Barmen: pols bad for biz

With security tight, and a cordon of cops, secret service and protestors surrounding the convention site, bartenders within the vicinity of the Garden are expecting business to be slow.
Taking as a template Boston, where the Democratic Convention was held in July, the outlook for the bar and restaurant business is at best a glass half empty.
While the Harp Bar across the street from Boston’s Fleet Center saw a brisk trade in July, bars a little way away from the Center saw trade decline. That might suggest that a bar and restaurant such as Tracks Raw Bar and Grill, located on the Pennsylvania Station concourse and, therefore, probably the closest bar to Madison Square Garden, will see an increase in business.
But owner Patrick O’Brien has made some significant changes to the menu in Tracks, which bills itself as the Oyster Bar of Penn Station.
Next week, O’Brien has cancelled all seafood shipments for the restaurant because the Convention will disrupt truck deliveries to the area. Expect chicken and hamburgers on the menu instead. And O’Brien has asked 20 percent of his staff to stay home.
“I’m counting on a slow week,” O’Brien said. “We’re hoping that a few protestors come in because commuters are going to stay away.”
The Charles Schwab branch at 2 Penn Plaza will shut for the entire week. Other businesses in the area are expecting a poor week of business and some are complaining that to get staff through the security cordon, they’ve had to fork out hundreds of dollars for NYPD identification badges.
And on top of all that, there are more traditional reasons for business to be bad: it’s just before Labor Day.
Experienced bar owners such as Des O’Brien at Langan’s on West 47th Street, a few minutes’ walk from Madison Square Garden and a few paces off Times Square, are able to look at their business history over the last several years and traditionally the pre-Labor Day week is a quiet one with many New Yorkers taking a final summer break.
This year, with the Convention in town and with the certainty of city disrupted by political protests, many more people are skipping town for the week.
O’Brien figures he might have one corporate lunch booking per day next week in a normal year. This year, the book is empty.
“People are trying to avoid the city at all costs,” O’Brien said. “Bars by Madison Square Garden are already booked out for private gigs. Once [conventioneers] come out of the Garden, they will probably go somewhere local, the places around the Garden itself.”
Of course, New York bar owners already have a rough guide with which to figure out the convention business: a quick phone call to Boston, which hosted the Democratic National Convention in July.
For the Harp Bar, located across the street from the Fleet Center where the Democrats convened, business was brisk, according to a bartender. What post-convention bounce candidate John Kerry may not have felt, was certainly felt by the bars closest to the Convention. Bars farther away had no such luck. A Boston bar owner told O’Brien that the bars did 10 percent of the normal late July business, because of the security presence.
The same rule seems set to apply here in New York City, where bars such as Tir na Nog, over by Penn Plaza at the rear of Madison Square Garden, are expecting business to be better.
But O’Brien cautioned that in-house catering for the conventioneers might mean that they do not even have to leave the garden or their hotels in order to find food and drink.
An off-duty bartender who declined to be identified also supported this point of view, saying that with security concerns many conventioneers will stay put within the security zone.
“They’ll go stir-crazy, but they will have food and drink laid on; it will be coming out of their ears,” he opined.
“I’m just looking for a regular week’s trade,” O’Brien concluded. “We’re predominately corporate at Langan’s, so this is a quiet time of year.”
Over on Eighth Avenue, just a few paces south of the Garden’s southwestern exit, is a new Blarney Stone, touted as being a flagship for the famous Irish bar chain.
Bartender Maria, serving last Tuesday evening to an almost-empty bar, said that the staff were hopeful of a decent trade during the convention but not too hopeful.
“We’re staying open to see what happens,” she said, adding that other establishments in the area, fearful of problems with protestors and police, may close for the duration of the convention.
The final analysis? In this year’s climate, for restaurants and bars at least, Republicans and Democrats are bad for business.