I’m All Lost In, #100: The White Horse Tavern; the Patio; warp speed Wharton.
I’m All Lost In…
The 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week …
#100
1) The White Horse Tavern
Have I told you about my idea for a Netflix movie called When You Say Dylan.
It’s based on a true story about 1950s Smith college student and Mademoiselle guest editor intern Sylvia Plath stalking her literary hero, famed Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Trying to meet Thomas while he was staying in Manhattan, 20-year-old Plath loitered outside Thomas’ Greenwich Village haunts including the White Horse Tavern and the Chelsea Hotel. (I learned about all this in Red Comet, the telephone-book-sized 2020 Plath bio.)
Neva Nelson [a fellow Mademoiselle intern] remembered hearing that Sylvia hung around the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village, where Thomas eventually drank himself to death. “Sylvia was ready to move heaven and high water to see him.” After the St. Regis dance, Sylvia commandeered Carol [LeVarn, another intern and Plath’s co-housing chum at the Barbizon women’s hotel in the Upper East Side] to keep vigil with her outside Thomas’ room at the Chelsea Hotel. But Thomas never showed up.
In my fictional version, a high school-aged Robert Zimmerman (aka, Bob Dylan) hitchhikes to NYC from Minnesota on a quest of his own. He too wants to meet the rock star poet during the hip bard’s penultimate trip to NYC in 1953; like Plath, young Zimmerman idolized Thomas as well. As Plath and young Bob unsuccessfully circle Thomas on their separate missions, they inevitably bump into each other like people crashing carts in the grocery aisle. They reluctantly—at least on Plath’s part—team up. The pair never meet Thomas, but a sweet coming of age love story—at least in Bob’s imagination—ensues.
Maybe the Timothée Chalamet Dylan flick stole my thunder—for the record, I came up with this movie idea long before No Direction Home came out—but I think my imagined secret history of these two mid-century American icons (and heroes to brooding teen coffee house mavens everywhere ) would be a hit.
At the center of Sylvia and Bob’s gyroscopic paths? The aforementioned White Horse Tavern, now a bit of cliché tourist spot I hit every time I go to NYC. I’m a brooding coffee house teen at heart.
A far cry from its mid-20th-century heyday as the bohemian enclave that Thomas and other proto-counterculture figures made into an artists’ third place circa 1953, the White Horse Tavern is now a normie but warm neighborhood bar with TVs. It’s still open late, though. Until 3 am.
I went there twice on my visit this past week.
First, looking for relief after a morning spent walking around the East Village and the muggy heat, I went to the White Horse midday Friday. I took the L to the West Village and beelined there from the subway stop at W. 14th and 8th. Such divine alliesthesia stepping into the air conditioned, easygoing, and clean place—checkerboard tiles, brass keg taps, holly snaking across the umber walls—and sipping horseradish-heavy virgin Bloody Marys at a corner table by the door. I also, as I always do, got the “Dylan Thomas,” which is a whiskey poured neat. I happily lingered in the lightly crowded room at my table (directly in the line of the AC) for 90 minutes or so watching Carlos Alcaraz beat Novic Djokovic in straight sets in the U.S. Open men’s semifinal.
Second time, and I wrote about this in my U.S. Open recap last week [I’m All Lost In, #99, 9/8/25]: I ran there from Soho on Saturday afternoon—during a biblical rainstorm—to watch the women’s final where I ended up bonding with the tranquil bartender; it was the same mellow woman who had served the savory Bloody Mary mix a day earlier. Today, she provided an unflappably beatific contrast to the bro and sorority girl crowd that had taken over the place; this TV- football-crowd nearly sapped the cozy tavern of any remaining Dylan Thomas karma. I managed to secure a spot at the far corner of the stained oak bar where I settled in for the tennis match and several neat whiskeys, including one on the house.
Over the course of just three days in New York, my two visits to the White Horse Tavern may have been my favorite moments. This is true despite some other high-quality outings: going to a cheeky comedy club in Bushwick; taking a moonlit stroll in Chinatown to get deep fried veggie dumplings at an all-night Sichuan place; going to freaking Arthur Ashe Stadium to see the U.S. Open women’s semifinals live; getting Saturday night slices, including a Grandma-style slice, at Williamsburg Pizza on Union Ave.; hacking the 7 train at 2am; and getting an upgrade at my fancy hotel.
Pell St., Chinatown, Manhattan, 11:15 pm, 9/5/25
The Tiny Cupboard comedy club, Bushwick, Brooklyn, 9/5/25
The view from room 2101 (quite the upgrade), Soho, Manhattan, 9/6/25
Famous Sichuan, Pell St., Chinatown, Manhattan, 12:10 am, 9/6/25
Euphoric about Daffy Saby’s straight sets win an hour later that Saturday afternoon, I stepped out of the White Horse onto Hudson St.
I cast my eyes south.
In addition to visiting the Dylan Thomas shrine every NYC trip, I always commune with Jane Jacob’s former apartment just three doors down at 555 Hudson; there’s a plaque, though it was only set there sometime in the last five years. Jacobs was another mid-century intellectual light who hung out at the White Horse, or at least name checked it (pg. 40) in her seismic 1961 urbanist tome The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She incorporated the popular spot into her description of the urban ideal noting how the tavern provided energy and safety to her block; the NIMBYs who complain about night spots ruining their neighborhoods have it backwards. The WHT’s patrons, Irish longshoremen and chatty intellectuals, were part of Jacobs’ famous “sidewalk ballet” depicted in her famous book. I love how this passage celebrates those strangers as a benefit.
Strangers become an enormous asset on the street on which I live, and the spurs off it, particularly at night when safety assets are most needed. We are fortunate enough, on the street, to be gifted not only with a locally supported bar and another around the corner, but also with a famous bar that draws continuous troops of strangers from adjoining neighborhoods and even from out of town. It is famous because the poet Dylan Thomas used to go there, and mentioned it in his writing. This bar, indeed, works two distinct shifts. In the morning and early afternoon it is a social gathering place for the old community of Irish longshoremen and other craftsmen in the area, as it always was. But beginning in midafternoon it takes on a different life, more like a college bull session with beer, combined with a literary cocktail party, and this continues until the early hours of the morning. On a cold winter's night, as you pass the White Horse, and the doors open, a solid wave of conversation and animation surges out and hits you; very warming. The comings and goings from this bar do much to keep our street reasonably populated until three in the morning, and it is a street always safe to come home to.
I cast my eyes up to the post-rainstorm-sky and snapped this tipsy photo:
Jane Jacobs Way, W. 11th St. & Hudson St, W. Village, Manhattan, 9/6/25
2) The Pad Ped at the Patio Fine Thai Cuisine Restaurant
This may as well be a lifetime achievement award.
I’ve been ordering the Pad Ped at The Patio, one of the five-plus Thai restaurants in my neighborhood, for a decade.
Once again, I ordered it on my latest visit to the low-key, family-owned spot on 15th Ave. E. this past Monday night. And though it’s my regular order, it was notably wonderful this time. I think the fact that the red curry (generally made from dried red chilies, lemongrass roots, garlic, shallots, coriander, cumin, coconut milk, and soy sauce) was more wicked than usual while the generous serving of fresh veggies (carrots, onions, mushrooms, and bamboo shoots) was more generous. I order it with tofu. And unlike many places these days where blasé tofu seems like a second rate and maybe spoiled afterthought, it’s always a soft and simmered-in-flavor highlight at the Patio.
I can’t speak to much else on the extensive menu—though you’ll devour the crispy eggrolls with plum sauce and fish cake appetizers. But if the other entrées are at the level of my sacred Pad Ped, you’ll be happy you chose this Thai spot over Seattle’s many others.
In addition to feeling warmed by my go-to dish, I was prompted to write about the Patio this week because I buttonholed the guy who was manning the place solo to ask what was up with the extra special Pad Ped tonight. This young man, who rattled off all the inferior (by his own estimation) Thai places he currently worked, lit up with food expertise and love and delighted in describing the specifics of Thai cooking.
3) Edith Wharton’s Twilight Sleep, Again
I must report that I’m still [I’m All Lost In, #99, 9/8/25] obsessing about Edith Wharton’s 1927 novel Twilight Sleep, an LOL sendup of New York City’s mystically enlightened, white, Jazz Age bourgeoisie.
Here’s a sample from the comedic onslaught that sets the tone at the start of Book II where among other things Wharton, who’s busy ridiculing busybody socialite Pauline Manford, tells us about “Spiritual Vacuum-Cleaning” and “Inspirational Healing.”
In this scene, Mrs. Manford finds herself “painfully oppressed by an hour of unexpected leisure.”
An hour--why, there was no way of measuring the length of an empty hour! It stretched away into infinity like the endless road in a nightmare; it gaped before her like the slippery sides of an abyss. Nervously she began to wonder what she could do to fill it--if there were not some new picture show or dressmakers' opening or hygienic exhibition that she might cram into it before the minute hand switched round to her next engagement. She took up her list to see what that engagement was.
"11.45. Mrs. Swoffer."
Oh, to be sure . . . Mrs. Swoffer. Maisie had reminded her that morning. The relief was instantaneous. Only, who was Mrs. Swoffer? Was she the President of the Militant Pacifists' League, or the Heroes' Day delegate, or the exponent of the New Religion of Hope, or the woman who had discovered a wonderful trick for taking the wrinkles out of the corners of your eyes? Maisie was out on an urgent commission, and could not be consulted; but whatever Mrs. Swoffer's errand was, her arrival would be welcome--especially if she came before her hour. And she did.
She was a small plump woman of indefinite age, with faded blond hair and rambling features held together by a pair of urgent eye-glasses. She asked if she might hold Pauline's hand just a moment while she looked at her and reverenced her--and Pauline, on learning that this was the result of reading her Mothers' Day speech in the morning papers, acceded not unwillingly.
Not that that was what Mrs. Swoffer had come for; she said it was just a flower she wanted to gather on the way. A rose with the dew on it--she took off her glasses and wiped them, as if to show where the dew had come from. "You speak for so many of us," she breathed, and recovered Pauline's hand for another pressure.
But she had come for the children, all the same; and that was really coming for the mothers, wasn't it? Only she wanted to reach the mothers through the children--reversing the usual process. Mrs. Swoffer said she believed in reversing almost everything. Standing on your head was one of the most restorative physical exercises, and she believed it was the same mentally and morally. It was a good thing to stand one's soul upside down. And so she'd come about the children. . .
Evidently, contemporary critics did not applaud Wharton’s novel; though, after being published in serial form by Pictorial Review, a contemporary women’s magazine, it was promptly put out the same year as a novel and became an instant bestseller. It’s certainly a chatty departure from Wharton’s neo-Victorian drawing room affairs; not that House of Mirth isn’t eloquently bitchy. But in dramatizing the trifles and frippery of the Lost (and rich) Generation, Wharton adopts the frantic pace of her characters’ lives to conjure a warp-speed rendition of her own classic prose.