McSorley's redux

 

McSorley's Saloon was the sole survivor of the anti-saloon laws of the pre-Prohibition and then the 1960s.  It served only beer, in a brightly lit ugly but inviting space unchanged since the 1880s or so.  The laws in NY prevented any place from calling itself a saloon (defined as a place that served liquor but not food) or being a saloon.  The actor Patrick O'Neal opened a restaurant/bar around Lincoln Center called O'Neal's Saloon. and even though it was in fact not a saloon (it served lots of food), it was forbidden by law to use that word, and O'Neal in a fit of pique (or good humor) renamed it O'Neal's Baloon.  

No food was served at McSorley's in the days I went there -- I rarely did, because it also, in those far off days, excluded women, at first by law and then by a general attitude of rejection, and a bar that has no women in it is charmless to me -- nothing but plates of Saltine crackers and "cheddar" cheese.  But at some time in its past it must occasionally have served turkey, because hanging on the crossbars of the overhead hanging lamps were dozens and dozens of turkey wishbones, hung up there and left for years, for decades, untouched and gathering an astonishing fur of dust.  (This display in itself might have helped keep out those unwanted women,)  This wonderful grotesquerie has no been cleaned up.  Here is a link to the NY Times article that describes it, which I wish I could read, but I've hit the pay wall with 23 days still left to go in the month.

www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/nyregion/07wishbone.html