Red Hook is the Brooklyn setting of Three Bars in Four-Four, the club where Edison Appaloosa exchanged after-hours cleaning for a place to sleep. Above the venue, a makeshift room and a house piano offered him a precarious foothold: shelter, work, and a musical community gathered in one place.

Three Bars in Four-Four

Edison tells Pandora Halfdanarson that when trouble keeping a home left him without dependable housing, some of his friends became scarce, but a close circle rallied to find him a place. That place was a room above Three Bars in Four-Four, at 44 Visitation Place in Red Hook. Pandora recognized the club by name and recalled its address as hauntingly familiar.

The arrangement was practical rather than managerial. Pandora had believed Edison managed the club, but he corrects her: he did not run it. Three Bars operated on a shoestring, stayed open very late, and could not afford a cleaning service. Edison cleaned after closing in exchange for permission to stay upstairs.

A makeshift home and musical refuge

The room was not up to code and was little better than a closet with an electrical socket. It had a single window covered in spiderwebs. Edison needed little, he says, and could use the club’s restroom to wash. During the day, when the venue was closed, he practiced on its piano; living directly above the club also made him its informal house keyboard player.

The club’s social life extended beyond its own staff. Slack and other musicians, most of whom had by then moved to Brooklyn, came by after their gigs. Edison remembers the place as lively and says that, for a while, things there were not so bad. Red Hook thus represents more than an address in his account: the club converted a precarious exchange of labor for shelter into a temporary routine of music and companionship.

The limits of the refuge

When Pandora asks why Edison no longer lives there, given that he could play, he begins to explain by pointing to the club’s food. Three Bars sold more than burgers: its menu included fish, chicken salad with mango and cashews, and home fries. The detail shifts the conversation from the room’s material inadequacy to the conditions of staying in a club that served food. In Edison’s recollection, Red Hook remains a refuge, but not a durable solution to the difficulties that brought him there in the first place.