And another Washington institution bites the dust.
We lost Trover’s Books on Capitol Hill this week; on Sunday, Nathans, the trademark Georgetown saloon, will serve its last beers and burgers.
Pity for a town with so few places that we can count on and call authentic and say: “Meet you at Nathans.”
On Thursday, Nathans owner Carol Joynt hosted the last of her Q&A Cafe luncheons. Over the years, she has interviewed Bob Woodward and Tom Brokaw; Jack Valenti and John Riggins. Looking elegant and calm, she told the crowd: “How do I thank you for coming here all these years? I close.”
Nathans has occupied the southeast corner of Georgetown’s main crossroads of Wisconsin and M streets since 1969. It had been a Greek diner. A bookie who went by the name “Nathan Detroit” got the lease and hoped to open a restaurant. When gambling debts sunk his eatery, a local kid named Howard Joynt took over and kept the name, thus Nathans.
“He didn’t want a drunk walking in the door and saying, ‘Where’s Howard?’ ” Carol says.
She came to D.C. by way of Denver, her hometown, and went to high school in Alexandria. She moved to New York and made her mark in TV journalism with the “CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.” She returned to D.C. in 1977 and married Howard Joynt. Carol stayed on the TV side; Howard ran Nathans.
Howard ran a well-stocked, man’s bar, though the men brought lovely women. The well-worn oak floor lacked only sawdust to give it a traditional pub feel. Georgetown’s upper crust — and Jim Kimsey — would meet and mix with kids from Virginia and tourists from Kansas.
I courted the lovely Louise at Nathans. She craved their juicy burgers; I preferred the Jim Beam and beer. On Georgetown shopping trips after we got hitched, Nathans was a regular stop.
Says Janet Donovan, a lifelong Georgetown resident: “It was like ‘Cheers.’ ‘Everyone knew your name.’ On Thanksgiving Day, it was the only place open.”
Howard Joynt died in 1997, and Carol found herself the unwilling proprietor of the quintessential Georgetown saloon. “The employees didn’t know who I was,” she tells me. “Every year I tried to get the landlords to take the keys.”
But Carol kept the lights on, the beer flowing and the conversation hopping, especially at her Q&A Cafe lunches. She endured “one calamity after another,” beginning with a federal investigation into alleged criminal tax fraud by her husband. She avoided being prosecuted under the “innocent spouse” laws. High rents and a shaky economy finally forced her to close.
Joynt will be writing her memoir: “Innocent Spouse.”
And she will be trying to pay off $22,000 D.C. says she owes in back taxes. The city is threatening to put a lien on her home.
“If I can get 220 people to donate $100 each,” she told her last lunch crowd, “I’ll be OK.”
Nathans fans can show up Sunday, hoist a final beer and help out Joynt — still innocent spouse.
E-mail Harry Jaffe at [email protected].
