profiles

No Lazy Days at Lazy Daze

There are no lazy days for Lazy Daze coffeehouse proprietor Jeff Coppinger, a modestly-bearded 32-year-old seen in his blue and white biker head scarf prowling around Johnson St. on the east side of the old Irving Theater, or chatting with customers or whipping up a latte. He’s got too many ideas about what he likes about Irvington and what he wants to happen there.

Picks 'n' Sticks...Music in Irvington

You can look at the history of a neighborhood through various lenses. You can trace the genealogies of families, look at the origins of local churches and schools, or chart the comings and goings of local businesses. If we had a series of snapshots of the 5600 block of East Washington -- the block now book-ended by the two local restaurants, Legends and Dufours -- taken across the past twenty years, we could watch as an active center of local commerce emerged. For the past fifteen years, the music stores Guitar Town and Sticks & Tones have been part of that growth. Their story is a small piece in the greater story of Irvington.

From Crooks to Cooks

Soon-to-be Public Enemy No. 1, John Dillinger popped into what is now Dufour’s of Irvington in 1933, engaged in a keystone cops screwup with a fellow gunman as to which way frightened drugstore customers should face, and then fled to a getaway car their rookie driver had impossibly wedged between two vehicles in a parking space on Audubon Road.

The Flags of Irvington

Every year, for the past four years, sometime near the beginning of each July, American flags appear on the utility poles of Lowell Street, between Pleasant Run Parkway and Ritter Avenue. It usually happens that, as I pull my car out of the alley onto Lowell, I notice that the flags have made their annual appearance, as if by some blend of magic and patriotism.

Dogs

Writer Stan Denski has produced a series of four stories about dogs. Two of the stories highlight dog-focused businesses here in Irvington, "For the Love of Dogs: A Dog Bakery" and "Dog Grooming by Whitney"

Irvington Laurels Bridal

“A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he’s finished.” – Zsa Zsa Gabor

Fashions come and fashions go, but the institution of marriage seems to be doing just fine. The Circuit Court Clerk’s Office for Marion Country reported 7,008 marriages in Marion Country in 2005, up from 6,930 in 2004. And this is good news for Lauren Kyle, owner of Laurels Bridal at 5646 East Washington Street.

NO HEADLESS HORSEMAN — YET!

Nobody yet claims to have seen any horsemen hanging around The Legend restaurant in Irvington minus their noggins, but Proprietor John Robertson says that on occasion when the place is closed and he is in the kitchen, he has heard chairs being moved out front. When he pops his head into the peephole to see who it is, there is nobody out there. He’s not particularly disturbed by that. After all, a place that is named for the Legend of Sleepy Hollow ought to have a few ghosts now and then. Old Ichabod Crane, the gangly schoolmaster in Washington Irving’s story, has been missing for nearly 200 years since his scary literary encounter with that ghastly horseman who tossed his head (or was it a pumpkin?) at him.

LUBE JOBS AND HAIR CUTS

Comedian Bob Newhart tells a story about flying with the Grace L. Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company where you had to weigh your baggage on Grace’s bathroom scales. You get the same feeling at Dave’s Tire and Auto and Jim’s Barber Shop. You go in the front door facing a stack of old tires and angle right if you want a lube job, or turn left for a haircut. Jim Hammond is a genuine slice of Hoosier and Irvington Americana. He runs the barber shop part of the tire repair and tonsorial parlor on the north side of Washington at Layman. Jim is 75, a recovering alcoholic and stroke victim, and has a bit of a shaky hand but he can do the job, and he may say to you afterwards, “Oh, give me five dollars” (He may charge more for people who actually have hair).