Ledger's bar to be a celebration
Ian Munro, New York
September 15, 2008 - 10:34AM
http://www.watoday.com.au/lifestyle/ledgers-bar-to-be-a-celebration-20080915-4gg2.html?page=-1
The Brooklyn bar opened by Heath Ledger's former business partner Jud Mongel (left) now in partnership with Ledger's father Kim. Photo: Trevor Collens
It was supposed to be the Brooklyn bar in which Heath Ledger would be most comfortable - a place in which the late actor not only invested, but that he helped conceive.
Only those who knew him well will discern the Heath touches: the engraved, granite-topped bar tables were his idea, as it was to have his favourite tattooist, Scott Campbell, from nearby Williamsburg, do the engravings.
It also was Ledger who wantedone table engraved as a chessboard. He played the game his father taught him at a nearby chess club and often beat the city's street chess hustlers, although he declined to take their money, his business partner, Jud Mongell, said last week.
Also engraved on the chess table is a scrawled love-heart, replicating one Ledger left on a note to a friend not long before his death in January.
The nautical theme - the space is furnished with deckchairs and fitted with a steel, bow-shaped bar to create the impression of being at sea - was an idea Mongell and Ledger had together.
The bar's name, Five Leaves, isa Ledger family decision, recalling an album by Nick Drake and a reference to the warning found near the end of a packet of Rizla cigarette papers.
This week the bar will finally open, not as a tribute to Ledger but as somewhere he would belong.
"We're 50:50 partners still," MrMongell said. "Heath is still my partner. He was fingerprinted for a liquor licence for the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration). He was going to DJ, bartend; he was not like some removed investor. At one point he put a bid in on the whole building. He was going to live upstairs.
"Heath was a very good chess player. He wanted a chessboard or two in here, so we could never not do that."
The bar has been completed because the actor's father, Kim, agreed to see it finished.
"Heath always intended helping Jud get into the restaurant business, so he put hismoney where his mouth wasand committed to the lease and committed to the plans," MrLedger said.
"He just wanted to be involved with his mates. He was just the kind of young man that gave a lot of people opportunities, all his friends, wherever they were in any part of life. That's just how hewas."
He said he it was satisfying to see that something his son envisaged had been finished. "Our family has suffered openly more than other families, in a way, because it's so public, but at the same time we're no different to other families that have lost children. It's heartbreaking."
Mr Ledger said the finished bar, with its rustic and recycled decor, was precisely the sort of place his son would have designed.
Mr Mongell, 35, is married to an Australian and befriended Ledger at a wedding on the Mornington Peninsula two years before the actor's death. They hit it off, becoming, as Mr Mongell said, dudes who hung out together.
They had in common the fact they were both returning to New York. They also had other shared interests in tattoos and food; they both liked Bills in Sydney and Cafe Gitane in Manhattan.
"I brought him over here andhe liked it right away," Mr Mongell said. "I took him skateboarding around the neighbourhood, showed him a lot of places for lease.
"He is still very important to all of us."
In contrast to Ledger's lonely death from an overdose of medicine in a Soho apartment, the bar hummed with activity last week during a function.
"I would just say it's a place where his friends swing by," Mr. Mongell said. "It's just more a place where the Australians in his life will continue to be around. We're still here; it's just Heath's no longer with us."
Click here to see 8 photos of the bar:
http://www.watoday.com.au/photogallery/lifestyle/heath-ledgers-brooklyn-bar-gallery/20080915-4gll.html
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