The Brooklyn Rail

The Monday Night Band: Recording Live at the Village Vanguard

And slowly, they start stepping in. The staff throws the door open to the usual cast of outsiders and insiders—natives and tourists, scholarly purists and dreadlocked adulterers, every configuration of man, woman, and child. They give the money to the door guy, a tattooed young man with a somber five o’clock shadow: $35, cash only, one drink included. The seating guy—a veteran staffer who tends the bar the rest of the week and designs handbags during the day—weaves the guests through the aisles and wedges them into butting wooden chairs.