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Marina Van refers to the old, now lionized, Bobby Van’s as a “gin mill,” a nice slangy word with connotations slightly different from a bar or saloon. Coming from an articulate woman who chooses her words carefully, it carries layers of meaning. The celebrated intellectual Hamptons hangout of the 1970s, Bobby Van’s has taken on legendary status, something she both understands and nurtures.
She may call it a gin mill with a sly smile, but she gets bothered when a newspaper article refers to bare tables (they had red tablecloths) and to literary groups drinking beer (bourbon was their drink). Details count when you are chronicling a legend.
It was entirely a home grown operation. When the place opened in1969, Bobby Van worked the kitchen and the keyboard, as chef and piano player. The bartender poured drinks and waited tables, and when Marina Van came on the scene she hosted and, yes, waited tables too.
A generation of writers was moving to the Hamptons, and they gathered at Bobby Van’s. (To avoid repetition, assume that everyone mentioned in this article is immensely talented and esteemed unless otherwise noted.) Willie Morris, James and Gloria Jones, Nelson Algren, Irwin Shaw, Truman Capote, William Styron, Norman Mailer and James Baldwin were all either regular or occasional visitors. The list goes on. “It was a home away from home, always a big party with lots of table hopping. It drove the servers crazy.”
After Morris published an op-ed piece in the New York Times about his love for Bridgehampton and for Bobby Van’s, the pace accelerated, both in the bar and in the village. “Artists were coming.” By that, Van means people like William de Kooning and Roy Lichtenstein. The sports announcers and movie people and television stars followed. But it was the written word that animated the place. “The writers studied our customers and quite often would use them as a fictional character in their next book,” Van explained. And it was “a big deal” when books were published. The staff people were readers, and they were able to talk intelligently to customers about the literary life
Even if the regulars ate at other restaurants, or went to Gloria Jones’s Wednesday night poker game, they wound up at Bobby Van’s later in the evening. “Late at night the gang would gather around a table and talk about literature, sports and dogs,” Van told me. “In the background Bobby would be playing Gershwin, Porter or the Beatles. From time to time the gang would break out in song.”
You may be used to seeing celebrities on Main Street in Gucci flip flops these days, but stars were more glammy thirty years ago. In one of the earliest encounters between Hollywood and the Hamptons, Jane Russell arrived in a chauffeured car, wearing a golden mink coat, looking gorgeous and sexy, for dinner with a writer friend at Bobby Van’s. Presumably it wasn’t August, or maybe it was, but who cares? Jane Russell belongs in mink.
The original Bobby Van’s was on the north side of Main Street, where World Pie is now located. In 1979, “we grew up,” according to Van, and moved across the street, into custom-built premises. The business was sold in 1987, and sold again. Owners retained the Bobby Van’s name, and it is now one of three restaurants in a steak house chain with establishments in New York and Washington. Bobby Van continued to play piano and after retiring moved to Garden City. Marina Van lives in Sag Harbor and heads the East Hampton Chamber of Commerce. She remains active in the social scene of the Hamptons, and keeps the archives of a cherished time and place.