New York’s new Irish bars: ‘It just works, this timeless feeling of romance and hedonism’

A new era of Irish bars is brewing in New York, particularly in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Shirking the usual interior design cliches associated with Irish pubs abroad, new venues are opting instead for a stripped back, more authentic interpretation, as well as completely new, contemporary concepts that not only push the boundaries of Irish culture in New York, but the city’s culture itself, creating new night-time playgrounds for a notoriously hard-to-please clientele.

Dubliner Ryan Skelton’s new Ibiza-inspired discoteca, Cafe Balearica in Williamsburg, epitomises this new school of thinking. A heavily tattooed gentleman, effortlessly stylish with a taste in music rooted in disco and house, Skelton is beloved of bartenders, bouncers and maitre d’s in Brooklyn.

When he moved to New York, Skelton worked in several bars simultaneously. “I started out as a bar-back, washing glasses and putting kegs away. I did anything that could get me going,” he says.

Bars that stay true to themselves and don’t try to be something they’re not. That’s really what it’s about

—  Ryan Skelton

“But I felt New York bars still had that rock’n’roll, jukebox vibe. There wasn’t much of that European feel, where a night out at dinner would turn into pushing tables into the corner and having a dance, with the bar top turning into somewhere a DJ is playing. So, unless you’re committing to a club on a night out, a lot of stuff here is quite similar. It’s quite hard to just have a few drinks and a dance.”

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That Brooklyn bar aesthetic – “a lot of old memorabilia, dive bar vibes” – didn’t appeal to Skelton when he got the opportunity to open his own place. Instead, he built a bar that evoked all the good times he’s had in Spain, particularly Ibiza, over a hidden basement club reminiscent of 1990s New York, with disco balls and a large leopard print booth seating area.

“Music, travel, people I’ve met along the way, that’s what inspires me,” he says.

He wanted the main bar to feel like 7am at a great party. “You know when you’re at a party and you go to the chill-out room and everyone is really friendly, everyone is chatting? I wanted it to feel like that. The music policy is definitely disco and house-forward, funk, soul, northern soul. We don’t venture into techno.

“With the drinks, the setting, you don’t want to be basic. You don’t want to be offering the same experience, or the same music every week. You have to give people a different experience. It’s about giving good people a decent place to play, to meet nice people, have nice cocktails, and feel an elevated vibe.”

The result of this vision is a beautiful, airy space – white surfaces broken with an abundance of plants and coloured lighting, and incredible murals behind the bar painted by Irish artist Peter Doyle. Skelton always envisaged Doyle’s art in his bar. “It just works with the concept, this timeless feeling of romance and hedonism. The murals have this nostalgic sensibility to them. When we were discussing them, we were talking about love, openness, softness.”

Skelton got the keys to the premises in July 2021, then the building started, with special attention paid to acoustics and soundproofing, before opening last April. The bar feels like a portal to another time and place, unmatched in a neighbourhood where a seemingly endless stream of bars, new and old, compete for customers.

What does he think makes for a great bar? “Bars that stay true to themselves and don’t try to be something they’re not. That’s really what it’s about. I could go into a bar that’s 80 years old and it’s a dream; the chairs, the tiles, the feel of the place. You can go into the Hacienda in Dublin and it’s beautiful, but so is the Horseshoe Bar in the Shelbourne. It’s about magical places, bars that know what they are.”

Over in Bushwick, a mammoth warehouse takes up what feels like an entire block. On the site of a former brewery, this is 3 Dollar Bill, a huge LGBTQ+ nightclub operating under Brenda Breathnach from Co Kerry. Breathnach started bartending in Dingle before coming to New York in the 1990s, working with her brother at an Béal Bocht in the Bronx. Wanting her own place, she often trawled CraigsList for bars for sale. In 2004 she took over an Irish sports bar, which she renamed Dr Gilbert’s, before landing on an ad in 2011 for The Phoenix, a gay bar for sale in East Village that had seen better days. She took it on, cleaned it up, hired new staff and reopened it to the community to huge success.

But she wanted something bigger. “As soon as I saw 3 Dollar Bill in 2016, even though it was dilapidated, I just thought: this is the one.”

Breathnach prides herself on being an attentive all-rounder. Until 3 Dollar Bill, she never employed a cleaner in her bars, preferring to do it herself, and she often acted as a doorwoman, bartender, and bar-back all in the same night.

The gay community is really great. I’d never again do a straight bar

—  Brenda Breathnach

We meet at 3 Dollar Bill as she is preparing for the Night of 1,000 Beyoncés, a sold-out drag show.

“Miss Brenda!” a drag queen dressed as a Lion King version of Beyoncé greets her in a backstage corridor. “I love you Miss Brenda!”

Breathnach is unmoved, “go on,” she says.

“I gotta do my eyelashes,” the queen exclaims, and totters off.

The drag queens appear to adore her, and I say so to eye-rolls from Breathnach. “Sure listen. You know gay clubs, girl, drag queens everywhere, sex and drugs and rock’n’roll, that’s the way it is. Let me show you the new part.”

She leads me into another gigantic network of spaces in a side building Breathnach recently took over, which stretches the venue space to around 30,000sq ft.

“The gay community is really great. I’d never again do a straight bar,” she says, despite the huge task ahead of her to expand into this vast space. “The gays just want to have fun. They don’t care about football or food. They just want to dance.”

Breathnach’s 3 Dollar Bill is in an industrial part of town. “That’s what I like about it,” Breathnach says; the location means fewer complaints about noise. It took two years to get a liquor license, and there were times when she wondered if they would open at all.

You’d think for someone who now presides over one of the biggest queer dance floors in New York that she’d be immersed in club culture. “Of all the clubs that exist in New York, I had been in one for a total of 10 minutes, ever. Now I’m in the middle of one, so what are you gonna do?” she says.

He’s Darndale, I’m Dundalk, we’re used to old school hospitality in pubs

—  Conor Myers

“We started shaky, but you live and learn. It took a while, it really did. Up to the pandemic, we were just getting going, and then that hit. We were only getting on our feet. It was a struggle, the rent was a lot, and we had so much money put in. But now it’s good.” Breathnach says the club wouldn’t have survived and thrived without the support of her business partners, Dermot Burke and Tony Caffery.

The previous week, singers Cyndi Lauper and Rosalía had arrived to party in the club. Breathnach unlocks her iPhone (the lock screen is a photo of potatoes), and flicks through a series of photos of various parties and events to show me. OTA, a Monday night party celebrating New York’s queer and trans ballroom culture, has become particularly popular.

“Every party has its own value, it’s own quirk,” Breathnach says. “We’re miles ahead of where we were. And there are miles to go.”

In Midtown Manhattan, Conor Myers from Dundalk and Archie Dolan from Darndale in Dublin survey their new project, a bar called Copper Johns which they recently took over under the stewardship of the Pmacs group.

Myers and Dolan worked at Casa Bacardi at Electric Picnic, and then at 37 on Dawson Street in Dublin, before arriving in New York within a year of each other. Myers’ talent as a barman, particularly his expertise in cocktails, saw him become the creative director of the bar Underdog in the Financial District. When Dolan arrived in town, he worked at Haswell Green’s and then Vida Verde, before they decided to once again join forces.

“This has been a culmination of years of grafting over here, and sinking all our savings in to get this pub. We don’t come from any legacy money or publican families back home,” Myers explains.

“He’s Darndale, I’m Dundalk, we’re used to old school hospitality in pubs. I thought if we could amalgamate that pub chat and craic with drinks that are exciting, food that’s exciting, without losing an old school pub mentality, that would be the perfect place.”

Their plan for revitalising Copper John’s is rooted in a Dublin pub of yore, Bartley Dunne’s on Stephen’s Street, which extended a welcome to everyone. In the coming months, Copper John’s will close for refurbishment, to re-emerge as Bartley’s. While keen to create a pub with a sense of Irishness, the pair plan to avoid the usual tropes. Instead, the focus will be on contemporary Irish heritage, with Irish street art, Irish street photography, artwork drawn from Irish rave flyers, and a soundtrack of Irish music that reflect the vibrant Irish traditional, rock, and hip hop scene back home.

Everybody works so hard. You don’t lose track of yourself going out five or six nights a week. You’re here for business

—  Conor Myers

They speak effusively of the creative talent from Ireland, from Maser to Gemma Dunleavy, the Mary Wallopers to illustrator Fatti Burke.

In the bar, which is set over two floors, they point to changes they’ll make while maintaining the integrity of the space, which is unique in its setting – a skinny old building surrounded by contemporary commercial properties. It sits on West 54th Street, just off 7th Avenue, where down the street, the glow of Times Square illuminates the night sky with a neon haze. Their customer base is eclectic, from finance workers and a Broadway crowd, to gig-goers heading to and from the Terminal 5 venue nearby.

They describe Patrick and Michael McNamee, founders of the PMac’s group, as “extremely hard-working. They are grafters”. When the McNamees come into one of their bars, “they’ll clear glasses, they’ll do whatever, and they’re not doing it as something to look good in front of the staff. It’s who they are”, Dolan says.

New York offers incredible opportunities for bar staff from Ireland, they believe.

“It’s impossible back home, we would have never have got this,” Myers says, as Dolan nods in agreement. “You’d have to borrow your life out, going to the banks. Here, if you prove you can work and you’re loyal, people will invest in you. But to get there, it’s about hard work. Every minute of the day, if your phone rings, you answer. On your day off, if they need someone to cover, you go in. Anything that needs to be done, you do. You prove your worth.”

“I don’t know one bartender at home that has a percentage,” Myers says. “We were bartending heavily in Dublin for a long time. Bartenders at home put in crazy hours. We do crazy hours over here, but you know there’s something at the end of it. Out of our friend group [in New York], I’d say around 90 per cent of us now have a partnership in a bar in the city, which is unbelievable. Everybody works so hard. You don’t lose track of yourself going out five or six nights a week. You’re here for business.”