Here's a new one for the "Books That Look Like Nothing" thread. I was thrilled to find this at a local auction. It literally looks like nothing, but sold on eBay for $516.00.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/305302412902
1920s
Original
I.B.F.
INTERNATIONAL BAR FLIES
Member's Booklet
Courtesy of HARRY'S AMERICAN BAR
#1 Location
Paris, France
Offered is an extremely rare, original I.B.F. - International Bar Flies member's booklet issued to anonymous member #15304 by Harry's New York Bar in Paris, circa 1920s.
Much of the inside of Harry's New York Bar in Paris was imported straight from New York. When Clancey's Bar on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan closed because of Prohibition, American jockey Tod Sloan had it dismantled piece by piece and shipped over to 5 Rue Daunou and renamed it the New York Bar. Later purchased by Harry MacElhone, a former
bartender who renamed it Harry's New York Bar, it became a popular hangout for Americans looking for a taste of home while in Paris.
MacElhone came up with a club for his most dedicated customers - the Brotherhood of the International Bar Flies. The I.B.F., as it was called, was a "secret and sacred fraternal organization devoted to the uplift and downfall of serious drinkers." Along with I.B.F. lapel pins, each member received a bright red notebook with the club logo on the front: a dead fly on a sugar cube.
Members of the I.B.F. included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thornton Wilder and Ernest Hemingway, along with boxer Jack Dempsey, coach Knute Rockne and fashion designer Coco Chanel.
Aside from being the oldest cocktail bar in Europe and the birthplace of the Bloody Mary cocktail, fictional character James Bond is said to have lost his virginity at Harry's American Bar according to Ian Fleming's "From a View To a Kill."
The 4 1/4" x 3" booklet comprises 10 pages stapled in red card wraps, along with both a front and rear pastedown page. The handwritten member's number of 15304 is written on both front and rear pastedowns.
The List of Traps names 74 different I.B.F. bar locations worldwide with addresses and names of who's in charge.
One of the bars listed is Hotel Cecil Bar in London. Named after the former London home of the powerful Cecil family, which once occupied the site, the Hotel Cecil opened in 1896 and stretched from the Strand to the Thames. By the 1920s, a jazz band was hired, turning the Hotel Cecil into a favored haunt for hedonistic flappers and gents.
Due to "Trap No. 7" in this notebook listing the Hotel Cecil Bar, we can confidently date this booklet to the 1920s, inasmuch as the end of the Roaring Twenties also signaled the end of the Cecil. In 1930, the hotel was bought by Shell-Mex and the building largely demolished in the space of 16 weeks.
