which was a huge place whose size was emphasized by the fact that nobody had shown up. We got there at about four-thirty in the afternoon and by seven Mickey was pacing back and forth. When he gets nervous, he really gets nervous, and he was walking around like a slow motion skiing accident. Finally we hit on the idea for the three of us to go from booth to booth, ordering a drink at each one - we'd already had quite a bit to drink by then - to give Mickey the illusion of one hundred glowing afterimages at all of his tables.
Tim O'Donnell (Balloon Vendor)
Excerpt from:
"High On Rebellion - Inside the Underground at Max's Kansas City"
by Yvonne Sewall-Ruskin (1998)[p.25]
I walked into the grand opening on January 15 [1966], looked around and said, "This will never last." The scene was always from the San Remo, to the Cedar, to Dillon's, to the Ninth Circle, to the new Cedar, which never really caught on.
Mickey Ruskin (Owner - Max's Kansas City)
Excerpt from:
"High on Rebellion - Inside the Underground at Max's Kansas City"
by Yvonne-Sewall Ruskin (1998)[p.25]
Meanwhile, the night business started growing even before I had the grand-opening party on January 15, 1966. I don't remember sending out invitations to Max's big opening. I kind of recall handing out invitations, and the rest was word of mouth. I must have had 1,500 to 2,000 people come through the place. From that night on, it just took off like a shot.
John Chamberlain (Sculptor)
Excerpt from:
"High on Rebellion - Inside the Underground at Max's Kansas City"
by Yvonne Sewall-Ruskin (1998)[p.25]
[Max's] was [Mickey's] living room and he had in who he wanted. From the opening on, Max's was always packed, except maybe around eleven in the morning, which is always a good time for cognac and coffee.
Excerpt from:
"A Directory To Dining"
by Craig Claiborne
New York Times - 11/04/66
Max's Kansas City, 213 Park Avenue South (between 17th and 18th Streets), CA.8-2080. The name on the menu of this restaurant is Max's Kansas City Steak Lobster Chick Peas, and it is one of the most switched on restaurants in Manhattan. There are waitresses in mini-skirts and waiters with beards. Max's is a large angular, two-level restaurant. At the moment it is wildly popular, and consequently there is at times a wait for tables. The service is a bit disorganized, but the simply grilled steaks and lobsters are good. The dishes are a la carte with luncheon entrees from about $1.10 for hamburgers on a seeded roll to $3.25 for broiled Filet Mignon; dinner dishes from about $2.50 foe broiled swordfish steak to $4.95 for boneless sirloin. Coctails, wines. The house wine ($2) served in a pichet or pitcher is dreadful. Open 7 days a week.
David Johansen (Vocals - New York Dolls)
Excerpt from:
"New York Dolls Photographs by Bob Gruen"
Bob Gruen (2008)
When I was a kid, fourteen, fifteen, there were so many places where bands were playing. In the West Village, you had the Night Owl, the Cafe Au Go-Go, The Wha?, and the Bizarre. It was all set up. All you had to do was get your act together and show up. But then when I was 17, they made some kind of cabaret law, and all those places seemed to close down.
"Cabaret Zoning Faces Court Test"
New York Times - 01/22/67
The validity of a city zoning decision is being tested by the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, supported by the Fifth Avenue Association.
The insurance company has gone to court in an attempt to have nullified a recent zoning variance that would benefit the owner of a neighboring restaurant on Park Avenue South. The association, whose purview includes Park Avenue, also opposes the varience.
Guardian Life's headquarters is in a 20-story building at 201 Park Avenue South, at the northeast corner of 17th Street, just north of Union Square. It's next door neighbor is Max's Kansas City, a restaurant that occupies the ground floor of a five-story structure at 213 Park Avenue South.
The restaurant by day is a luncheon place for local business people. At night it swings with a "mod" young crowd and is a lively, bright spot in a deserted business area.
B. Michael Ruskin, who operates Max's, wants to provide dance music for his dinner patrons. This would put his restaurant in the cabaret class, but his neighborhood is not zoned for cabarets, a fact well known to Guardian Life. An application for a cabaret licence for the restaurant is still pending.
Guardian Life, one of the major companies in the Park Avenue South business District, has been a strong supporter of the general upgrading the avenue has undergone in recent years.
Street Renamed
The stretch of Fourth Avenue from 17th to 32nd Street was renamed Park Avenue South a few years ago to give that part of the avenue more prestige and zoning in the area was tightened under the new zoning resolution of 1961.
The area is in a C-5-2 zone, which limits it to a highly restricted commercial use. Restaurants are permitted, but cabarets that provide entertainment and dancing are not.
Cabarets are allowed only two blocks south of Max's Kansas City, where the area is in a less restricted zone, termed C-6.
The zoning variance was granted to the Coldover Realty Company, the owner of the restaurant's building, by the Board of Standards and Appeals which reviews applications from property owners for an easing of the zoning resolution. The zoning resolution is administered by the City Planning Commission.
The Commission in the past has charged that the Board issues exceptions to the zoning resolution too often. In seeking a variance, a property owner has to show that compliance with the zoning resolution would result in unreasonable hardship.
A spokesman for the Commission said officials of the agency were disturbed by the variance granted to Max's Kansas City.
Excerpt from:
"In and Out of Books"
by Lewis Nichols
New York Times - 01/29/67
Parties
The literary cocktail party is a legendary thing, perhaps more legendary to those who don't go than to those who do. It's purpose is to celebrate the publication of a book, allowing the author to mingle with his peers - and sometimes his critis - and in any event showing that someone, namely his publisher, cares.
There are big literary parties in hotel ball rooms and small ones in bookstores, and the other week there were two which somehow seemed to run the gamut by themselves.
The first of these was in honor of George Grotz, otherwise known as the Furniture Doctor, the most recent of his books from Doubleday being "Antiques You Can Decorate With." This was held in an upstairs room of Max's Kansas City restaurant on Park Avenue South, currently an "in" place, and a spot where Mr. Grotz felt he might meet some of his cronies. The upstairs room was equipped with a bar, cigarette machine, record player and a cloakroom where Max's waitresses change from civilian mini-skirts to working mini-skirts. The invitations read to bring any pieces of furniture the guests wanted refinished, and while the party was in progress, the guest of honor busily worked at repairing a footstool, a table, and a shaving mirror. An odor of shellac mingled with an odor of garlic and a smoke odor from a fire Max's had just undergone, and it all was a fine thing of it's kind.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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