Ms NOLA dropped by on Saturday afternoon. She had had dinner with us the night before, but only on Saturday did she remember to tell us that our favorite Chinese restaurant, Wu Liang Ye, was closed. She’d noticed, walking by it on 86th Street. The restaurant closed once before, a few years ago (anywhere between five and ten — or more), with “Closed For Renovations” written on the brown paper that blocked the windows. Kathleen and I didn’t believe it, because experience had taught us that “Closed For Renovations” simply meant “Closed,” but, that time, we were wrong, and Wu Liang Ye did re-open. The fresh brown paper that went up the other day, however, just says “Closed.” When we passed by ourselves yesterday afternoon, there was a quartet of folks our age standing outside the door — which an enterprising fellows from Wok 88 (a former competitor/survivor) had decked out with a sheaf of menus.

How dreadful. I was picking up the phone to call for a lunch special this afternoon when I remembered that no one would be answering the phone (I’d tried that when Ms NOLA spread the news). I called Lili’s Noodle Shop on Third Avenue, and their pork lo mein was fine — it was always better than Wu Liang Ye’s, to tell the truth — but my heart was heavy.

A few hours ago, a young man from the Video Room called. I knew what it was about as soon as I saw the caller ID. Our membership expires at the end of every October. This membership entitles us to twelve free rentals a year (one per month) and also free delivery. We haven’t been using the Video Room much lately, because I’ve accumulated a backlog of DVDs to watch with Kathleen. Even without the backlog, we probably wouldn’t be renting, and for the same reason that the backlog only grows: Kathleen is knitting like mad. That’s to say that she’s experimenting with different stitches and patterns, and so can’t take her eyes off what she’s doing. We can always watch a Hitchcock or a Woody Allen. But movies that Kathleen hasn’t seen are out.

But the reason for our declining rentals has nothing to do with Netflix, which I’m sure is doing something like grievous bodily harm to the Video Room’s business model. As far as I’m concerned, Netflix is no substitute. If I want to see an old Japanese movie that hasn’t come out on DVD — A Geisha is a fave — or the Cary Grant – Carole Lombard “solid soaper” (Leonard Maltin), In Name Only — Netflix isn’t going to be worth diddly.

I renewed our membership, and the young man told me that he would send over the monthly freebie coupons right away. Hermes himself would not have appeared at our door any faster. As I signed for the coupons, something fluttered to the ground. A menu had been wedged in our doorframe. Ordinarily, menus are slipped under the door, but I saw in a moment why this one hadn’t been. It was printed on plain paper, not stock. I recognized the typography, too. Although it now calls itself Wa Jeal, the Wu Liang Ye people have decamped to a storefront on Second Avenue — not far from the old Pig Heaven, I should say, and possibly in that very space.

My training as a lawyer both invites speculation as to why the move (now that we know that it was a move) had to be conducted on such cloak-and-dagger lines and fills my head with explanatory scenarios. The menu stuck in the door frame — I now believe that menus were delivered to regular customers, not, as is the custom, leafletted throughout the building — reeks of the kind of “non-compete” constraint that made it impossible, for example, for Kathleen to advise her clients that she’d be moving from one law firm to another. The clients weren’t Kathleen’s, they were the old firm’s. Barbers and beauticians are bound by the same rules.

In the case of Wu Liang Ye, the “old firm” wasn’t, obviously, the 86th Street restaurant, which has completely shut down. We’re not talking about a chef’s departure, or a manager’s. It looks as though the entire operation moved a few blocks south. But Wu Liang Ye is actually chain of restaurants, with its original location, I believe, in Shanghai (PRC). There is in any case a Wu Liang Ye in midtown, not far from Grand Central. And one must not forget that “It’s Chinatown, Jake.” I’m actually delighted to see that the closing of the 86th Street shop didn’t involve a Saint Valentine’s Day massacre (a drowning, say, in Newtown Creek) I look forward to giving the new? management a call.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
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