Operation: Takeover
Amid Greenpoint's plentiful meat markets sits an ancient Irish island in the kielbasa sea. It's an anachronistic hangover from the 'hood's Irish heyday, when tubular pork was called sausage. The bar has faded into near-obscurity on car-choked Manhattan Ave. So to find the saloon, polish your glasses and search for a signless grey building, where a neon Bud shamrock dully glows in the window, reminding passersbys of the past, while luring the curious into McGinn's, one of my favorite drinking secrets.
To call McGinn's a dive would be a disservice. At one time the bar oozed four-leaf goodness. Its two boat-size rooms would be filled with whiskey-powered patrons, ordering rounds at the room-length bar. A second, smaller bar (no longer functional) served hearty, alcohol-sopping food (judging by now-empty chafing dishes). But those days are as dead as Ronald Reagan.
McGinn's, circa 2006, is a somber affair. The spacious drinkery is coated in an eerie, glossy yellow paint, like coffee-stained teeth. The air smells musty and stale, of long-extinguished cigarettes and loneliness. A lone, vintage poker video game hides in a corner, cockroach-like. Despite, or perhaps because of, these shortcomings, I visit McGinn's monthly.
In every drinking session at this Irish throwback, no more than a dozen solitary men (women-ha!) sipped on minigoblets of strong, brown liquids and infernal seven-ounce beers. They're the sort rickety lushes swill to delude themselves into thinking they're just imbibing a little bit. Uh-huh. And my mom was only a little pregnant with me, right? You're either a drunk or not, so own it, buddy: Hit the Turkey's Nest and stick a 32-ounce Styrofoam Bud in each hand.
Anyway, the just-described scene is seemingly depressing, the Siberia of bargoing. "Why suggest another piss-scented shit hole?" you wonder. Trust me: Look beyond looks to find McGinn's beauty: It's a blank slate to fill with your friends. All of them. Plus their friends. And their enemies too. Let's dub this proposed action "takeoveritis."
It's endemic among old-man bars that have outlived their clientele. Take the East Village's Holiday Cocktail Lounge. Liver-hardened grandpas are gone (save for Stefan, the lovably incoherent drink-slinger), replaced by collegiates and slumming uptowners. Or gander at Williamsburg's Greenpoint Tavern. Polish laborers are supplanted by apple-cheeked boozers who thrill to ordering brew from blue-haired grannies. Takeoveritis is rooted in irony and economics: You spy a ramshackle bar with cheap beer and an open stool. What's not to love? Takeoveritis is no gentrification curse: New customers can save bars. After all, it's adapt or die.
And I just may die drinking at McGinn's. Sure, this Irish stalwart sells chest-hair-growing whiskey for four or five bucks, but stick to Schaefer on tap. A mug of the low-rent, Kool-Aid?sweet suds, which has so far avoided PBR-like cachet, costs a cool buck-fifty. The beer is poured by Richie. The silver-pompadoured bartender wordlessly fills mugs like a world-weary film-noir cop. He symbolizes and embodies a simpler time, when drinking was serious business-and men needed to get seriously drunk.
"This one's on me," he'll periodically say, refilling you and your friend's mugs after 30 minutes or three beers or three bucks in tips-some mysterious mental recipe equaling a buyback. Maybe the beer's free just because he likes you, thinks you need a buzz before bedtime. Or before the bar closes.
Like most old-man bars, McGinn's closes by 9, maybe 10 p.m. The clientele drinks away sunlight, then reluctantly shuffle home after the nightly news broadcasts, which they watch on McGinn's TVs with detached interest: A world's out there, sure, but there's no reason to take part in it. Why go anywhere else? Why leave the safety of a time-capsule past?
Why do I feel like I haven't convinced you? Sure, McGinn's is hardly ideal for meeting ladies (though women are welcome). Mr. Clean could stand to pay a visit. And, for the love of sweet Jesus, is it too much to ask for a jukebox? But McGinn's won't change: except, perhaps, to close its doors forever. So embrace the faded glory and bring a posse to Greenpoint's textbook early-evening bar. After all, at McGinn's the beer's cheap, and there's always, always an extra seat.
718-383-9768