Victor Frenkil, the man who set out to buy a piano and ended up with a hotel, returns to his beloved and once-beleaguered Belvedere today, bringing the original owls back to the Owl Bar, where they belong.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're not hip to the legends of One East Chase. Frenkil, the politically connected contractor who bought the grand hotel in 1976 (after only intending to buy its grand piano at auction), desired to reopen the once-popular Owl Bar, too. But the owls, the bar's most famous nondrinking fixtures since World War I, were gone. They had disappeared when the hotel closed five years earlier. Ed Hanrahan, long a Frenkil friend, went on the hunt and located both birds in New York. (Someone in the hotel's previous management had "borrowed" them.) Hanrahan was the hero. It was big news when the owls turned up in the place one night in April 1977, with the following note spiked to the bar door:
Where we've been/ What we've seen/ No matter the din/ No one will glean. . . . But if your eyes are clear/ Today you can tell/ The Owls of Belvedere/ Have returned from Hell.
The owls winked their amber eyes at bar patrons for 12 years. Then the business started to sputter. The hotel had well-publicized financial problems, and Frenkil had a dispute with the city. He finally pulled out in 1990 -- with the owls. The bar and restaurant closed. The hotel was converted to condos. The Owl Bar had at least one reincarnation, which failed. Now, it's just about what it used to be, and people speak happily of it. The new owners are Pauli Santi from Champagne Tony's, Tom Stuehler, owner of the catering company Truffles, and Aristotle "Telli" Stroumbis.
Frenkil gets to bring the owls back to the bar at noon today in a horse-drawn carriage, and it's all because of Hanrahan. While casing the reopened bar several weeks ago, he bumped into Stroumbis in the Belvedere elevator and mentioned something about "original owls." Next thing you know, Frenkil is renting the birds to the bar for $1 a year. This is a happy development in the life of the city.
One for the road
So I'm walking up Calvert Street from the courthouse when a wavy-haired man who used to run a diner I used to love slides out of the passenger side of an Isuzu Trooper and, in a robust Greek accent, says: "Here, have some shreemp." I'm not kidding. It's Pete, originally from Chios, but the last 30 years from Tolna Street. He hugs me, reaches into the back seat of the truck and fills a large Styrofoam cup with steamed shrimp. Before I can say, "Please don't," Pete hands me an institutional-size frozen pie. Drivers are honking behind the Trooper. Peter gives me another big hug and disappears into rush hour. It's a beautiful country.
Full fish salute
Last Friday, a visitor to the Giant in Lutherville was impressed at seeing employees standing at attention in every food department, the shiny veggies stacked perfectly on each display, shelves packed with freshly placed goods. Nice. Over in the seafood section, even one of the rockfish was standing at attention. Its ice-packed body was propped up and arched, its mouth was wide open, and the handsome rock was fringed by rows of glistening smaller fish. So why the big whoop? An employee confided that the store had been gussied up for a group of executives touring Giant outlets in the Baltimore area -- and not just Bounty salesmen, either. They happened to be officials of the big British retailer J. Sainsbury PLC, which bought TC 9.8 million shares of Giant stock last year.
Natty Boh artifact
Pals alerted us to a discovery in the 1200 block of N. Charles St. -- an old Natty Boh beer sign painted on a north-facing brick wall. Recent demolition of a parking garage on the east side of the street revealed part of the sign, and it's created a nostalgic buzz in midtown. Larry Marshall, who first told us about it, thinks the sign goes back to when Charles Street had southbound traffic.