Life above the bar.

Making home among barstools and brownstones.

Our New York City apartment is short and narrow. Closet-sized bedrooms on opposite ends connect by a walkway that passes a restroom with a clawfoot tub, a serviceable kitchen, and a living space with windows framing brownstones across the cobblestone street. Few of the windows are functioning—but situated on a southwest facing corner, and a stone’s throw from the Hudson River—light pours through the dusty glass onto white walls. We’re fortunate for the the breathing room that natural light provides in a city that many consider asphyxiating.

In its layout, the flat is much like the 36 foot trailer that my parents hauled south from the Midwest for camping trips during my youth; sincerely good memories of fishing waterways that flanked the campgrounds and chewing candy cigarettes on my bicycle.

Now, I find myself running along Manhattan’s waterways and smoking a cigarette here and there when the social situation seems to warrant it. Nostalgia, typically, is unhealthy.

Moving our life from the Midwest to New York, my wife and I had a goal to become regulars in the neighborhood. And our roommates, too, it was a goal we shared. No—in our case, “roommates” is not a metonymy for children. We’re just a married couple of twelve years sharing a kitchen and bathroom with two other late twenty-somethings. Mercifully, they’re also cherished friends on nine days out of ten. It’s New York; the rent ain’t cheap—so our arrangement is far worth those three contentious days per month.

Going in, we all thought becoming a regular meant honing in on a favorite coffee shop or a neighborhood restaurant, somewhere that we could grow to be part of the fabric—where we’d be recognized by name. We wanted to make home. But we never drew it up to be a dive bar.

In the afternoons, writing at the dining table in our living space, I listen to birds sing melodies that one would not expect in chorus with honking horns or breaking glass outside the dive below. It’s an unconventional symphony that has transformed from overstimulating to a genuine comfort. 

At night, as we dine around the same table, conversations outside leak through the windows. The sloping wood floors reverberate familiar anthems against our bare feet. Bar patrons at the watering hole fervently join in to hit [miss] the high notes, bottles raised overhead. There are good times to be had, nearby.

“How’s the big city?” Aunts and cousins ask. “What are you enjoying most since the move?”

And it’s just that: the good times. Beyond our walls, they’re happening. People are making them—young and old. We pay arms and legs and by most standards still other body parts to live in the city for the accessibility to experience just about anything. But the truth is that we don’t even need a real lick of it. As we cozy inside on any given night with Chinese takeout delivered via e-bike, just knowing it’s all within our grasp is enchantment.

But when we do step out of the apartment—the lot of us—we live out the many things that make our New York. The good, the bad, and as little of the ugly as we can negotiate.

First, and always, heading out into the neighborhood, we walk by the bar. Sometimes, inspiration strikes, and it also becomes our first stopping point. These are good days.

Upon entry, we’re greeted by concrete walls lined with photographs of musicians and the checkerboard floor that hugs our soles with every step. The room resonates with music—the same song we heard just a moment ago from upstairs, of course. If things are on the quiet side, we’ll grab some stools and spark up conversation. If it’s busy, we’ll curl into our favorite corner and order with hand signals from whichever friend [bartender] is behind the taps. The tunes will quickly change course, correcting to one of our favorites. You could say we’re part of the fabric.

There are no froofy drink menus here. No outlandishly-named cocktails. Things are kept simple, because bars are supposed to be easy to understand. 

It’s a place that—at the right time—Mr. Anthony Bourdain himself may have wandered in for a beer in a bottle. And he wouldn’t have been the only man of prominence to frequent this watering hole. The Beatles used to grab a beer here, for God’s sake! And now it’s us? Things have really gone awry. 

But I smile about it all. In a setting such as this, I take a moment to consider the lives that once passed through such a simple room and the ways they may have thought about the things we face today. That’s history, isn’t it? Like most things, it starts with people. Individuals. I used to only feel this way when traveling, but that changes when home becomes New York. 

George Herdt’s Bar, 1972 | West Village, NYC

On the days when our bar is not the first stop, we step past the previous night’s cigarette butts and broken bottles, taking in the other elements that now carry a foreign turned fresh feeling of home. There are our neighborhood’s newspapers on the steps of townhomes—yes, morning papers in print! Gaggles of dogs are walking their professional dog-walkers—it’s usually backwards in that way. The laundromat a few blocks over is open, where we need not leave name or phone number at the drop. We find novelty in things that are expected.

Walking everywhere, somehow, makes each interaction more personal. I now know the man who reads on the corner, Alan, as well as some of my old friends. His old lady, Girlie, rests always at his feet, protectively shielding her ball from the passerby. Moments of intimacy are more valuable in this place of chaos—even if they are, at times, too few and far between.

I’ll confess, everything about our little situation isn’t just peachy. The city has its issues. And the bar, too, has an underbelly that takes many forms. Mostly mice and rats, galore. Sure, they’re outside the bar in droves, but the former is also a regular guest just upstairs in our apartment. We give them pet names and treat them well, leaving out dabs of peanut butter under miniature guillotines to draw them in and put them out. We’ve agreed that should a rat ever make its way into the unit, we’ll purchase a firearm. One can’t be too prepared.

We’ve seen many things that you just don’t get used to. Enough for a stand-alone essay, but I don’t think we’ll go there. I’m happy with the simple take that the city’s allure outweighs its inadequacies.

One thing I strongly believe: New York is for everyone. It belongs to the world. It’s not what you’ve heard about before you arrived. People are welcoming here. And there’s a good chance you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for—if any of us truly know what that is. To live and to love life is a matter of having options.

Wherever we find ourselves late in the day, up a few streets or across the avenues, there’s a distinct comfort knowing of a steady option to pour one more just a flight of stairs from good night’s rest. It’s always in our back pocket that the bar will be open. When things inside are descending into chaos, bodies shoulder-to-shoulder like it can get, we’ll grab some take-homes for the short climb home. It’s a privilege of being a regular. One of the many that we’ve tendered with regularity.

Like being out of ice while entertaining—we just run downstairs and fill up a bag in the bar kitchen. Beer running low in the fridge? Grab a case from the bar. We can settle it up later. Need to kick overstayed guests to the curb? “Let’s all go down to the bar.” It works.

In the end, more often than not, I’m just happy being wherever I am with the people I want to be around. I do suppose that’s all of us. But like people that carry a certain magnetism about them, so too can a place. And here living with dear friends in a neighborhood eminent as a setting for sitcoms, our lives have become a real one. The everyday is an honest embellishment. It really is life above the bar.