Garage

A restaurant that touts live jazz seven days a week, the Garage was relatively quiet when I arrived past midnight last Tuesday, technically Wednesday.  The place seemed somewhat like a caricature, a cartoon character’s home with its humongous chandelier, a Christmas tree spinning upside-down from the ceiling and oversized wooden carvings of silverware and handyman tools.  Large glowing orange orbs hung from the ceiling amidst the excessive holiday decorations depicting Santa Claus.

In addition to the upside-down tree, there were five smaller Christmas trees that I could see and more potted poinsettias than I could count.  The Garage also seemed to be counting challenged, billing the ensemble of saxophone, guitar, bass and drums as a trio.  Bassist Dave Baron led the quartet with Francesco Ciniglio on drums, Alex Wintz on guitar and Lucas Pino on tenor sax.

My first time finally meeting Lucas after seeing him around quite a bit, he first introduced himself as a photographer and then revealed that he is a pathological liar.  Well, at least he is honest.  Look out for his Thanksgiving album release—it’s sure to give Charlie Brown’s Holiday Hits a run for its money.

When you pull back the curtain under the restrooms sign, you’ll notice a 2 to 1 ratio of women’s to men’s bathrooms, with the women’s rooms on either side of the men’s in the center.  A large hand sanitizer dispenser and a payphone furnish the dimly lit area.  The storage for paper towels, cleaning supplies and such is located in a closet inside the women’s room on the left side.  The women’s toilets are situated lower than usual so be aware if you sit instead of squat that the drop is greater than you’d expect.

Dave volunteered to be the men’s room correspondent and took photos of the men’s room for us.  Watch out KMac, your “friend” is trying to steal your gig.

On this merry day, I’d like to give a shout-out to my friend Tierney for her sweet gift, a book of photos of bathroom signs from various countries with indoor plumbing.  I received another book from my sister: The Birth and Death of the Cool by our favorite historian Ted Gioia, who deemed JAZZ TOILET the worst of hundreds of jazz blogs.  I may take up my sister’s suggestion and do a book review in the new year.

Pianist Nial Djuliarso, who sat in on a few tunes, tells us how to say, “Where’s the restroom?” in Indonesian –

Kamar mandinya dimana ya?