The end of a dream is a hard thing to bear, even when you get used to the idea. I was thunderstruck when heather 2 leaned over and confided that we were in the last two weeks of operations at the best bar-restaurant I am likely to experience in this world.
I am sure there will be others that I will come to love, if there is, in poet Anthony Marvell’s great words: “World enough, and Time.” But I have to say the unique confluence of location, people and great food and beverage made Willow a place for the ages.
Anyway, you have suffered enough as I wandered through the Kübler-Ross model of the grief process, popularly known by the acronym DABDA, which include:
1. Denial. “You gotta be shitting me. You can’t close Willow!”
2. Anger. “Godamn Building Management should be horsewhipped!”
3. Bargaining: “Are there drink specials tonight? What is the bar snack special?”
4. Depression. “I can’t get up for going anywhere else and have to bribe the bartenders into the kind of favorable treatment we get here. Sigh.”
5. Acceptance. “OK, so the drinks ARE cheaper at home. And Old Jim and Mary already fled the city anyway. Dammit.”
Kübler-Ross have it down pretty well, but they missed the next two steps. After Tracy O’Grady turned the keys back to building management, we passed into the sort of place where Rod Serling would have been quite comfortable.
The Willow was still there, physically, anyway. Tracy and Kate Jansen had taken the stuff they really cared about, and left the rest. So for more than a month the sign still read “Willow Restaurant” out front, there were still wrought iron tables, and I had to blink when I drove by on Fairfax Drive to remind myself that this was only the husk of what had been, all the laughs and tears and culinary triumphs and friends who left us too soon.
Now, it is just a place that building management is calling “Suite 101, 4301 Fairfax Dr., Arlington, VA 22203.” That requires two other phases in the grieving process.
Step 6: Auction.
Suite 101 has been a restaurant since the building opened twenty years or more ago. It started as a high-end steak house, which is responsible for the exquisite woodwork throughout the place, and particularly the iconic back bar and the long, L-shaped business end where the Willow Refugees spent the better part of a decade in residence.
The original place failed quickly, and was replaced by a restaurant called “Gaffney’s.” We used to like to go there because the staff was surly and you could always find a place to talk quietly since no one was there. It was the sort of place where smokers didn’t give a crap about ashtrays and put their cigarettes directly on the bar, where the smoldering cancer sticks left long dark streaks on the rich mahogany.
Then, a decade ago, Tracy and Kate transformed the place into the wonder that was Willow. But Suite 101 had always had a kitchen, and all the appurtenances that go along with the trade. Building management is apparently no longer in need of two restaurants on the ground floor. Uncle Julio’s formulaic Mexican place is still holding on, but Suite 101 is going to get cleaned out, right down to the floor. Ovens and stoves and cappuccino machines and coolers and prep stations and wire racks on rollers and sauté and fry pans and giant baking pans and stock-pots all have to go, not to mention tables and chairs and light fixtures and the bar, concierge station and Kate’s bakery nook.
It all went on the block last week. I took a swing by to see what it looked like, and what was left. Beefy people from the moving trade and other furtive ethnic restaurateurs were prowling around, looking for deals. I identified a Willow banner, the one that had hung on a stand in the inner building lobby as something I really needed. The catalogue was posted on line the next day, and lots opened for bid.
I am leery of auctions in general, and on-line auctions in particular, since that is how I accidentally bought that 1973 Mercedes 350SL convertible a few years ago. But what the hell. This was about Willow, and memory.
One of my best friends told me it was not the time of life to be getting more junk; in fact, it is past time to have my own auction and get rid of all this stuff. But not quite yet.
I kept my bidding to a minimum, and the prices were quite reasonable. I got the “Circle of Life” wall sconce I hope to burn my house down with for less than twenty bucks. The stand for the banner came for $12. The way cool fry pan that doubtless cooked many of the meals I consumed there over the years was a modest $15.
And can anyone really live efficiently without a champagne chiller for table-side service? This is Washington, after all, and I think not.
Anyway, I wanted to tell you some more about the last voyage of the battleship Nagato this morning, but today was the day. Stage 7: Removal.
Starting at nine, the doors to Suite 101 were going to open, and all auctioned items were going to have to be out by four. That is it. The end.
So rather than telling you what CDR Ed Gilfillen found when he returned to his cabin on the target ship, I was looking for a parking space for the Panzer to get my crap out of Suite 101.
It was better than a trip to the DMV in terms of meeting all the diverse people of the region, seeking to re-purpose Willow’s implements of dining pleasure into something new. The auctioneers were awesome, and watching the tables being taken down, hearing glass breaking as things were moved, or knocked aside, folding doors being removed was wrenching. It was a bit like being with the Visigoths on a holiday visit to Rome.
But the most wrenching thing was seeing a pert blonde lady at what had been my usual seat at the bar. She was directing a couple of husky men who were using crow-bars to gently pry apart the structural components of the front bar. That was intense.
“You are sitting where I did for over eight years,” I said, a little wistfully. “Did you buy the back-bar as well? It is original to the first restaurant that was here.”
She stuck out her hand and shook mine. “I’m Julie,” she said. “And that is Mike. We just got the front bar and we are going to put it in The No Wake Zone bar down at Lake Anna.”
“No shit,” I said. “I have a place down in Culpeper. I go down to the lake all the time in the summer.”
“We are going to open next March. You can motor your boat up or come by car to 6320 Belmont Road, just north of metropolitan Mineral.”
I took a look down the bar, which now had no top at the place where Mac Showers and I would sit and talk about the events of the Pacific War.
“I am sure glad to meet you, Julie. And you know what?”
“What?”
“I am delighted that I have not had my last drink at Willow’s Bar after all.”
Julie smiled. “Ya’ll come down, hear?”
Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303