We are going to begin a new feature on NYCBP this week: weekly bartender recommendations. I am going to kick things off with Friday nights. So post your picks for best bartenders on Friday nights. Don’t forget:
- Her/His name and where they work
- Why she/he is a great bartender
- Anything special she/he makes

Let’s get this site back up and running in fine fashion. You can post photos too.

Well I have not blogged in a long time, so let’s start off with a long-overdue post. And why not talk about some dive bars we go to a lot: The Patriot and the (new) Cheapshots. I would talk about The Duck too, but since I was on “hiatus” and not blogging, the bar closed. That’s a drag, because I loved the place. Not to death, but I did love going there.

So, where to begin? The Patriot.

First, why are so many of the bartenders so horrible? There are some great ones, and I am going to ask for the regulars to post their names below in the comments section of the blog (a novel concept, I know). Since I only get to The Patriot once a month, I can’t speak to who the great ones are. But when I’ve been there with Bass Ale Man and PaulKatcher.com, there have been a few that are considered starts. The longtime veterans seem to have all been fired. But I am particularly peeved about the newcomers.

Hiring some rookie who just moved to New York is fine with me. But if the bartenders have no experience or pizzazz, what’s the point? Too many bartenders at The Patriot just stare at you, like they have no idea how to interact with a customer. This is definitely not how Tommy used to run his bars, which were 100% about customer interaction. Dare I say it? Most of the bartenders are afraid of the customers.

A few months ago, Tommy took over Cheapshots, which is a stone’s throw from Coyote Ugly. I admit I only went to Cheapshots to see Carmit on Friday afternoons. When Tommy took over he cleaned house and canned everyone. That’s his business. But the staff, from the reports, is that these are the same minor leaguers who come over from The Patriot. Has anyone anything else to add to this?

It’s a sad thing about The Duck closing. However, it seemed to be inevitable. There is only one real factor, and that’s the location. Being in El Barrio, it was just a little too sketch for a lot of Tom’s crowd to venture too. Sure, you had to be a real pussy not to want to walk from Lexington Avenue to Second Avenue, but if you are plastered, that’s not smart in any neighborhood. But I think the location turned a lot of people off. I did like the setup, with the 2 bars. Every time I went there I had a blast; the highlight being the World Series victory last year.

I hope this gets some of you talking about how the bar scene is going in the world of dive bars. Comments are welcome.

I’m a huge Elvis fan. I never saw him perform live. So this is what I feel like knowing that Chaundra is coming out of retirement after three years away from bartending. She is going to be part of Little Michelle’s all-star team at Blue Ruin, which I already told you rocks. The bar on Ninth Avenue and 40th Street will be the place to be on Saturday night.

I can’t emphasize enough how awesome a bartender Chaundra is. She worked at three of the greatest saloons in the city (all shuttered): The Village Idiot, Yogi’s and Who’s on First. The girl INVENTED theme nights with her partner, Jenn. Let me put it to you this way: before Chaundra there was no Nurse Night, Catholic School Girl Night, French Maid Night, etc.

Her bartending skills are incredible. She is so fast and flies around the bar. She is a whirlwind in action. When we had NYCBP awards and voting back in the day, Chaundra cleaned up time and again. She is of course in the NYCBP Hall of Fame, along with so many all-stars. (So is Rachel, formerly of Red Rock West, who works Fridays at Blue Ruin).

Getting Chaundra back behind the bar is like going back to 1999 for me. I can’t wait to drink with this woman, and you should not miss out.

Back in another time and era, pre-October 4, 2008, that is, many of us who had formerly lived on the Upper West Side would regularly make pilgrimages to our dearly beloved Yogi’s. Its closing by the real estate sharks made numerous headlines, and far beyond the confines of New York, judging alone by the responses I have personally received about our coverage of its demise.

On the night of its closing, numerous writers, journalists, and photographers showed up both to record this sad event, and also to have one last beer or shot, since at least some of them had puked there more than once.

While trying to navigate through the human sea of beer-worshippers who had gathered there that night, I started talking to this fellow who said he was there covering the closing for VanityFair.com. He said his name was George Gurley, and we talked.

His story, with the politically potent title of “Another Dive Bar Dies in Bloomberg’s Manhattan”, indeed captured the flavor, sounds, and scent of this bar, from the customers to the music to the bartenders to the bathrooms.

The story included a quote from me that I had wanted to celebrate my 60th birthday at Yogi’s. That joyous day was Sunday, March 22, 2009. I had a cold all week, so I postponed any celebratory drinking until my aging body said “beer and vodka” to me instead of “soup and tea.”

But I was in the neighborhood to have dinner and shop, so I wandered a few blocks to the intersection of 76th Street and Broadway, and sat down on a wooden bench in the area which separates Broadway. I had passed by the site a few times when it was all boarded up, and had also seen it recently now that the entire building has been ripped down, destroyed, incinerated, obliterated from our lives.

Now I have a photo of it, albeit an unintentionally misty one because I took it late at night with a phone camera, and not a real one.

I think the seeming haze adds a surreal quality to the photo, since all it took to destroy such a vibrant mini-community and oasis of controlled debauchery was the unquenched zeal and greed of a tiny handful of real estate, banking, and political pirates.

I’ll be back drinking again very soon, now in my 60th year. I hope to see y’all in the barrooms – unless, of course, you’re one of those types of bastards who go around looting and stealing from people like us. Our day is coming, and we’ll bury you at the foot of the big beer can mountain. You can count on that, boys.

Tommy with Megan at The Patriot.

Could Tommy McNeill have us drinking again at 457 West 17th Street, the former home of Red Rock West? Our “reliable sources” tell us that Tommy, the fleshy proprietor of The Patriot and The Duck, is about to take over the old Red Rock, which closed amid lawsuits, acrimony and much bad karma in May 2008 after a 13-year run.

This is good news for dive bar fans, as it comes on the heels of word that Tommy is busy with carpenters and electricians to ready his third bar—so far unnamed—on East 92nd and Second Avenue (which coincidently, also held the defunct Red Rock Roadhouse, which shuttered two years ago).

Tommy has been the pied piper of dive bars in Manhattan for 20 years. Without him, there would be none of the early 1990s dives that exist today: Coyote Ugly (he gave founder Liliana Lovell her start in the bar game), Hogs ‘n’ Heifers (he was the brains of the original operation) nor Doc Holliday’s (Tommy was an original investor and co-owner, and came up with the name). When he closed the original Village Idiot on First Avenue and 9th Street in 1994, and moved across town to 14th and Tenth, we rejoiced. That place closed in 2004 and his Upper West Side operation, Yogi’s, closed in October 2008. He has been running The Patriot (Chambers and Church) for five years and The Duck (West 112th and Second Ave) for less than six months. With Tommy, it is cheap beer and Johnny Cash tunes at all times. He has done more for the bottom line of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Jack Daniels in New York than any other person.

Could he pull this off in the shadow of the High Line? Of course. We saw him mobilize the bartenders from The Patriot and Yogi’s and move into The Duck in a matter of hours. He has been hiring new girls like crazy for the past several weeks. As soon as the Upper East Side bar opens—which could be in a matter of weeks—he will have his hands full getting the old Red Rock West in shape to open.

Could we see Dara of The Patriot/The Duck at the old Red Rock? We hope so!

What can we expect? When Red Rock West folded, the staff of about a dozen bartenders scattered to the four corners of the city. A couple found spots at Coyote Ugly (where they had to tone down their antics, sad to say). Others moved to the outer boroughs. In the world of Tommy, he will staff the bar with the same girls that work for him at The Patriot and The Duck. Could it open by Memorial Day for Fleet Week? We hope so.

One big change that separates Tommy’s bars from the now-defunct Red Rock is that he never needs hulking bouncers or doormen, who stood around and intimidated the customers. Tommy hires bartenders that run the bars, do the stocking, and handle all the chores at the bar. So we do not think he will even think about re-hiring any of the bouncers or support staff that worked at Red Rock (and this includes the poor soul who had to guard the motorcycles). I can think of only one male face I want to see Tommy bring back: BOB. That dude was the BBQ master, and his hog roasts were legendary. If Bob is grilling, it will be happy days on West 17th Street again.

Tommy is a smart businessman, and savvy where he picks his bars: his new Second Avenue bar is in a prime spot for the Second Avenue Subway when it opens in six years, and even better, when the High Line park opens, his new bar will be in it’s shadow. It looks like 2009 is going to be a great year for dive bar patrons!

The Times has the story today that The Holland Bar is coming back from the dead. This is such good news on so many levels. It is also a sign of the times: The bar got back into its old spot because the landlord couldn’t get anyone to rent the space with a jacked up rent.

According to Mr. Kelly, who has owned the bar since 1998, the landlord refused to renew the lease in the hopes that he could make more money converting the building for residential use or selling it off. But such plans apparently did not work out, and the landlord offered Mr. Kelly his old space back starting Jan. 1, albeit at a 20 percent increase in the rent. Now the Holland is scheduled to reopen its taps as soon as Wednesday.

This is great! And I am glad the Times finally is paying attention to dive bars. It totally missed the closing in 2008 of Yogi’s and Red Rock West.

Regardless of which holiday you celebrate (or, for people like me, don’t), you can’t help being bombarded this time of year by armies of Santa Clauses, usually seeking a bailout, and from you.

Did you ever wonder where the hell all this money goes? Have you ever received a detailed accounting of who gets what from your handouts? And are you now or have you ever been just a tad suspicious that this “goodwill to all” stuff is merely another scam or racket, just like the stock market?

I was ruminating about just such things the other night at The Patriot Saloon, where I somehow ended up after being a guest on Joey Reynolds’s late night radio talk show on WOR. As I was sitting there, enjoying the lovely Jessica tending bar, and talking with a bunch of old friends who are fellow survivors of Yogi’s, I noticed another one of these Santa guys standing in the bar.

Now, I always wondered why his nose was flaming red, but now I had ironclad, documentary proof: Santa is a big fat boozer, and we caught him red-nosed and red-handed at The Patriot with a beer can in his hand.

So next time one of his cronies tries to bum some dough from you, just ask him if he wants a can or a bottle, laugh, and then walk away. Then go to the nearest dive bar, and if I’m there, buy me a cold one. At least you’ll know where your money went, and, after I hit the can, that while it was in the end flushed down the drain, it was put to good use.

(Photos by Eddie Goldman.)

A few months ago, we started to chronicle the doings of veteran bartender Lauren. She had just started working at Yogi’s shortly before the real estate sharks destroyed it, and after the bar where she had worked for six years, Fubar, had physically been destroyed by a crane collapse.

More recently, I ran into her Sunday night at The Patriot Saloon, where for that one night she was filling in. But she does now have two regular shifts: Wednesday nights at The Duck, and Friday nights at The Patriot. So go see her, somewhere, anywhere, as often as you can.

Now you really have no excuse ever to stay home!

I guess turkey day is the start of what is called the holiday season. That is what all these incessant advertisements and commercials have been insisting, and they wouldn’t lie, would they?

For some, this time of year is a busy one, pre-programmed to carry out shopping and all sorts of other rituals. The creative tendencies, whether produced by DNA, experience good and bad, or, more likely, some equation involving the two, tend to get overwhelmed or even crushed in this seasonal onslaught of conformity and commercialism.

Such a time is particularly difficult for those among us who think and, more to the point, act independently. Convention, custom, fashion, and the like count for naught to many of us, unless they can be shown to make sense, to be proved so.

But we, the independent and thinking folk, are a minority. Some of that is by economic necessity, as any economic system will not reward its outsiders.

So what do we do, while the prevailing mores, prejudices, and fears are utilized and manipulated to marginalize us? Sure, we all fight back in our own ways, to varying degrees of effectiveness. But alas, we are also very human, fallible, and emotionally vulnerable, too.

In the meantime, while the existing dumbness prevails, we need to feed our minds and spirits. What the dominant institutions cannot provide our critical minds, we find elsewhere, in the public houses, taverns, barrooms, and honky tonks. These crazy places may be our best refuge from all this insanity. Our problems may not be solved there, but our hearts and minds can be recharged so we can not only survive this season, but continue to go against the tide.

For us NYCBP’ers, this has become a harder task with the closure of so many of our bars like Yogi’s this year. But they are still out there, so don’t hesitate to free yourself from all this mindlessness. Have a rowdy good time, but remember to tip well.