Lifestyle
T.J. Byrnes, a No-Frills Irish Pub, Draws a Martini Crowd
Misty Gonzales has been tending bar at T.J. Byrnes, an Irish pub in the Financial District of Manhattan, for 13 years. For most of that time, she has served office workers, college students and city employees.
Two years ago, she noticed some unfamiliar faces. This new crowd was younger and usually stopped in for poetry readings, book-club gatherings and parties. Aside from their age, their drink orders set them apart.
“Martinis are the biggest thing — I couldn’t even get over how many people are drinking martinis,” Ms. Gonzales said. “Lots of Negronis, too.”
In the past year, the pub has hosted talks led by the art critic Dean Kissick, a holiday party for the leftist publication Dissent, a monthly reading series called Patio, a performance-art karaoke competition and a pre-Valentine’s Day party for single readers of Emily Sundberg’s Substack newsletter Feed Me.
Some of Ms. Sundberg’s 180 guests were initially confused by the choice of location.
“This was the first time people have texted me before being like, ‘What is this place?’” said Ms. Sundberg, 30, who first went to the bar for a friend’s birthday a couple years ago.
“I wouldn’t go as far as to call it the new Clandestino,” she added, referring to the downtown bar that is often bursting at the seams along Canal Street. “But if you have brand events — magazine parties, readings — it’s become a venue.”
At first glance, T.J. Byrnes might seem like an unlikely draw for writers, artists and fashion types. The bar is nestled in an austere plaza behind a Key Foods grocery store, at the base of a 27-story residential building. The facade looks onto a courtyard it shares with a preschool and a diner. The interior is unassuming, with a dark wooden bar in the front and white tablecloths and red leather booths in the back.
The bar’s eponymous owner, Thomas Byrne, 70, can be found most evenings at a cluttered desk just inside the dining room or perched at a hightop near the entrance, keeping an eye on the scene. In a pinch, he pulls pints behind the bar.
“I am very hands-on,” said Mr. Byrne, who has a neat mustache and typically wears a button-down shirt tucked into black trousers. He commutes into the city daily from Yonkers, where he has lived for the last 32 years. “I’m not saying I never take a day off, but I’m here a lot of the time, and I like that.”
The youngest of three, Mr. Byrne immigrated from County Wicklow, Ireland, in 1972 to join his brothers in New York, where they made their livings working in bars. With his brother Seamus, he ran a pub on Fordham Road in the Bronx from 1975 to 1991.
After they closed that spot, his brother Denis came across a vacant Chinese restaurant on Fulton Street. It needed some serious remodeling, but its sheer size and proximity to some of Manhattan’s busiest office buildings made it too good to pass up. After months of construction, T.J. Byrnes opened its doors in October 1995.
With the exception of a brief window during the city’s Covid lockdowns, the pub has been open nearly every day for the last 30 years.
“People say, ‘Oh, you’re still here,’” Mr. Byrne said. “We went through Sept. 11, we went through Sandy, the big storm and all that, and tough times. But you just hang in there, and it works out.”
Mr. Byrne recalled finally getting through police barricades the day after the attacks on the twin towers to find the bar, helmed by his brother, teeming with people from the neighborhood.
“So many people came in here just to be together,” he said. “People were in distress, and this was a meeting place to sit down and talk.”
T.J. Byrnes has always had an eclectic clientele, he said. City workers from 100 Gold St. mingled with musical theater students from Pace University. Office employees, retirees from St. Margaret’s House apartment community and residents of Southbridge Towers sat shoulder to shoulder at the bar. But it seemed to take a specific confluence of events to get a more artsy crowd in the door.
It might have started in 2022, when the writer Ezra Marcus sang the bar’s praises in the Perfectly Imperfect recommendation newsletter. “Byrnes is a holdout against the mass extinction of normal places for normal people to get a drink in the city,” Mr. Marcus, an occasional contributor to The New York Times, wrote.
A couple months later, Joshua Citarella, an artist in New York who researches online subcultures, called T.J. Byrnes the “new Forlini’s” in an article for Artnet, likening it to the red-sauce restaurant that had unexpectedly become a downtown cool-kid haunt in the years before it shuttered.
At the same time, the micro-neighborhood a few blocks from Forlini’s known as Dimes Square was becoming overexposed and — with the arrival of an opulent boutique hotel and fine dining establishments — a bit too upscale for some.
“It just has a better vibe,” Mr. Citarella said on a recent evening at T.J. Byrnes, where he was hosting a reading group with the author Mike Pepi. “With the transformation of downtown New York, everything has turned into condos; it doesn’t feel like anything is authentic or is here to stay.”
The South Street Seaport area that surrounds T.J. Byrnes has undergone its own changes. Once a gritty neighborhood celebrated by the writer Joseph Mitchell for its fish markets, the district has been transformed over the decades, most recently by large real estate investments, new shopping destinations and independent art galleries like Dunkunsthalle, located in an old Dunkin’ Donuts on Fulton Street.
When McNally Jackson Books opened its Seaport location in 2019, making it a hub for literary events, T.J. Byrnes became a favorite post-reading spot.
Jeremy Gordon, a senior editor at The Atlantic, was introduced to the bar after one of those McNally Jackson events. He took to it right away. Although T.J. Byrnes is unusually spacious for the city — another point in its favor — he described it as “beautifully cozy.”
When his debut novel, “See Friendship,” was published this month, he decided to throw a book party there.
With a lineup of readers and an open bar, Mr. Gordon invited around 60 of his friends to fete his book. The crowd sipped vodka sodas and hung out in the “many little pockets” of the space, which includes a large dining room and a side area that’s more tucked away.
“It is the type of place that I hope continues to exist for as long as I live in the city,” he said.
For some, it is a necessary counterbalance to fussy bars and restaurants that cater to the TikTok crowd or to those seeking experiences behind red ropes.
“I don’t want a concept,” said Alex Hartman, who runs the satirical meme account “Nolita Dirtbag,” railing against what he sees as a trend of bars spending exorbitantly on interior design that panders to the downtown creative class. People are “protesting this sort of aesthetic lifestyle,” he added.
With reasonably priced bars in short supply and a surge of private clubs taking over nightlife, T.J. Byrnes, with its lack of pretense, is an antidote.
“It’s the anti-members club,” Ms. Sundberg said. “There’s this huge cohort of New York City who wants to get into this locked, password protected, paywall door — and then T.J. Byrnes is right there.”
Mr. Byrne keeps track of his bar’s events and parties by hand, in a hardcover planner. Many people looking to entertain there simply text him to reserve the space — no fee or bar minimum required.
“I like the people that come here for the artist group,” Mr. Byrne said. “They’re really nice to deal with and enjoy the place, and we enjoy having them here.” During readings, he often listens from a spot toward the back.
On a recent Friday night, the furniture designer Mike Ruiz Serra celebrated his 28th birthday at T.J. Byrnes with about 100 friends. His guests downed pints of Guinness, sipped martinis and Negronis, and ordered classic bar fare like mozzarella sticks.
Away from the party, Andy Velez was closing his tab. Mr. Velez, who works for the City of New York in data communications, has been coming to T.J. Byrnes after work for 17 years, usually a few times a week.
“This is my ‘Cheers,’” he said.
Even when the crowd started to swell, as it was then, Mr. Velez said that the bar was almost never too loud to have a conversation.
“This is a very special place, a staple of the community,” he said. “Only people in the neighborhood really know about this.”
President Trump speaks at the Memorial Amphitheater in Arlington National Cemetery on May 25 in Arlington, Va.
Alex Brandon/AP
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Alex Brandon/AP
President Trump has suggested that an event celebrating America’s 250 birthday should instead be a Make America Great Again rally after many of the artists who were announced to perform dropped out.
The Great American State Fair, which is set to begin on June 25 on the National Mall, had featured artists such as Martina McBride, Morris Day and the Time, The Commodores and Poison’s Bret Michaels — who have all since withdrawn from the lineup.
McBride explained why she decided to not to be part of the fair, writing in a social media post she was presented with an opportunity to perform at “a nonpartisan event but that turned out to be misleading.”
“In my mind I thought this was a great way to celebrate the states and also bring people together in the way that only music can. I saw it as just a bigger version of so many state fairs I have performed at over the years, celebrating community and what makes each state special,” McBride wrote in the post on Thursday night. “Yesterday things started changing and what we were told is, in fact, not what is happening.”
Some artists plan to still perform at the fair. Vanilla Ice said he would not drop out of the event, writing on social media, “This is not a political platform. This is celebrating America’s birthday.”
In a social media post on Saturday, Trump called the performers who backed away from the event “Third Rate” and said he will give a speech that will rally the U.S. “forward like I have done ever since being President!” Later on Saturday, Trump wrote in another social media post that the event should be canceled and replaced with a rally.
“We should have a giant MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN RALLY, for 250, instead of having overpriced singers, who nobody wants to hear, whose music is boring, and yet who do nothing but complain,” Trump wrote.
The fair is being organized by Freedom 250, a public-private group working with the White House to organize the celebration of America’s 250 birthday. The Trump-backed celebrations have drawn criticism and concern that it is centered around himself instead of the country.
Democratic lawmakers and watchdog organizations, such as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, have also questioned where private donations for the 250th celebrations are coming from.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who is involved with planning the celebration, on Sunday said the events are “nonpartisan.”
“It’s not about the transparency of the donors,” Burgum said on CNN’s State of the Union when asked if the donations should become public. “This is about Americans celebrating the 250th anniversary.”
On-air challenge
Every answer is a word, name, or a familiar phrase in which the first syllable is pronounced “fair” — in any spelling. (Ex. Locale for an exhibition –> FAIRGROUND)
1. Long stretch on a golf course
2. Alternative to Celsius in temperatures
3. Alaska city just south of the Arctic Circle
4. Boat that transports passengers across a river or body of water
5. Monarch in ancient Egypt
6. Medical term for the throat
7. Revolving ride at an amusement park
8. “Cinderella” or “Hansel and Gretel”
9. Small, domesticated animal related to the European polecat
10. Historical Jewish sect in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles
11. County of northern Virginia that’s adjacent to Washington, D.C.
12. Actress Morgan
13. Louis who leads the Nation of Islam
14. Chemical secreted by the body that’s a stumulant to others
15. Fond goodbye
Last week’s challenge
This week’s challenge comes from Jim Francis, of Kirkland, Wash. Think of a famous female singer (8,4). The first syllable of her first name, the second syllable of her first name backward, and last name forward again are all verbs associated with human desire. Who is this singer?
Challenge answer
Courtney Love
Winner
Larry Birkenmeyer of Glenview, Illinois
This week’s challenge
This week’s challenge comes from Mike Reiss, a longtime writer and showrunner for “The Simpsons.” Name a classic song with a two-word title. Drop the first letter. Add an R after the new first letter. The result will be the names of two countries one after the other. What song is this?
If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it below by Thursday, June 4 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle.
Jean Smart.
HBO Max
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HBO Max
This review of the Hacks series finale includes spoilers for the episode.
It also discusses suicide.
The truth — my truth — about the fifth and final season of HBO Max’s Hacks is that I would have left it at the end of the penultimate episode last week. Deborah’s show in Central Park, improvised after she was thwarted in her efforts to play Madison Square Garden, was a triumph. The story has always been, after all, about Deborah and Ava together, outdoing the expectations other people have for them and outfoxing the people who try to thwart them. So being embraced by a huge outdoor crowd, surrounded by people who love them, was just the right ending. Not too heavy for a comedy, not too idealized and neat.
In this week’s series finale, you get a much more melodramatic story. The earlier hints about Deborah’s health problems mature into the news that she has cancer, but she has decided to forgo treatment and travel to Switzerland to undergo an assisted suicide. She also wants Ava to go with her. Ava is furious and panicked, wanting Deborah to choose differently, but Deborah’s mind is made up. In the end, encouraged by Jimmy to respect Deborah’s decision, Ava appears at the airport, and the two go to Paris for a final vacation before they travel on to Zurich. They laugh and walk, and Deborah gives Ava her first taste of Parisian bread. They shop for skin care, they go to the Louvre (which Deborah buys out just for them), and they debate Van Gogh. They even go dancing.
Perhaps I was naive to never believe the show was going to end with Deborah’s suicide. Perhaps it might have ended that way. But it doesn’t. (Here, I am tempted to say, “Of course it doesn’t.”) After Ava fights Deborah, concedes, fights her again, and concedes again, Deborah suddenly (very suddenly) realizes she still likes writing jokes, and she decides to write a new hour with Ava and begin cancer treatment instead of going to Zurich and ending her life. “Happy Days Are Here Again” plays as they walk together in Paris, and then later in Vegas. The end.
I’ve always been of two minds about Hacks: the scene-level writing is impeccable, the jokes have a high hit rate, and the performances are utterly singular, but I’ve always found the plot choices frustrating. By Season 4, the basic story was repeating over and over (they feud; they make up; they feud; they make up). But even then, the jokes were still working, and the performances were exceptional.
Similarly, in this finale, the scenes in Paris are not only great to look at; they are very funny and wildly charming. Even in a short, slapstick bit where Deborah cracks herself up by making Ava try to learn stick shift driving a boxy little rental car through a roundabout, the kicker line from Ava, “Why am I in the rough draft of a car?” is just a straight-up great line. These are gorgeous scenes between the actresses (who are co-leads and always have been; do not let the Emmys deceive you), and they are a great gift to the many people who have loved Hacks over its very successful run. These characters are soul mates, and it is delightful seeing them, once and for all, on the same side.
But the flip side is this: When you incorporate a story about illness and death, especially very late in a show’s run, and especially if it resolves abruptly, it can seem maudlin or manipulative. Death is just a big bat to swing in a comedy series, and there’s a good argument that Hacks just didn’t need it. There is plenty of emotional heft in the history of Deborah and Ava, and in the stories of their careers, without a death scare. And because it was a death scare, some things got awkward, like … Why did D.J., Deborah’s daughter, play no role in any of this? Certainly, Deborah might not want to tell her, but when begging Deborah not to die and pulling out all the stops, would Ava not have talked about her family? Might “please don’t leave me,” touching as it was, have been accompanied by “or your daughter”?
It’s not that the Hacks finale was bad, not by a longshot. (Though the Jimmy/Kayla triumph where they re-enter Latitude to literal applause was perhaps a bit pat.) It’s the capper to a very successful and very good show, which has been richly rewarded with awards and seems highly likely to rack up a few more this fall. But it did, in the end, feel a bit like a hat on a hat, like they didn’t quite trust what’s been built between those two characters enough to pack a wallop without the Grim Reaper stalking the episode. But perhaps it would not have been a Deborah Vance production if it weren’t just a bit over the top.
If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 9 8 8 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
This piece also appears in NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what’s making us happy.
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