Your Chapel: Mooney's Pub, Brooklyn, N.Y.


I got an email recently from Jody Kuh, one of the riders on Braking the Cycle along with Team Guinan. (Our adventures are chronicled in the Advocate magazine.) Jody wrote to say her "local" -- Mooney's Pub in Brooklyn, N.Y. -- is poised to close like Guinan's.

"The neighborhood is definitely gentrifying but Mooney's has generally managed to negotiate the gentrification nicely - there's an incredible mix of the young and old there who all blend together and talk (much, seemingly, like Guinan's).

It really is like losing a family member. We're all a bit dazed and trying not to make it one long funeral. The good news is that they were to be out as of November 30th, but there's been a reprieve for the moment. I'm sure they will close but it's not clear when. I'll keep you posted if you'd like."


Please do. The New York Times published a nice piece recently about this Brooklyn relic, and reading it, I was struck by the similarities to Guinan's. Said one regular: “This was a very gentle place. It really was a true pub.”

Everyone in the NYC area should try to visit Mooney's soon. I know I will.

(Pictured above: Mooneys bartender Ben Carlin and regulars Mike Morgan (left) and David Sheets (middle)

Comments

Anonymous said…
Mooneys Truly was the last of the great old bars of this area in brooklyn. I started drinking in time when younger folk drank with the oldtimers. when you got out of line you were put to the side and told to behave or else. One more slip up and you were out on your behind. Thankfully I am still drinking there twenty years later. The place were I learnt how to laugh, cry and become a man. e.coffey
December 19, 2007 at 9:32 PM
DANIELBLOOM said…
wow, this is an amazing anecdote, the screen of that movie was there:

''After that, he says, he will still have another Mooney’s Pub, in Bay Ridge, to look after. But he will miss the customers on Flatbush, like the guy who always sat at the end of the bar in the back, and lately wrote from California to say he had written a movie, “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” -- an old Irish proverb about getting to heaven quickly before the devil knows you died -- and had named a bar in the film in honor of his old hangout.''
December 30, 2007 at 6:29 AM
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