Reflecting on how a pony named Little Catalina died after well-meaning people fed it too many apples, cultural historian Ainsley Hawthorn looks at times when people's good hearts nonetheless cause harm.
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In a crushing blow to New York’s restaurant scene, the 21 Club announced that it would be shutting its doors indefinitely, yet another victim of Covid-19’s economic fall-out.
The news was received as a gut-punch to all who adored the 21 Club for its reminder of New York’s racier, glamorous past. Once New York’s premier Speakeasy, the 21 Club ‘officially’ opened on 1 January 1930, a few years before Prohibition ended in 1933. Cousins Charlie Berns and Jack Kriendler, born to poor immigrants from Austria, had operated an earlier incarnation called Red Head in different spots since 1922 before settling on 21 East 52 Street. To cope with the frequent police raids, they stashed contraband booze behind camouflaged doors, created shelves designed to collapse and send wine bottles down a hidden chute if the cops arrived, and as well as constructing a secret wine cellar in the adjacent basement (barred by a 5,000 pound door), allowing sta