Joel Renaldo

Who is Joel Renaldo?

Joel Renaldo was a restaurateur whose two story Bohemian restaurant, Joel Renaldo's Café, at 206 West 41st Street near Times Square in New York City was a Manhattan institution before and after the First World War. Max Weber's, oil painting, "Joel's Cafe," done in 1909 or 1910, portrays the bar. In 1910 he self-published his theory of evolution, "polygeneric theory", which hypothesized that each species was independently created when its time had come. In 1921, following raids on his establishment, Psychoanalysis of the "Reformer" A Further Contribution to the Sexual Theory which purported to demonstrate that the passion for reform of their neighbors by those who favored prohibition was a neurosis akin to a passion for "rape" or "eating caviar" was published.