After Five Decades on Newtown Lane, J.J. Jensen Hangs Up His Apron

People dream of finding a job they enjoy, where they are treated with respect, one that they are happy to return to each day.

As he only reluctantly retires at age 81, and after 40 years over five separate decades of working behind the same bar on Newtown Lane in East Hampton, James Jensen — known by generations of East Hamptonites simply as, and often only as, “J.J.” — must have actually found his dream job.

“They always treated me well there, Frank Duffy and Paul Campanella, and then Benny. I never even thought about leaving,” Jensen said last week over lunch in Southampton, a few weeks into a retirement he enters only after being compelled by some relatively minor health issues to give up the hours on his feet. “I saw a lot of people come through that place.”

Jensen strolled through the doors of what was then The Grill in 1983, recently having been laid off from his daytime bar shift at the Southampton branch of the once ubiquitous O’Malleys pubs. Another O’Malleys bartender, Eddie Sheehan, had landed a job at The Grill and urged Jensen to apply.

Campanella, the manager at the time, chatted with him at the bar briefly and offered him a “tryout” the following night.

It would be his last job interview.

“He said to come in at 6 and give it a couple hours — well, I was there till 3 a.m. and, really, I guess I never left,” he chuckled in recollection.

The Grill was an institution and social nexus in East Hampton in the 1980s, the only bar open late. The East Hampton Village Police station was still on the street, and late-night shift changes and restaurant workers kept the bar bustling and lucrative long after the dinner crowds had left.

In 2002, longtime owner Frank Duffy sold the building to builder Ben Krupinski, then the owner of renowned fine dining restaurants East Hampton Point and 1770 House. It was clear that major changes were in the making.

“The Grill was a local place. Citta was going to be more upscale, Italian — they were changing the whole place up, and I wasn’t sure if they were going to keep an old guy like me,” Jensen recalled. “But Kevin Penner, the chef, and B.J. [Calloway], the manager, kept coming to me and saying, ‘Don’t worry, J.J., we’re going to have a job for you.’

“I had my condo in Florida, and Ben got me a job for the winter at a golf club in Naples … Calusa Pines — they were still building the clubhouse, so we worked in a trailer,” he said. “And so I came back and I did my job, and they were happy, and I was happy, so it worked out.”

Jensen was born in Queens, went to work for Pan American Airways straight out of high school, and then General Foods. He landed in the hospitality industry when a growing family spurred a need for supplemental income. He started as a barback at Community Gardens, the legendary dance club in Queens Village.

After a bartender was caught stealing, the owner informed Jensen he was now a bartender.

“I said, ‘I don’t know how to tend bar,’ and he said to me, ‘Well, you do now,’” he said.

By the time he left Community Gardens a decade later, bartending had shifted from supplemental employment to primary employment. A gig at another Queens Village institution, the Lantern Inn, morphed into a job in Nassau County. His three children, by then in their 20s and living in the Hamptons, beckoned their father eastward.

Renowned New York City restaurateur Buzzy O’Keefe had just bought the venerable Bowden Square restaurant, had a “help wanted” sign in the window — and, just like that, Jensen was a Hamptonite.

And he remains one. Jensen has owned a condo in Fort Myers, where his son lives, for decades. He rarely spends more than a few weeks there. He said he has little interest in moving there or even becoming a traditional snowbird.

One of his two daughters, Lisa Fox, set up a “virtual retirement party” for him — really, just a last chance for his longtime customers to offer a final tip as a retirement gift on GoFundMe.

Jensen insists that if he had his druthers — and could shake himself back to health — he’d still be behind the bar on Newtown Lane.

“I was very lucky to work for some great people there — Paul Campanella, and Frank and Benny, and Bonnie,” he said. “I saw a lot of great people come and go through there. Bartenders — Don Sharkey — and waiters and customers. So many wonderful people. I’ll miss it.”