Sketch me!

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, just as a lark. To the right is a sketch of me that was done as I had a beer (several, I’m sure, to tell the truth of it^[1]) in McSorley’s Old Ale House in 1982. Click it, as usual, to enlarge.

I didn’t know the guy was sketching it, and when he finished he showed it to me, and then offered it up; I liked it, and I took it and thanked him. I presume he was a student at nearby Cooper Union, just around the corner from McSorley’s, but he as well might have been from anywhere around New York City. One can expect artists of various sorts to pop out in Greenwich Village and SoHo.

I didn’t get his name, either. If I read the signature correctly, it’s Dan McVeigh. A Google search of that name turns up a singer/songwriter from Ontario, which is probably not the same guy. So I guess I don’t have an early sketch by a famous artist, here. It might have been worth thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands, even — you never know. But, no, not likely.

In any case, I still like it, and I scanned it some years ago. And here it is, now shared with the world.

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^[1] McSorley’s, at the age of 156 now, is the oldest bar in New York City. Until 1970, women weren’t allowed in, and when I used to go there with my cousin and his NYU-alumni friends, there was still but one loo in the back, shared by all. Beers were two for a dollar in 1982 — they would only sell them two apiece — and we were there to drink many of them that afternoon.

I haven’t been there in years, and I wonder what the beers cost now. I should pay it a visit. I have neither the capacity nor the inclination to have as many as I did at 25, but the place has a character that I’d like to experience again.