A stunner of a day in Central Park accompanied by great music, iconic songs & showmanship.

Bravo!

Jimmy Lategano - vocals
Kaori Yamada-Lategano - drums
Marcelo Cardozo - guitar
Tony Ventura - bass

Here’s a little reading on Jimmy, who’s apparently a singing waiter at the famous Greenwich Village pizzeria Arturo’s 🎤🍕

Little Jazz - Arturo’s
By Lorissa Rinehart

I arrived at Arturo’s Pizza at exactly the right moment. A seat opened up at the end of the bar and the trio of piano, bass, and drums had just started a new set. I swooped in, sat down, and ordered a glass of wine. Besides the one I filled, there wasn’t an empty seat in the house. Groups of 4, 5, and 6 squeezed into the dining room’s booths and made room as the servers brought out piping hot brick oven pizzas. The bar was mostly occupied by single folks like myself checking out the band and making conversation with the bartender. I took out my notebook and started jotting down some observations about the place.

Aspidistras hung next to wooden models of WWII era war planes (I wondered if this wasn’t a bit of a nod to Orwell.) Photographs of familiar scenes of Italian family meals crowded the walls as well and of course one of Mayor Fiorello Henry La Guardia. But that’s about as far as I got before the bartender, who later introduced himself as Tony, asked if I was a reporter.

“Kind of,” I said, and explained the project.

“You gotta meet Frankie Sticks then,” he said and pointed to the drummer.

“Sure!” I said.

While I waited for Frankie to finish his set, Tony told me a bit about his years at Arturo’s Pizza where he’d been tending bar since 1991. He started as part time, but in 1997 the previous full time bartender passed away, at which point Tony was promoted. His predecessor, however, still watches over all of Tony’s shifts from the urn where his ashes are enshrined above the bar. I turned to my neighbor to confirm.

“Yep,” he shrugged.

If it’s true, than Arturo’s must have been like family to him, which would make sense. All the people I met that evening had been coming to Arturo’s for ten years or more and some had been living in the Village for even longer. One lived around the block, evidently next door to Tony, and started telling him about how a resident in his building called 311 about the construction noise from a new building going up across the street, not an uncommon complaint these days, and one that says a lot about how the neighborhood is changing.

Arturo’s is on Greenwich Village’s southernmost border on the corner of West Houston and Thompson Street. While the Village on the whole wasn’t particularly Italian when Arturo’s opened in 1957, the 10 square blocks around Arturo’s were. Over 3,000 of the area’s 8,000 residents were born in Italy and a fair bit more identified Italian as their heritage. Opening an Italian restaurant made perfect sense to Arturo Giunta who borrowed $3,000 from his father to get the place going.

From the start Arturo’s was a neighborhood restaurant and remains so to this day. If the bar crew of old timers isn’t enough evidence, I refer you to the New York Daily News’ obituary of Honey, Arturo’s extra fluffy Bichon Frise. According to the article, Honey hosted lavish birthday parties on the sidewalk outside the restaurant which included pizza for the human guests and treats for the canine attendees. Eventually, her parties got so unwieldy that they had to be moved to the park across the street. Which is all to say, if Arturo’s dog meant so much to this little Italian enclave, imagine how much the restaurant means.

Jazz was part of Arturo’s from the outset as well. Arturo’s wife Betty, a singer at the Amato Opera, sang show tunes at the restaurant just for the hell of it. Famed piano player and Roberta Flack’s music manager Harry Whitaker was also an early fixture who played 5 nights a week for 5 years.

But the neighborhood and its surrounding area have been changing since Arturo’s opened, and especially in the past decade. New luxury apartment buildings are going up every day it would seem. The median income in the area immediately surrounding Arturo’s hasn’t changed much in the past 10 years, but this may be due to the NYU faculty and student housing included in its census tract. However, in the areas bordering Arturo’s to the north, south, east, and west, median incomes increased by about $20,000 between 2000 and 2013. And therein lies the 311 complaint. What was once a middle class neighborhood is now becoming an upper class neighborhood.

At any rate, Frankie Sticks, whose real last name I found out is Levatino, finished his set. He’d been eyeing my pen and paper from behind his drum kit and came right over. To say the least, Frankie is full of energy…

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