‘Permanently Closed’

And, so, another local landmark is gone.

My sister and I passed by O’Sullivan’s Bar & Grill in Bay Ridge last night during our after-dinner walk and saw nothing but darkness.

There were no lights shining from this old Irish saloon that the O’Sullivan family took over in 1934.

There were no customers outside taking a cigarette break on Third Avenue; no voices, music or laughter emenating from the corner business on 89th Street.

A dark bar on a Saturday night only means one thing, but I didn’t want to accept the grim reality.

I had to walk up to the front door, grab hold of the handle and pull back. But the place was locked up tight.

This morning I jumped on the Internet in hopes of learning that the owners were on vacation, or that they were renovating the place and would be reopening in grand style any day now.

But the bar’s Yelp page was branded with two grisly words at the top: “Permanently Closed.”

I’ve been searching around local message boards for any indication as to why the bar went under, although I suspect this place was yet another casualty of the Covid-19 shutdown.

New York may be emerging from the pandemic nightmare, but we’ve lost a lot of people and businesses in the return to something that resembles normalcy.

Signs reading “Closed” and “Store for Rent” are painfully common sights.

My personal connection to O’Sullivan’s is distant, but there was a time when I was something of a regular.

Back in the Eighties, I used to work at a weekly newspaper a few blocks down the place and one of our freelance photographers was this wonderful man named Artie.

Artie was a big, powerful Irishman, who was both a former Marine and a retired cop, and O’Sullivan’s was his local watering hole.

Whenever he and I finished covering a story, he would proudly sing out “O-Sull-i-van’s!”, point his car toward Happy Hour, and off we’d go for some serious drinking.

I was younger, of course, and looking back I’m quite relieved that I made the drive home without having an accident or getting busted for DUI.

Artie had scores of great stories to tell about his time in the NYPD and I couldn’t get enough of them.

Shake It Up

He once showed me New York Times clipping from the early Sixties when he and some other officers have saved a rookie from a mob of angry drunks.

The young cop’s nightstick was broken in two during the fracas and there was a photo of Artie—trimmer and in uniform—holding the shattered club.

Artie also shared some details that didn’t appear in the Times story, like what happened to the suspects when the police got them back to the station house.

Let’s just say it was a different era with a different attitude toward policework.

And he had connections within the department, so I got to meet people and hear details about incidents that were not being released to the media.

I couldn’t print them, but I loved having that inside knowledge.

Artie was just a great guy who so supportive of me at a time was I terribly unhappy and unsure of myself.

“You’re good,” he’d tell me over and over. “I mean it, you’re good!”

One time we were at event at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park where then-Mayor Ed Koch was appearing,and naturally all the big-time local TV and newspaper reporters were there.

I didn’t say anything, but I was somewhat intimated by all the heavyweight talent circling around me.

Artie, being a good cop, immediately picked up on my fears.

“Hey,” he said, “you’re just as good as these humps.”

I laughed, calmed down, and got my story.

Every time we parted company outside O’Sullivan’s, Artie would do a mock spit shake, where he pretended to spit in his palm and then held out his hand.

The Urban dictionary says the spit shake is “only to be used for the most sacred of handshakes.”

Scared indeed, and only now I am truly appreciating what a great friend Artie was.

I moved to Pennsylvania in 1988 to work at the Pocono Record.

I’m tempted to say I lost contact with Artie, but the truth is that once again, I failed to keep in touch with a good friend.

This is yet another form of self-sabotage which I am looking to eliminate from my life.

Good people are hard to come by, so we have to keep them close for as long as we can.

I was in O’Sullivan’s a few years ago with a local Meet-up group. It seemed so different from the place I frequented back in the Eighties, when Artie and I guzzled beers together.

And now that the lights have gone out for the last time, I really feel Artie’s loss.

This afternoon I called a friend whom I hadn’t spoken with for a long time.

He’d been recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and he told me he was taking it one day at a time.

I told him that I loved him and I promised myself I would call him regularly until the day he stops answering the phone.

And the next time I see him, I’ll make sure to give him a spit shake.