Yogi’s may have closed, but The Duck is a worthy sequel to that hit movie. On opening night, more than 70 customers jammed the new bar in Spanish Harlem, located at 2171 Second Avenue, between East 111th and 112th streets. Owner Tom McNeil was on hand, buying shots. “We’re not discovering a new neighborhood,” Tom told me, “we’re ruining another neighborhood.”

I got the first beer. It was served by Bobbie Jean, a Florida gal who used to work Thursday day shift at Yogi’s. Bobbie Jean was called up yesterday morning and told to report to The Duck. Likewise for Kate, a cocktail waitress from The Patriot, who pulled her first-ever bartending shift in admirable fashion in the “back room” at The Duck. The flame-haired stunner served the drinks with a big smile.

Tom was asked about the name. The Duck was just a name he used on his business papers when he was trying to think of a name for the new place. He said it doesn’t mean anything; but recently he found out that a firehouse around the corner from the bar has a duck mascot. Tom is encouraging customers to come in with letter “D” signs for the bar walls. He would prefer they be stolen, and in true Tom fashion, would most like ones that were shot off from “SOLD” signs. OK…

A few hours into the opening night party, after the jukebox started pumping out familiar tunes and the crowd picked up, Tom treated us with a free ribs spread from Green Apple BBQ, an excellent ribs joint at 362 East 112th St. “Try the pulled pork!” Tom told us, as he slapped down a tray of pig. Poor Kate, a vegetarian… it was dynamite food. So far there is only one giant TV in the front bar, but Tom says they are buying more. I hope they do not come from Yogi’s… another great thing, and worth a trip soon, is the bathrooms are pristine. I predict within a week they will be destroyed.

Since I was the first customer, I got the first beer. A Bud Light. Another guy came in behind me and got a PBR. My first shot was Weller Reserve bourbon, on Tom, who said its much better than Jack. “It costs more, but I won’t charge more,” he said to me.

About the bar: It is twice the size as Yogi’s. The front bar is smallish, with an unusual curve design. It has a high ceiling, perfect for dancing. However, it is not long, so it would be hard for more than one bartender to be back there. The back room is pretty long, and has a door that opens to the side street (112th). It has a pool table and lots of seats. The low ceiling would be good for midgets to dance on the bar.

Good news for country music lovers: the same jukebox CDs were moved from Yogi’s. Even the song numbers are the same.

It was a great crowd on opening night. Some of the regulars from Yogi’s came out, such as Paul Katcher (customer 3) and Bass Ale Man.

Expect good things from The Duck.

More photos here.

This Tuesday night, Oct. 7, my nephew was in town, so we went out for dinner at Artie’s on Broadway near 83rd Street. I had taken him to Yogi’s a time or two, and normally we would have stopped in to see the luscious Theresa, the queen of Tuesday nights for about the last seven or eight years.

Before heading to the restaurant, I passed by Yogi’s to see if somehow my recollection that it had closed this past Saturday night was just a hallucination implanted by alien kidnappers from a hostile galaxy, or maybe some falsehood claimed in a campaign attack ad. Maybe I had dreamt it all, and now that the beer from the previous week had worn off (except on my dirty laundry awaiting cleaning), I would discover that it was all some big misunderstanding.

And maybe I would also get a text from Halle Berry saying that her hotel key was under the doormat of room 1410.

The place was dark and locked. It was night when I arrived and hard to see inside, but it looked like any ordinary, boring, spiritless bar. The big labels on the beer taps appeared to have been removed. There were some things littered about, although the liquor bottles still seemed to sit there. And outside, the bear was gone, gone for the first time in about 25 or so years. It was as if its heart and soul had been ripped out.

I only stayed outside the bar a couple of minutes, but in that brief time I heard several passersby commenting on the countdown clock and saying, “They held out as long as they could.” If such decisions were left up to the community, and not some faceless real estate bandits, I might be drinking there right now instead of posting this.

My nephew and I both decided to split after dinner instead of getting beers somewhere else. He has a very busy schedule while here, and I just didn’t feel like suddenly looking for a new bar home on the Upper West Side after first having gone there, when it was still McGowan’s, at some time I now wish I had recorded, in the mid or late 1970′s.

That is what Yogi’s was to so many of us, a place for our drinking family and a place for our real family. I had taken countless people there from all around the world, and mostly made ready converts of them, even on the slowest of nights.

First what made Yogi’s special was the people. While every place has its share of assholes, the people plus the setting made most folks quite friendly, and friendlier than any bar I have frequented either regularly or even a few times.

The music played a large role in that. The main message of the rockin’, outlaw country music which filled its semi-functional jukebox was that life and individual happiness should be celebrated. There is a true passion for freedom in these tunes, freedom in the individual and social sense and not just meaning formal freedom like voting, etc. You could celebrate you right there, while drinking your beer, singing and yee-hawing along with the songs, and then trying to wade through the soggy men’s room when it was time to unload.

The gorgeous women behind the bar also, of course, made Yogi’s special. Most of them, especially the veterans, made you feel right at home. Many of us guys in there couldn’t pass as metrosexuals if it meant getting a chunk of that bailout loot. It usually didn’t matter quite what you looked like, and especially what you were wearing – so long as you tipped nicely, thank you.

And the cheap, cold beer, that elixir of the common man and woman, was the cornerstone of this perfect quartet which made so many of us fall in love with this filthy, little place.

The people, the music, the women, and the beer – all guarded by the bear, which has since gone missing.

Now we are orphans again, left to search for a new bar home either farther away or with a different vibe. Hopefully The Duck, which opens Thursday, will do well, and there are always gems like Doc Holliday’s remaining, but East Harlem and the East Village may be too far to travel for those who liked to get smashed while listening to Merle and Willie on the Upper West Side.

At the behest of drinking buddy Joe, I hung around as long as they would let me to be the last paying customer to exit Yogi’s, forever, at this location anyway. He said it was only fitting, since I probably had been going to this bar the longest of anyone there that night, and certainly among the longest.

A crowd hung around outside for some time afterwards, just as it started to rain, as if David Allan Coe went to pick up his mom again. The raindrops hastened everyone’s retreat, the countdown clock with all those zeros told the story, and it was over.

The NYCBP.com message boards have some great recaps of the last night there by many of my rowdy friends. I am not posting my fuzzy pictures taken with my camera phone, as there were many folks there with real, fancy, digital jobs who have promised to flood us with these memories. But I still have my pics to save.

The last song played on that ole jukebox was Sawyer Brown’s “Some Girls Do.” Its line of “I ain’t first class, but I ain’t white trash” describes a lot of us who walked in the door past that bear. And for those who loved Yogi’s, whether or not they were white anything, the line, “Some girls don’t like boys like me, but some girls do”, summed up a lot of our experiences, both there and elsewhere.

There is no hiding the sadness so many of us are feeling now that Yogi’s is gone. It was surreal knowing what the countdown clock said, and it will take some time and frustrations like I experienced Tuesday night for it to sink in. A lot of us put in some extra tours of drinking duty during this last week at Yogi’s, so we may not be all that ready or eager to whoop it up this soon. But the emptiness will hit you, sooner, probably, than later.

Such were the instructions of bar owner Tom McNeil, shortly after 2 AM Friday night/Saturday morning, on the next to last night at Yogi’s, to those who were planning to come for the final night of drinking, Saturday, October 4. Presumably he meant only the ladies, but, as we see from some of the photos below, it would not surprise us if some of the Yogi’s men tried to show to the world that they indeed have balls.

I already wrote my Yogi’s epitaph on the chalkboard:

The countdown clock is getting scaringly low:

The lovely Patience was behind the bar:

Plenty of folks jammed the bar for this next to last night:

Free drink cards for The Duck, which opens Thursday, Oct. 9, were handed out:

Tom helped us see the philosophical side of Yogi’s closing:


And after the bar closed, it was time for Tom to rest:

Janet is looking for something here, and is also unsure of where she’ll land after Yogi’s closes.

The cold, cold hearts of the real estate parasites have robbed us of Yogi’s. Will we ever find another home like it again?

It was a surreal Monday night at Yogi’s. Mondays have been one of the liveliest nights at this bar over the years, and Monday, Sept. 29, was just that, with girls dancing on the bar, outlaw country music blaring from the jukebox, and the gorgeously frenetic bartender Patience looking as radiant as ever.

But this one was different, as it was the final Monday before Yogi’s closes for good on Saturday, October 4. For those who hadn’t heard or believed the news yet, there were signs posted outside and inside the bar:

There was a countdown clock facing the street:

Even the legendary sewer of a bathroom had graffiti with the news:

It will all be over Saturday. Hopefully, however, it will all resume Thursday, October 9, at The Duck and, we wish, at a new Yogi’s near the present one sometime in the future when the economy, finance, and the real estate markets, i.e., the “big money” which is closing down this Yogi’s, allow.

(All photos by Eddie Goldman, thank you.)

On October 4 Yogi’s will join the list of shuttered city bars and saloons. It will be quiet at the spot, 2156 Broadway, at 76th Street, for the first time in many years.

This has been a bad year for dive bars. We have lost Red Rock West, Scruffy Duffy’s, Collins Bar, Kevin St. James, and Time Out. Now comes word that the most beloved dive on the Upper West Side is closing up. The building was sold and will be torn down.

Yogi’s has been in the Tom McNeil empire for 10 years. Prior to that, the space was the Bear Bar. For decades before that, it was an Irish pub. As Yogi’s, it has been an oasis for country music lovers and fans of cheap bar and rowdy barmaids since Clinton was in office. It always delivered the goods: low-price drinks and raucous times. It has several hallmarks: disgusting restrooms, peanut shells on the floor, broken chairs, and sticky surfaces.

But Yogi’s always made the list of great NYCBP bars for it’s bartenders. Over the years there have been dozens, maybe hundreds, of women to work behind the bar. Some lasted just one night, other clocked in for years. Who was a regular customer of Jenn? Chaundra? Steph? Myriam? Patience? Theresa? Teresa? Lisa Marie? And so many more…

Tom still has The Patriot, and rumors are that he’s opening The Duck in Spanish Harlem soon. But for the next week, make a final stop to Yogi’s and pay your respects.

Nine-to-fivers will disagree, but for us nocturnal beer drinkers, would that the week had many, many Mondays. That way we could go to Yogi’s several times a week to drink with the electric Janet.

I know some of you had to watch those Robin Byrd shows from twenty years ago on channel 35 and then have dates with Five-Fingered Mary, but you’d have been better off postponing such bliss and heading over to Yogi’s. I got there around 1 AM, and you never know who will wander in.

There was some raven-haired girl dancing to the songs next to the bar. I told her if she danced on the bar, she could become famous. She said no way, and that she was already famous. I then asked her how she had become famous, and she said she’d tell me for a dollar. I wonder what 50 cents would have gotten.

Around 2 AM, guess who moseyed on in?