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Greenwich
Village's history is speckled with thousands of restaurants that sprang up in every
available nook and cranny. The same is true today. Right after the turn of the last
century this began with places like La Bohemia, the first tea room that also sold food, in 1917. It was also the
first place to affect a Bohemian theme and atmosphere. Others with names like Ye Polliwag, The Vermilion Hound, Three Thieves, and one called TNT, very anarchic! Whenever a cheaper storefront came available, these
restaurateur would up and move, rarely lingering for even six months. In their brief
heyday they offered inexpensive menus, low cost environs, beaded curtains- a symbol to up
towners that they were slumming, which has always been popular. One small Village eatery
claims it seats 250 patrons-11 at a time.
Some Tea Rooms grew into larger
restaurants, like The Jumble Shop, which survived on MacDougal Street well into the
1960's. Others bowed to Police harassment and added the illegal alcohol of Prohibition
that made the "protection" payments necessary. Now all gone, their spirit lives
in the many tiny restaurants that dot the Village landscape.
The Tea Rooms attracted other
bizarre businesses and personages such as Sonia The Cigarette Girl. She ran a tiny shop a
few steps from Sheridan Square at 184 West Fourth Street. She sold her hand rolled
cigarettes from there, and would often take her wares from tea room to tea room, selling
cigarettes to the patrons.
By the early 1920's the
"village atmosphere" had already become a commodity sold by landlords. Sonia was
a welcome sight, her wild curly hair and bright red lipstick, her body in bright batik
smocks and her feet in sandals. She would always flash her Slavic eyes and cry about her
poor family in communist Russia, and everyone buckled under. When pressed, she admitted to
being Sonia Bright, but it turns out she was actually Ella Breistein from east 10th
street. She left home at 16 and started up as the Cigarette Girl. One of six children, she
never saw her family again.
Sonia died suddenly in 1923, on
May 19th. Her memorial was well attended. Even the Post Office accepted letters for her
marked only "Sonia, Greenwich Village".
Sonia The Cigarette Girl is
another Legend of Greenwich Village.
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