NEW YORK: Double Trouble

Early this month an organizer from the Bartenders’ Union dropped in at Danny’s Hideaway, a small, newly opened mid-Manhattan bar & grill. The boss—a black-haired little ex-soldier named Dante Stradella—reacted just as many another enterpriser had acted before him. First he argued. He had served 18 months overseas with the Army, had been wounded at Messina, was trying to make a start on borrowed money. The union would cramp his style. When that got him nowhere, in clipped West Side accents he spoke what was closer to his heart: he thought the union was a racket; his answer was no. To this routine performance the union had a routine answer: pickets.

Neither Danny nor the union knew what they were starting. Last week both acted as though they heartily wanted to forget each other. But they had attracted so much attention that neither could retreat an inch.

When the pickets turned up, tough, 27-year-old Danny Stradella erected a sign under his small, red canvas marquee:

OPEN LETTER TO THE PUBLIC . . . I AM TRYING TO MAKE A NEW START IN LIFE AND THEY WON T LET ME. . . . IS THIS THE FREEDOM THAT A MILLION MEN AND I HAVE FOUGHT FOR? MY BARTENDERS, EX-SERVICEMEN, ARE MAKING MORE THAN A UNION CAN OFFER. . . . IS THIS WHAT WE CAME BACK TO?

Pvt. Danny C. Stradella

39th Inf., 9th Division

Against the Wall. Things began to happen. Soldiers & sailors turned up, bought drinks, chased the pickets. Someone called the cops. Reporters and photographers appeared, made pictures, listened to Danny say, “They’ve got me up against the wall. . . .” The next day almost all Manhattan newspapers blossomed with stories, a few with editorials. Said the New York World Telegram: “A wounded veteran’s little business is being ruined by picketing. …”

Hastily the union sent ex-soldiers as pickets, gave them signs which read: “I am a veteran too!” But passersby still glared at them. The pickets glared back, and at each other.

Meanwhile Danny’s business boomed. From noon until the small hours soldiers, sailors, ex-servicemen and their girls crowded the bar to drink and damn the Bartenders’ Union. A commander from the aircraft carrier Enterprise hurried to Danny’s to announce that the picketing was a “damned shame.” But Danny still had his troubles. Union drivers refused to deliver whiskey, and at times Danny seemed to be sweating slightly as drinkers cried, glass in hand: “You can’t give in, Danny!” It was obvious that he couldn’t—his clientele had gotten bigger and tougher than the union.