![gay bars new york greenwich village gay bars new york greenwich village](https://nomadicboys.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/New-York-City-gay-cities-in-America.jpg)
Posted in Bars and restaurants, Disasters and crimes, Politics, West Village | 3 Comments »īack in the early to mid-19th century, when the Village really was a country village north of the main city, this quaint clapboard house became a tavern known as the Old Grapevine.
![gay bars new york greenwich village gay bars new york greenwich village](https://media.timeout.com/images/100629575/750/562/image.jpg)
Tags: 12 Gay Street, alleys of New York City, Gay Street NYC, Gay Street West Village, Greenwich Village bars, Mayor Jimmy Walker, New York during Prohibition, New York speakeasies, Speakeasies of Greenwich Village property, on the corner of Waverly Place, is rumored to be inhabited by a restless spirit who walks the creaking floorboards at night,” states a 2009 New York Daily News article. After the Pirate’s Den closed down, Mayor Jimmy Walker, a notorious partier and playboy, moved his showgirl mistress here, turning the house into kind of a second Mayoral home.Ĭould he be the mysterious figure in a top hat and tails, dubbed the Gay Street Phantom, who is said to creep around the stairs at night? Twelve Gay Street isn’t only known for its liquor joint rep. “ clanking chains, clashing cutlasses, ship’s lanterns, and patch-eyed buccaneer waiters,” writes George Chauncey in his book Gay New York. Located near other Village speakeasies, such as Julius’ on West 10th Street and the Red Head on Sixth Avenue, the Pirate’s Den was more of a tourist trap than a place for locals. See the metal arch placed in front of the building? It supposedly marked the bar’s basement entrance. So it’s hardly a surprise to learn that one existed here in the 1920s.Ĭalled the Pirate’s Den, the illegal bar was run out of number 12, a Federal-style house built in 1827-back when Gay Street was just a slender stable alley in up-and-coming Greenwich Village. Posted in Bars and restaurants, Music, art, theater, Poets and writers, West Village | 9 Comments »Ĭrooked little Gay Street looks like the perfect place to open a speakeasy. Tags: Clancy Brothers, Greenwich Village 1960s, Greenwich Village bars, legendary bars New York City, Lion's Head Christopher Street, Lion's Head Tavern Greenwich Village, New York 1960s, Pete Hamill There are accounts like Hamill’s in many books and memoirs, but more and more of the memories of nights at the Lion’s Head are lost to the ages. Kettle of Fish still packs in crowds, but too many of the regulars who remember the “glorious mixture” Hamill recalls at the Lion’s Head are not with us anymore. The Lion’s Head has been shuttered for 21 years in its place is the Kettle of Fish (below), another old-school Village bar that moved over from MacDougal Street.
#GAY BARS NEW YORK GREENWICH VILLAGE FULL#
Everybody joined in singing, drinking waterfalls of beer, emptying bottles of whiskey, full of laughter and noise and a sense that I can only describe as joy.” “On any given night, the Clancy Brothers would take over the large round table in the back room. “I don’t think many New York bars ever had such a glorious mixture of newspapermen, painters, musicians, seamen, ex-communists, priests and nuns, athletes, stockbrokers, politicians, and folksingers, bound together in the leveling democracy of drink.” “In the beginning, the Head had a square three-sided bar, with dart boards on several walls and no jukebox,” he writes. Pete Hamill, a writer at the New York Post in the mid-1960s, recalled the energy and excitement there in his wonderful 1994 memoir, A Drinking Life.
![gay bars new york greenwich village gay bars new york greenwich village](https://www.history.com/.image/ar_1:1%2Cc_fill%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_1200/MTY0MjQ4MDY0NzA4NTg0NTc3/stonewall-gettyimages-105126018.jpg)
That’s when the downstairs bar at 59 Christopher Street equally attracted literary types and longshoremen, and drinkers could rub elbows with writers, newspaper reporters, Irish folk singers, politicians, and a pre-fame Jessica Lange, who waited tables. And even past its heyday, it lingered on as a popular neighborhood bar until the taxman shut its doors in 1996 (left, during last call).īut the Lion Head’s glory days as a legendary Greenwich Village watering hole was during the 1960s.
![gay bars new york greenwich village gay bars new york greenwich village](https://untappedcities.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Gay-Liberation-Monument-George-Segal-Greenwich-Village-Christopher-Park-Stonewall-Inn-NYC.jpg)
It had an early incarnation on Hudson Street.