Iridium Jazz Club

Do you remember Hurricane Day in the city last summer?  I showed up with nothing but the clothes on my back and a platter of assorted cheesecake in my hand to pianist Misha Piatigorsky’s place, at the kind invitation of drummer Chris Wabich.  And that is how this refugee became acquainted with Sketchy Black Dog, a rhythm section plus string quartet ensemble that mixes classic rock and jazz.

I went to see Misha and Chris’s group again on Thursday at Iridium Jazz Club.  Danton Boller joined them on bass and violinists Monica Davis and Adda Kridler, violist Colin Benn and cellist Agnes Nagy made up the quartet.  Sketchy Black Dog’s nickname is Scratchy Black Cat and it used to go by Paris Troika, before adding the strings.

I’ve never noticed Iridium before because its presence is obscured by humongous signs advertising Mamma Mia! and Stardust Diner.  The jazz club is downstairs from the diner, decked out in reddish blue décor with guitars and Les Paul posters hung all around.  Their restroom was clean with three stalls that were roomy enough.  And in case you weren’t sure if being a woman also qualified you as a lady, they had two signs on the door, one that said Ladies and another that said Women.

Hopefully you have a compact mirror on you to read the bathroom door handle, because it says “Pull” in mirror image reflection.  Once you open the door, you might notice that the wall on the far right corner goes in.  They stuck a small sink there, which was most adorable and the best feature of the room.  They also had a standard size sink and more posters up on the walls.  Iridium seems to be as fond of putting up decorations as my mom; every time I visit home, I have to take down a few plaques and trinkets.

My mom told me that when our family used to live on the East Coast and visited New York, we could only afford two bowls of jja-jang-myun (black bean noodle) to share among the four of us.  I thought about this, what little money we had in the first decade of our life in the States and the change in lifestyle over the years, while I ordered and ate my $9 strawberry shortcake without flinching.

Misha, who also immigrated to the States at a young age, tells us how to say, “Where’s the restroom?” in Russian —

Gde tooalet?