Scruffy Duffy's Farewell!

Kids, Scruffy Duffy's is CLOSING on February 6th.

I remember when it was just another 8th Avenue bar, way back when 8th Avenue was scary as hell, it was far too scary to even walk in the door. Then Pat and Eileen took it over from their father, renamed it Scruffy Duffy's, and opened their doors. I had a roommate who got a job bartending there, and Scruff's became a regular haunt. Those were the days when you didn't start getting ready to go out until 10 pm, and that was on a Tuesday night. I don't know how I did it, but in those days I consumed my fair share of brown liquor at Scruffy's on lots and lots of school nights and still got up and went to work clear-eyed and sharp. There were peanut shells on the floor, cable spools for tables, and the floor was see-through. We showed up for Karaoke Thursdays anyway.

In the late 90's there was a core group of regulars, your Janey included, who used to camp out at the front of the bar around the pool table. We would lounge in the two park benches at the front of the bar and the front windows and at the front of the bar. I plugged my five dollar bills into the jukebox and played "The Female of the Species (Is More Deadly Than the Male)" nine hundred and forty five times. I thank Alan the bartender for not hating me for making him suffer through it at least twice a night. The Rev used to come in on Ash Wednesday and give ashes. Shelly invented a drink, served in a pint glass. It was 1 shot of Absolut Currant and the rest of the pint was filled with club soda. It became known as the Shelly Cocktail, as in, "What'll you have? A Shelly?" You went to the john a lot, but you never got drunk, just mildly happy, and you could stay all night just cruising at 33,000 feet of buzzed. It was a neighborhood place. Roni and Sean were the most beautiful and in-love couple in the neighborhood, until they weren't.

Joe Pool ran the table almost every night. When he wasn't there, Tom W would take over with his funny break. Everyone followed the house pool rules (Rule #1: Don't be an idiot. Pretty good life advice, too).

There were scandals and hookups and fights and feuds.

The bartenders were part of our little family, Bob, Sean, Alan, Enda, Dermot.

Pat used to take regulars on "outings" -- to the Renaissance Fair, Booze Cruises, and once he even chartered a bus to take us to Great Adventure. We were on a Scruffy's booze cruise one night in August 1997, and we all drank tons of beer and I danced to salsa music until my feet in their strappy black sandals bled. We came off the boat and piled into cabs and didn't believe the cab driver when he told us "Princess Diana! She dead!" For some reason, none of us went back to Scruffy's that night -- we went across the street to JR's instead, where the Irish contingent of our group were all in tears. I remember the fine shine went off the night and I went home.

Pat would turn New Year's Eve into a "members only" night to keep out the bridge and tunnel riff-raff who would try to come in after watching the ball drop.

For my birthday in 1999 I asked Pat to hire Karaoke Dave from the early years, and he did it! I got to have my own private karaoke birthday party at Scruffy Duffy's. As a present, my ex-boyfriend gave me his Levi's denim jacket, perfectly worn in (falling to bits, actually), with the zebra striped collar he had had his grandmother sew onto it. He went home with a girl who wanted to be my friend and never would be after that. I still have that jacket and wear it occasionally.

Over the years, Pat made gradual improvements to Scruffy's, in lockstep with the upscalification of the neighborhood. The crowd got a little more uppish, and pretty soon the regular crowd scattered a bit, finding the crowds of suit-wearing Ogilvy ad guys and the ones from the financial firms that had set up shop in Times Square a little too "duuuuuude" to tolerate. The regulars scattered to other bars, other neighborhoods.

We do still drop in from time to time, and we always get a warm welcome from Pat.

So now, the Scruffy's era is coming to an end, not with a bang but not quite with a whimper, either.

Thanks, Pat. It was fun.