‘SNL’ promo conjures iconic Max’s Kansas City club. It served steaks & ‘sanctuary’
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- SNL promo spots Role Model wearing a Max’s Kansas City T‑shirt, invoking legacy.
- Max’s ran from 1965 to early 1980s as an NYC club and restaurant magnet for artists.
- Owner Mickey Ruskin chose the Kansas City steakhouse name; nonprofit now supports artists.
In a promo for this week’s “Saturday Night Live,” musical guest Role Model — singer Tucker Pillsbury — wears a T-shirt that reads “Max’s Kansas City.”
A band name? Nope.
A Kansas City dive bar? Nope.
An iconic NYC hangout? Very much so.
A New York Times headline once called it a “sanctuary for the hip.”
Max’s Kansas City was a legendary New York City nightclub and restaurant, a bohemian hangout that operated from 1965 to the early 1980s. Jimi Hendrix declared it a place “where you could let your freak flag fly.”
With a restaurant downstairs and a club upstairs, Max’s famously became a magnet for giants in art, film and music — a crowd once described as creative people with a lot to say.
A guest book would read like a Who’s Who of American culture — Andy Warhol, Tennessee Williams, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Janis Joplin, Velvet Underground, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, fashion designer Halston, Faye Dunaway, Warren Beatty.
Here’s how The Star described the place in a 2000 story.
“Assuming you had the reputation (notoriety helped) or the look (the funkier the better) to get into Max’s, you might well have glimpsed David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed staring at one another’s makeup. Andy Warhol surrounded by a throng of his ‘Superstars.’ A pre-Blondie Debbie Harry waiting tables in a black miniskirt. Peter O’Toole being tossed out for slapping a manager. A very young Bruce Springsteen performing upstairs.
“So what was the Kansas City connection?”
Club owner Mickey Ruskin wasn’t known to have Midwest ties.
The question of the club’s name pops up from time to time, including just last year among the 11,000 members of the Max’s Kansas City Facebook group.
“Max’s was originally a Kansas City style steak house...”
“I always heard that it was because it started out as a steak house, which prepared steak in the Kansas City style.”
“It kinda lends itself to the way you can get big humongous steaks in the Midwest States or even Texas. But guess Max’s Fort Worth City didn’t sound good, ergo Max’s Kansas City.”
“I always thought it would be funny if someone in Kansas City opened a venue called Max’s New York City.”
The Star told the story behind the name in 2000:
“In 1965 Mickey Ruskin, a Jersey boy who got a law degree from Cornell but went into the restaurant business instead, was preparing to open a new place. He couldn’t think what to call it.
“So over steak, salad and baked potatoes — fare typical of what he’d serve at his new place — Ruskin and two friends brainstormed.”
One of those pals was poet/writer Joel Oppenheimer, who told Ruskin: “When I was a kid all the steakhouses had Kansas City on the menu because the best steak was Kansas City-cut, so I thought it should be ‘something Kansas City.’”
Mickey’s Kansas City, then?
Oppenheimer didn’t like the sound of that name, so he thought of Max’s Kansas City. Ruskin tried it out on a few people and they liked it.
Some people have speculated the Oppenheimer was “hung up on the name Max because his first wife’s second husband was a Max,” The Star reported. “But Oppenheimer (who died in 1986) denied that. He just thought Max’s sounded like a good restauranty kind of moniker.
“Apparently few of Max’s denizens knew much about the real Kansas City, so the menu attempted to educate them.”
Side note: Max’s was also known for the dried chickpeas served as finger food at the bar that more often flew through the air before they made it into into anyone’s mouth. They crunched underfoot.
The sign outside read “Steak, lobster, chickpeas.”
But the way the words were printed, it looked like the restaurant served lobster peas.
Ruskin was 50 when he died in 1983. His memory lives on in Max’s Kansas City Project, a nonproft that provides emergency funding for struggling artists.
The T-shirt Role Model wears in the “SNL” promo is available from several outlets online, including OldSchoolShirts.com where it sells for $30.
The original Max’s Kansas City building still stands at 213 Park Avenue South. Today, it’s a five-story loft building with full-floor lofts featuring private keyed-elevators, 10-foot ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Park Avenue and Union Square.
Bring your own chickpeas.
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