Bruce Waite

On Sunday, September 1st, 2024, at precisely 6:22pm, Bruce Cawsey Waite, the inventor of Frankie Frank’s Flat Frank®, America’s first flat hot dog, finally passed away after an 80-year battle against himself. His first act as a child was ruining Christmas Eve dinner when he arrived in White Plains, NY, on the evening of December 24th, 1943. He was the fifth and youngest child of Ralph H. (d.1955) and Esther (Mitchell) Waite (d.1951). His four siblings Ralph Waite (d. 2014), Joan M. (Waite) Hanlon (d.1979), Suzanne Waite Landon (d. 2017) and Donald M. Waite (d.1998) are all predeceased. He leaves behind his son Jackson (Lisa) and his granddaughter, Fox Buttercup.

A lifelong genealogy enthusiast, Mr. Waite described himself as an orphan and United States Marine (OTH), descended from the great Morrison Waite, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1874-1888). To millions of hungry New Yorkers, though, he was the owner/operator of Cafe Bruce Waite, Shakespeare’s on 8th and the world-famous David’s Pot Belly Stove Cafe at 98 Christopher Street. 

In 1971, when Bruce took ownership of it, David’s Pot Belly Stove Cafe became a candlelit refuge for the LGBTQ community shortly after the Stonewall riots. While Bruce and his Great Dane, Clay, maintained hyperbolic status as the original instigators of the violent revolt, it is more likely that their role during the conflict was slightly less than historic. One thing is for sure, though: the riots awoke a deep sense of injustice for his friends, customers and the loving community that let him call the intersection of Christopher and Bleecker his home for over forty years. 

 A proficient student of history, Bruce cherished his role as an ally to the voiceless and orphaned citizens of Greenwich Village. The Pot Belly was where you went to eat a 3/4 pound cheeseburger or a Texas omelet at 4:30AM on a Tuesday but it was also where you went to feel the sense of belonging that everyone orphaned by the city and country that called them ‘different’, deserved. And, in 1979, David’s Pot Belly Stove Cafe became the first non-gay owned business in the United States to fly the now iconic Pride Flag on its storefront. 

 In the 1980s the Pot Belly built on its message of acceptance and tolerance, becoming a beacon of progressive thought and a safe haven for those in need during the emerging AIDS crisis. In 1984, after opening America’s first standalone Häagen-Dazs Ice Cream Store at 178 MacDougal, he was shot in the chest by a .22 caliber revolver. Early reports suggested he was the target of an attempted assassination due to his casual civil rights advocacy, but ultimately the NYPD’s 6th Precinct—the same precinct responsible for the original Stonewall Inn raid in 1969—determined the shooting took place during a botched armed robbery for $340 and a scoop of pistachio ice cream. 

Making good on the new moniker given to him by the New York Post, The Village Ice Cream Mogul opened two more Häagen-Dazs locations in response to his big brother, Donald’s, efforts to help build up the competing Ben and Jerry’s brand 50 city blocks to the north. But like all candles that burn too bright—and this one was burning too bright from both ends—it all came crashing down after Donald’s unexpected and tragic death in 1998. By the end of the decade, The Village Ice Cream Mogul’s hospitality empire was no more. 

As Bruce would see it, all that was too 20th-century to reflect on and the next millennium offered opportunities for new schticks and grifts, alongside the same old bits. And when he followed his nephew, Ralph Gus Waite, into the world of Manhattan real estate, the broker business was never the same. He operated with neither license nor training, surviving on grandiose stories, a stolen City government parking permit and a bottomless knowledge of Greenwich Village history. According to the New York Observer, he rebranded himself as “Cawsey” and became homeless to avoid the consequences of the unresolved debt and legal challenges that had plagued every reinvention since the death of his mother in 1951, at only 8 years old. The eternal entrepreneur had found his niche, until unfair housing practices led to staunch regulation by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the shuttering of his storied real estate tours. 

Always down but never out, Bruce saw the next chapter as an opportunity to revisit the cherished invention that had laid dormant since The Pot Belly closed its doors. Without hesitation, he was back to the drawing board with his nephew Gus, but Frankie Frank’s Flat Frank would have to wait once more. The first 5 waves of the SARS COVID-2 pandemic gave him multiple life-threatening infections and, as a result, his health declined, but as with all things Bruce, he looked at both his past and his future with a vital energy that left onlookers confounded. But there was an actual scientific explanation for his ability to survive every variant of Covid that hit the bricks of the greatest city in the world: Da Bathz.

Bruce knew more than most that The 10th Street Russian & Turkish Bath house only exists because of its owners David and Boris, who according to Bruce “both deserve presidential medals of freedom.” Their lifetime of service to the building and community inspired Bruce in his own work, even going so far as calling the dueling business partners “culturally significant and fundamentally important to the history of New York City and the United States. No bullshit.” And yet there was still no boundary he wasn’t willing to cross and, when David famously 86’d him, FOR LIFE, he made no apology, and he pleaded no case. 

Indeed, everyone that crossed paths with Bruce Waite loved him until they hated him. Never was that more true than at his beloved 10th Street Baths. Most would credit Bruce’s continued access on “Boris weeks” to Boris’ now famous indifference to law and order and maybe it was but he also seemed to understand Bruce more than even Bruce understood himself. The Baths was Bruce’s favorite place on earth and her heat kept him alive for 60 years. The fact that David tried to take that away from him isn’t evidence of a cruel act but a reminder of how harmful our own wounds can be to the people that love us. Ask anyone who’s shared a shvitz with Bruce Waite and they’ll all tell you he should have died on the roof of 268 E. 10th street face-up towards the sun, barely covered, and with his tab still open.

10th Street, as it’s properly called, wasn’t the only reason Bruce survived for 80 years. When Ralph and Donald got sober Bruce joined them in the program and Alcoholics Anonymous became the family business. Together they shared, and overshared, the story of addiction and recovery in unused rooms and church basements across the country. He was humbled and inspired by the process and the acts of service gave him purpose and comprised his singular act of consistency. One day at a time, he kept going back. 

Bruce, in spite of himself, was constantly confronted with endless compassion from the people whose lives he passed through, enriched and destroyed in equal parts. During the summer of 2021, his great-nephew Miles Waite moved into the only permanent home Bruce ever had. Miles’ endless support of a man that took so much, did not come without a cost. As his home health aide, Miles suffered alongside Bruce for years as he chased an endless trail of destruction up Audubon and down St. Nicks, apologizing in the old man’s wake. Bruce’s heart could be found in Greenwich Village but his soul belongs to Washington Heights. For the last 25 years of his life, he again found himself in the arms of a community interconnected by a common struggle and ignored by the city and country around them.

Bruce Waite died with empty pockets, knowing he never fully allowed himself to connect to the people that loved him. His heart and his lungs and his hands and his legs were all gone but his head was full to the toe top fill of direst intention. In May of 2024, having never flown on an airplane, he applied for and received his first passport. Clean-cut and freshly-shaven, his portrait shows a man ready for a new chapter. Having worked his program for decades, he was planning on celebrating another AA birthday at the annual International Convention in Vancouver. Even though he was never able to make amends for ruining that Christmas Eve dinner in 1943, he ultimately became a living and partially-breathing, partially-walking example of what you could accomplish for yourself with consistent work.

On Sunday, September 1st, 2024, at precisely 6:22pm, he made no apology, he pleaded no case. Bruce Cawsey Waite died, 50 years sober.