“It started as a joke,” Vince Francone says. “Just a joke. It was just a goofy thing. I’m kind of a crazy guy.” Francone drew his first face on the black blank wall of the Trio Lounge in 1973. Trio’s owner, Dominick “Snooky” Santore, and another regular more or less prodded him into it, he says. “After that they gave me carte blanche. It got pretty crazy. People would give me drinks–sometimes they’d pay me, you know, $20, to put them on the wall. I was drinking a lot in those days.”
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For 13 years Francone chalked Trio regulars–cops, firemen, truck drivers, butchers, and drunks–on the long wall that runs the length of the bar. But he says he hasn’t touched the wall in at least two years. “Just a little bit now. Sort of touch up.” The wall is beginning to show signs of its neglect. Some of the faces are fading, slowly succumbing to the clinging cigarette smoke and to the occasional arm that brushes against them. Yet many of the portraits are still striking.
He says he does his portraits to please himself
“One of the girls had a police dog,” he says, grinning broadly. “I put ’em both up. She just died–alcohol. She was just 34. She used to be a dancer, a beautiful girl.” Francone says a number of the people on his wall have been too fond of drink.
At the peak of his creative output, Francone probably had 60 faces on the wall. About 45 still cling to it. On the right comer of the wall, a profile of a man Francone calls the Irishman glares across the bar. His face, as Francone drew it in the mid-70s, is sharp and ambitious. The Irishman who comes into the Trio now is softer, fuller, and grayer.
“Yeah, forty-three years,” Francone repeats, nodding.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Jon Randolph.
