I was having a drink one afternoon recently at the sunny end of the bar at the Kettle of Fish celebrating my recent move to New York after a 30-year absence, telling the story of how that bar, in its incarnation as the Lion’s Head, had become my regular haunt years ago.

It was 1969, I had just graduated from West Point, and I was spending my graduation leave subletting a loft on Broome Street and writing stories for The Village Voice, the offices of which were then directly upstairs from the bar. I had met a guy at the sunny end of the bar and we commenced to run into each other nearly every afternoon about the same time. At the far, dark end of the bar stood a gaggle of the grizzled real regulars of the place: the Post columnist Pete Hamill, the Voice staffer Joe Flaherty, the novelist David Markson, the poet Joel Oppenheimer, the four of them attended to by a bartender and by the occasional Voice contributor Nick Browne.

The five of them, Mr. Browne included, were Village royalty, their names appearing in print above articles, on novels and poems that were remaking the face of their craft. To be admitted into their circle, to join in their conversations crackling with the wry cynicism that comes only with age and experience, would be a dream come true. The row of empty barstools between the sunny end of the bar and those princes of the Village seemed immeasurably long, and for several days, never did the two ends of the bar mix.

Then one afternoon I spied what appeared to be a huddle among the veterans at the far end of the bar. Some sort of decision was made and they dispatched Mr. Oppenheimer to carry a message from their end of the bar to ours: “If you two gentlemen will come to the bar attired in trousers, we would be pleased to invite you down the bar for a drink.” With that, Mr. Oppenheimer returned to his august station at the far, dark end of the bar. My friend and I looked at each other. Sure enough, we were both wearing shorts. We hurriedly swallowed the last of our beers and exited the place, heading back to our respective digs to put on trousers. Returning within a half-hour or so, we were signaled to take our places down at the far, dark end of the bar with the others. Drinks were bought, toasts were raised, and I was anointed a regular, as was my new friend, Fred Exley, the author of the justly lauded “A Fan’s Notes.”