Frank Sinatra enthusiast Ed Shirak re-opened his one-room shrine devoted to “Ol’ Blue Eyes” Tuesday, featuring a new relic that is sure to excite fans of the Hoboken-born crooner who drop by for a visit. Shirak’s “From Here to Eternity” Sinatra museum will display one of the three copies of a recently uncovered 8-inch Sinatra record that is thought to be the first ever solo recording of the Voice. Earlier this month, Shirak closed the museum, went on vacation, and tried to figure what to do about zoning laws that apparently prohibited him from charging an entrance fee and performing a play for patrons as he had planned. Without the admission fee and the projected revenue from a play that Shirak wrote and stars in, the museum creator, who also owns a local chocolate store, said that the monthly operating expenses, which are approximately $1,200 a month, will be difficult to cover. City officials have said that Shirak could open a “store” dedicated to Sinatra and that city laws would allow him to sell items from the space he had rented at Monroe and Fourth streets, but he cannot operate a museum. “If he wants to, he can sell bubble gum, knick-knacks, pins, whatever he wants,” said Business Administrator George Crimmins. “Just no live entertainment, no admission fee and no alcoholic beverages. Not that he ever wanted to serve alcoholic beverages.” Shirak, who challenged Mayor Anthony Russo in the last mayoral election and also ran in the last at-large council election, said that City Hall was trying to make it impossible for him to operate the museum. “They are trying to bleed me dry,” Shirak said. “I’m not allowed to call it a museum and I’m not allowed to call it a shrine either. That’s the way that politicians are. They don’t come up with anything. And this is big. That’s why they want to shut this down, because they did not come up with it.” As he walked around “From Here to Eternity” Tuesday, Shirak said that he will sell pins and T-shirts from the Hoboken Historical Society, but that he does not think he can raise the $1,200 a month he needs to keep the facility open. “I could call it a store, but that is kind of tacky,” Shirak said. “It’s really a people’s museum. People from all over the place have gone out of their way to donate things to this place.” One of the pieces that has been donated to Shirak’s museum recently left him breathless. As he was knocking on doors to try and bolster his city council candidacy this fall, he happened to knock on Angela “Dolly” Calandriello’s door. “She said, ‘I hear you are starting this Frank Sinatra Museum,'” Shirak explained, “and she showed me an old record. Even though I did not win the election, we found a priceless recording.” Calandriello, who was on hand to help Shirak re-open the museum, said that until Shirak knocked on her door, she had no idea that the record might be worth something since it was so scratched up that it was not even possible to listen to it. “When I told him about the record, I thought he was going to go through the roof,” Caliendriello said. “He knew people in Brooklyn who could help make the sound come out of it again. It was so exciting.” Caliendriello said that her late husband, Walter Costello, had recorded the song with Sinatra in Sinatra’s parents’ home in either 1939 or 1940. Costello plays a faintly audible accordion that hums along beneath the unmistakable Sinatra voice on the recording. Since discovering the record, Shirak and Calandriello have had it cleaned up and copied it. They have provided a copy to the Hoboken Historical museum as well, but they have no plans to release it to the radio stations or music companies who have called to inquire about it. On the still-scratchy recording, Sinatra sings “Roses of Picardy,” a British song that was written in 1916. Shirak said that he believed Sinatra chose the song because he knew he was headed for larger venues and this was his way of saying goodbye to Hoboken. “He always had a way of knowing his destiny before he lived it,” Shirak said. “This is meaningful that we found this now. I always wanted to bring Frank and Hoboken back together again. He always acted like he would not be welcome in Hoboken again, and now we find this record.”
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