Close-up Photo of the Smirk at Green Parrot

The Story of Smirk

For nearly 40 years that enigmatic countenance, that sphinxlike kisser, has gazed out from the plywood shutter on the Southard Street facade of The Green Parrot.

Facing the barroom when the Parrot is open and facing the street when we are closed, Smirk, has, as we say, “Seen it All”.

Photo of the Artist Saul Paul Stewart

Circa 1975

In the then-owners’ effort to dress the place up, Smirk leapt from the pallete of artist and former Green Parrot bartender Saul Paul Stewart in 1975 when amazingly, the only other things resembling art that adorned the Parrot’s walls was a rather grisly knock-off of the famous Karsh Hemingway portrait, also by Stewart, and screwed to the opposite wall, an equally disturbing snow shovel with several bullet holes in it.

Photo of Smirk hanging in Green Parrot

Inspired

The now-iconic portrait was inspired by a photo in an 1974 National Geographic article titled “The England of Charles Dickens depicting “fair-skinned and flaxen- haired female student (yes, Smirk was a girl).

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