I’ve already written a note on Lovecraft and the Double-R Coffee House. Here are some more notes on the other coffee houses and cafes Lovecraft is known to have frequented…
* Cairo Gardens, Brooklyn.
Owned, probably in the late 1930s and 40s, by Joseph Oppedisano….
“He was a former teacher at Albany High School and Ravena-Coeymans High School. He later owned his own restaurant, Cairo Gardens, in Cairo, N.Y. and was also an area [local] musician in his own band called The Manhattans.” — from his obituary in the Albany Times Union from 8th-10th October 2004.
* Tiffany’s, Brooklyn.
Lovecraft calls this “my regular” in the 1925 letters. Apparently (perhaps later) it was the occasional hangout of young roughs, since a Lovecraft letter of 1927 states that the police had arrested some youngsters for possessing guns at the cafe. Although, one wonders if perhaps they were just attempting to extort ‘protection’ money from the owner?
Tiffany’s obviously also sold food, since Lovecraft states in a letter that he “dined” there with friends. Elsewhere in his letters he calls it the “Tiffany Cafeteria”.
Some might think that the movies Breakfast At Tiffany’s has something to do with the place, but the Tiffany’s in the movie is a jewellery store not a cafe.
* Tontini’s, Brooklyn.
Nothing known. Seems to occur only in Kirk’s letters. Could this actually be Kirk’s mis-spelling of the name of the ‘legendary’ Totonno’s on Coney Island, which was originally… “on Neptune Ave off Coney Island Ave in Brooklyn”?…
“Since 1924, Totonno’s pizzeria has been a beacon on the block, remarkable for its longevity and for the deliciousness of its food.” — New York Times, March 2009.
* Unknown. Spanish restaurant on Fulton Street, sometimes visited on Sundays for lunch.
Lovecraft and the gang would also frequent the ice-cream parlors. These were apparently very sparkly, and a woman in the 1920s was once described as… “glittering like an ice-cream parlor”.
Daniel Fuchs’s Brooklyn story “Low Company” (1937) gives us a vivid portrait of two burglars in a closed ice-cream parlor, a decade after Lovecraft was in New York…
Lovecraft and the gang also paid at least one visit to Coney Island, which had plenty of ice-cream parlors.
Amazingly, the famous anarchist Emma Goldman once opened an ice cream parlor in Brownsville, Brooklyn. It went bust within three months.