The bar necessities

Sometimes they walk out of the bar completely forgetting the large chunk of change from a $50 note that they left on the bar. But then some out-of-towner lights a cigarette. Now half the crowd is smoking.
It’s St. Patrick’s Day, 2004. This could be the scene that confronts the hardworking bar and wait staff that, while the rest of us observe, go to work.
March 17 is by far the busiest day of the year for almost every Irish bar and restaurant in the city and there are few better places to celebrate St Patrick’s Day in the traditional manner than New York City.
Minimal preparation is needed for the average punter: wear something green, dress for the weather (beware the horizontal sleet), bring I.D., wallet and wear your drinking boots.
Behind the bar, it’s a different story. Bar staff report that there are a few fundamental rules when preparing for St Patrick’s Day.
“A very traditional menu,” said Des O’Brien, manager of Langan’s Bar just off Times Square on 47th Street. “A short menu, that is. Corned beef and cabbage, corned beef sandwiches, shepherd’s pie. And the night before, you clear out the whole bar.”
O’Brien’s last comment is repeated by staff across the entire city: clearing out the bar furniture, stools, chairs, tables, for St. Patrick’s Day — not out of any cynical feeling that the furniture takes up space that could be used by paying customers. It’s simply so that more people can get in to enjoy the fun.
“We rent a U-Haul,” said Kieran Staunton at O’Neill’s Bar on Third Avenue. “We put tables and chairs in it and take them away for the period of time.”
Staunton has been doing St Patrick’s Day at O’Neill’s — the bar at which to be seen with Sinn Fein — since 1997, so experience must make each new season easier? Staunton laughed heartily.
“Yes, but we still panic,” he said. “I’d say we have a total staff of 27 for the day, and it’s all hands on deck. We really cut the menu down and offer only three, four items. Corned beef and cabbage, corned beef sandwiches, sausage and mash, fish and chips.”
For 72 hours, things are crazy, he continued, with preparation, buildup and meltdown.
“The day staff meets the night staff,” he said. Extra kegs of beer are brought in — no one knows how many pints are served beyond the inexact “a helluva lot.” Many bars choose to go plastic — plastic cups that is, not credit cards. Even with a good-humored crowd, glasses get broken, so plastic containers make sense for a lot of owners.
Though things get crazy, staff morale is high, said John Tevan of Doc Watson’s on Second Avenue. Doc’s celebrated its eighth anniversary last Tuesday.
“Nobody is barging through anybody,” he said. “A lot of people bounce around from bar to bar, so you get a shifting crowd all day long.”
One bartender who declined to be identified said that he will come to work at 6 a.m. on St Patrick’s Day, hoping that the night staff will have been kind to him and left the place shipshape — they usually do.
By 10 a.m., he will be pouring pints in rapid succession. He admitted that it’s not the best day of the year to expect the perfectly pulled pint of Guinness.
“We’re trying to fire out the pints as fast as possible,” he said. “And you might say a certain amount of quality get sacrificed.
“I get a half-hour cigarette break at 5, then work through to 9 or 10,” he continued. Sometimes, he said, it seems like a cruel form of punishment but the time passes quickly.
John Tevan added: “People say it’s a day for bar owners rather than the staff,” but Des O’Brien said things even out. “By sheer volume, the staff do all right,” he said.
What might be called “baraphernalia” deck out the walls of many Irish bars: tin pots, Irish flags, bar mats, proclamations, posters of JFK, pictures of De Valera or Michael Collins, old bicycles. They make an easy target for scavengers, said Tevan.
“We take down as lot of the stuff that might walk,” he said.

Location location
Tevan’s bar is on Second Avenue at 77th Street, so he gets the waves of marchers coming off the Fifth Avenue parade route. They usually stay for one or two drinks, then pass on.
“Maybe 30 or 40 percent of people on the day are tourists,” said Tevan, who’s from Dublin. “By noon the place is packed. You get an initial wave of firemen and cops from Fifth Avenue, then everyone heads over.”
He reckons as many as 2000 people pass through his doors on St Patrick’s Day.
All bars are not created equally. Location alone determines a lot. So does ambience.
At Brendan’s bar and grill on 35th Street in Midtown Manhattan, manager Brendan Kelly said his high-ceilinged, high-pillared joint keeps its menu the same as every other day of the year.
“We get more people coming in,” he said. “But we keep things pretty much the same.”
Nor, said Kelly, will visitors see a restriction of beers on sale — some bars reduce the number of beers on sale to Guinness, Harp, Smithwicks and Magner’s Cider. “And no plastic cups,” he added.
Sean Byrne, a bartender at Swift’s on East 4th Street in Soho, said Midtown Manhattan will still clear out earlier than downtown bars in more close-knit neighborhoods, where the bars stay busy later.
“In Ireland, you would hardly know it was St. Patrick’s Day, except if you saw an old lady coming out of church with a bunch of shamrock,” continued Byrne, who’s from County Donegal. Here in New York, Byrne and colleagues are already busy, more than a week before March 17.
“Since last night, we have events every single night up through the day itself and beyond,” Byrne said. It’s his 26th St. Patrick’s Day serving behind a bar.
“After all these years, I still can’t get over the excitement, the enthusiasm, and I’ve worked in the city from Riverdale in the Bronx to Flemings,” he said. “We open earlier, at 8 o’clock. We have the firehouse around the corner so a lot of the firefighters come in before they head up to the parade.”
“Down here [in Soho] people are different. They’ll stay out for the duration,” he continued.

Shifting gears
For bar staff, St. Patrick’s Day is accomplished by shifting gears, so that the usual production line flows just as smooth but a lot faster. None of those interviewed expect any trouble. People get rowdy but rarely out of hand — that’s where some special extra staff come in handy for the day: doormen.
“We always put two or three guys on the door, in case anyone’s trying to get in who’s had a bit too much,” Tevan said.
At Langan’s, there are doormen as well — “New Year’s and St Patrick’s Day,” said O’Brien, are the only days when they are necessary.
It’s been said before that bartenders are a great source of information — frequently acting as impromptu psychiatrists, confessors and advisors. So what do they have to say to the public?
“Be nice to us, we’ll be nice to you,” one bartender said. “Tips!” said another with a grin. In an Eastside dive, a young woman behind the bar rolled her eyes.
“After a few hours out drinking, men, you know, they should do something about the, ah, flatulence,” she said.
“Nothing could pay you for the abuse,” said an off-duty bar Manhattan tender in his Queens local, shaking his head.
There’s one minor wrinkle this year that staff may have to look out for — smoking. Since last March’s smoking ban in New York City, locals are now well used to the smoke-free atmosphere. Out-of-towners may not be so aware. In a bar packed to capacity, an outbreak of smoking could spread like, well, wildfire.
“Anyone from Ireland, they’ll get a good dress rehearsal for the smoking ban there,” said Des O’Brien of Langan’s, referring to the smoking ban about to take effect in Ireland.
Some bars have become embroiled in arguments with residents over the number of smokers blocking the sidewalks and talking loudly late at night. With more people out in the bars for St. Patrick’s Day, this first non-smoking St. Patrick’s Day should see even greater numbers outside for a puff.
Still, said Sean Byrne, there are some things to be happy about.
“I don’t see as much green beer each year anymore, maybe it’s gone the way of the leprechaun” he said. “But you can’t escape St. Patrick’s Day. Half the people in Chinese restaurants are probably wearing green on the day. So you just have to get into it.”
And at times, the atmosphere is . . . well, let a bartender have the final word.
“It’s a magnificent thing,” Byrne said.