Helen at Lucky Strike

We've lost lovely Lucky Strike. A place that meant so much to us in the late 1980s when we lived within walking distance of it from our loft on Lafayette Street.

Always perfectly cooked steaks and burgers and never not a table filled with people you'd want to sit along side. Exemplary service.

This is a photograph I took of Helen Johansson tucked into a far corner of Lucky Strike in about 1989. At the time she had stopped modelling and was designing jewelry.

We first met Helen when she turned up at the studio for a go-see.  I took a Polaroid of her but she looked very tired and nothing came of it.

One day, a few weeks later I spotted a girl sitting on the curb on 4th Avenue in front of a table with jewelry laid out on it.

"Now there's someone I could photograph," I said to Caroline and without hesitating asked her if I might take her picture. She said yes and turned up at the studio a few days later.

"I have been here before," she said, "You looked at the Polaroid you did of me and did not seem interested."

"Well, today you look different, just as you did when I saw you sitting on the curb, and I am looking for someone to photograph at Lucky Strike. Would you like to do that?"

She said she would. She left her telephone number and I said I would ring to make the arrangements.  This took some doing. When I rang her she was either out, too busy, or said yes and then cancelled.

After she cancelled the third or fourth time I yelled, "You will be there at 11 tomorrow or I shall come and drag you out of your apartment." All right," she said and hung up.

"That girl is driving me crazy." I said, slamming down the receiver.

Astonishingly she turned up dressed as you see her here and was as good as gold. A week or so later she and a friend came to dinner and she gave Caroline a piece of her jewelry.