Legendary Upper East Side saloon Elaine's closed its doors early this morning after struggling to survive without its namesake proprietress and hundreds of mostly white, sometimes famous, people showed up to say goodbye to a space that may soon become a P.J. Clarke's. Boldface names in attendance included Gay Talese, Alec Baldwin, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, James Lipton, Lewis Lapham, Jay McInerney, former Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and former Governor David Paterson.
“This is not about Elaine’s,” Talese told the Gray Lady from a table filled with friends. “We’ve said goodbye to Elaine’s. That’s over. This is saying goodbye to one another. The circles of New York, of which there are numerous—one of those circles was Elaine’s, and it brought together people who had next to nothing in common except that they came to Elaine’s.”
Despite long lines and lots of hustle and bustle (they ran out of glasses at one point) there was still some bitterness in the air. One waiter was apparently mad that the manager who inherited Elaine's, Diane Becker, wouldn't let him hand out commemorative shirts (he handed them out anyway) and Becker herself would really have preferred if people had kept coming after Elaine died, rather than wait until the space was closing. “For the first 10 days after Elaine’s death, the place was extremely busy,” she said. “Then we went back to the struggle. Customers were gone. As soon as we announced that Elaine’s would close, the restaurant was filled again for the next 10 days, with people joyfully mourning and questioning why, when in reality, it was because they hadn’t been around.”
