Tracy Westmoreland's Siberia Bar Moves Up and Over

Inside the storm doors of a business with no shingle, underneath the distressed-denimed seat of a knowledgeable New Yorker, and within an incognito wooden crate dolloped with cushions to pass quietly for furniture lies a dislodged toilet bowl, a symbol of distress, controversy, and, to its master, ultimate victory. Hauled halfway around the globe, this clandestine toilet bowl has logged more flight hours than most of the world's six billion people. The bowl, invested with figural significance, will likely never again know the thankless toil of its peers, for now it is peerless. "If Siberia became a religion," the toilet bowl's master, Tracy Westmoreland, chanced to remark, "that would be the icon."

Now, understand that Westmoreland, 44, is playfully understating his case. The bar he's helmed for the past four and a half years, Siberia, is already a religion. Snugly nestled in the tattooed bosom of the 50th St. 1/9 station, Siberia cultivated the devotion of hipster New York (Luscious Jackson, if they still count), famous New York (Conan O'Brien, the Coen Brothers), literary New York (Kitchen Confidential author Tony Bourdain, Jane Pratt), well connected New York (Hillary). The worshipful followed a code of honor: No sailor language (though sailors are welcome) and no hitting on women. Patrons sipped drinks from plastic cups, since the rumble of the subway's upset stomach could shatter glass. When it seemed that Siberia would shut its metal gate forever, nearly a month ago, its patrons rent its tiles from the floor and stripped its walls to their elements, seizing totemic pieces of what would no longer be the longed-for bar.

And like that old-time religion, Siberia crushed to earth rises again, unheralded, under the watchful aegis of Port Authority. No sign announces Siberia's new location? it's 356 1/2 W. 40th St., right off 9th Ave.?but believers in redemption and chrysalis will recognize the bar's noble crest, a Social Realist man bringing the wrath of a heavy stone hammer down upon the ground before him.

To hear Westmoreland tell the story of his bar's phoenix flight, we need to pay attention to the hammer-wielder and the toilet bowl. The space in the train station used to belong to the Riese Organization, who leased it to Westmoreland for Siberia's operation. When Riese's master lease agreement with the Rockefeller Group, a Mitsubishi-owned development corporation, ended, the Group sought to redevelop the property. So began months and months of eviction notices, court-ordered extensions and high-profile battles between Westmoreland and the Rockefeller Group. Along the way, the building superintendent removed one of Siberia's three toilet bowls?it was on the fritz?and the Group was less than amused at Westmoreland's pleas for reinstatement. The displaced bowl galvanized the bar's patrons, which included members of the city's press. Westmoreland reports that Siberia publicity events began showing up on the Associated Press Daybook, which helps assignment editors find noteworthy events on little notice.

Despite favorable media coverage and a devoted cast of regulars, Westmoreland's final occupancy extension expired June 4. By the time that date rolled around, however, Westmoreland and the toilet bowl were in Tokyo, chained together outside Mitsubishi's corporate headquarters. "We figured we'd get their attention," he recalls. "I thought, there's no way they're going to arrest me. But they were smart, and didn't." Westmoreland brought his buddy Tom Shannehan and another friend, a filmmaker who committed the entire exchange to celluloid. (A documentary is forthcoming.) Security didn't know what to make of a six-foot, 260-lb. gaijin attached to a toilet.

"Sometimes I dragged it around, sometimes I sat on it?like The Thinker," Westmoreland says. "Security's trying to get rid of me. I'm complying, going around in circles like in a comedy... I said, I'm not here to have a fight, I'm here to tell you the Rockefeller Group is doing bad things."

Out to speak with Westmoreland came "an older guy, maybe 55, 60" years old, whom the barkeep identified only as "the number-two guy at Mitsubishi Estates, globally." The company representative was a kindly man who spoke English well. "He comes out and asks, 'With whom am I speaking?' I pulled out a Siberia card"?bearing that planet-smashing icon?"and there was no way he read it that fast, but he saw the logo and said, 'Ahhhhhhh, Mr. Westmoreland, we are very aware of you.'"

Rockefeller Group spokesman Vince Silvestri confirmed that Westmoreland indeed journeyed to Mitsubishi headquarters, but could not identify "the number two guy at Mitsubishi Estates, globally." Silvestri says that the Group is "examining our options" for the now-vacated Siberia space. Asked if he would ever drop down to the new 40th St. Siberia for a drink, Silvestri diplomatically stated that "the matter is closed." Meanwhile, Westmoreland says one of the Group's attorneys used to be a Siberia regular.

As for the new space: past the heavy, intimidating doors lies a whole new Siberia, with two floors, a huge, comfortable, full-nostril-breath space. On a recent Monday people drank up, chatted with polite vocabularies and didn't bother each other. Bartender Ungie parked his enviable white Vespa next to the bathroom and the photo booth, adjacent to the couches and touching against a crate with a cushion on top of it. Downstairs is a space to summon the envy of every rock club ever to have existed, with a makeshift stage and bare, ancient red brick walls. Westmoreland says attendees can expect the occasional bout of "performance art" down here, a threadbare space his friend Bourdain perfectly christened "the Gulag."

"Everything's working out fine," Westmoreland says of the relocated Siberia. "If you go home and see your mother, sister and brothers, and they move to a new house, are you going to feel any different toward them? It's about the people, not the space. When [the faithful] come to the new Siberia, they're home.

"The problem is letting people know" the place still exists, he admits. Although thirsty people venturing into the 50th St. 1/9 stop can find a piece of paper taped to the old storefront telling them where to find the bar, "people read in the press we've been closed. If The New York Times says you're closed, fuck it, you're closed."

That type of language won't be uttered in any Siberia location, though. "I try to keep the meatheads away," he says of a tactic to preempt barfights and keep the place hospitable. "Look at a guy like me"?big muchacho, stubbly goatee, t-shirt, shorts, sandals?"most people think a guy like me is a meathead. [But] if I ask some guy to stop cursing and he thinks it's a civil right, I don't care if he looks like Quentin Crisp." Westmoreland's judgment is unequivocal, the finality of justice. "Meathead." Same goes for dudes who bother women in search of a relaxing, boozy evening: "Usually guys who go to talk to women are guys who never get over."

Although nothing is final, Gulag inmates might not be counting trees with Solzhenitsyn for much longer. Westmoreland says he's been having discussions with Rockefeller Center and the MTA to see about moving Siberia to that storied plot of midtown real estate.