Last Call at Coogan's
The Life and Death of a Neighborhood Bar
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
The uniquely inspiring story of a beloved neighborhood bar that united the communities it served.
Coogan’s Bar and Restaurant opened in New York City’s Washington Heights in 1985 and closed its doors for good in the pandemic spring of 2020. Sometimes called Uptown City Hall, it became a staple of neighborhood life during its 35 years in operation—a place of safety and a bulwark against prejudice in a multi-ethnic, majority-immigrant community undergoing rapid change.
Last Call at Coogan’s by Jon Michaud tells the story of this beloved saloon, from the challenging years of the late 80's and early 90's, when Washington Heights suffered from the highest crime rate in the city, to the 2010’s, when gentrification pushed out longtime residents and nearly closed Coogan's itself; only a massive community mobilization including local politicians and Lin-Manuel Miranda kept the doors open.
This book touches on many serious issues facing the country today: race relations, policing, gentrification, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Along the way, readers will meet the bar’s owners and an array of its most colorful regulars, such as an aspiring actor from Kentucky who dreams of bringing a theater company to Washington Heights, a television reporter who loves karaoke, and a Puerto Rican community board manager who falls in love with an Irish cop from the local precinct. At its core, this is the story of one small business, the people who worked there, the customers they served, and the community they all called home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Librarian Michaud (When Tito Loved Clara) delivers a stirring tribute to Coogan's, a restaurant and bar in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. From its opening in 1985, when the neighborhood was at the mercy of drugs and gun violence, to the gentrification that pushed away many of its working-class and mostly Dominican population in the 2000s, owners Peter Walsh and Dave Hunt—and later, Tess O'Connor, who started as a bartender and ended as a partner—worked to make Coogan's a welcoming place for everyone. Cops dropped in after their shifts, local politicians met to cut deals and listen to their constituents, staff from a nearby hospital came for lunch, and residents held wakes in one of its rooms. Both Walsh and Hunt "shared a belief in the promise of New York as an engine of social cohesion," according to Michaud, a former regular who compares Coogan's to "the most democratic institutions in the city—subways, parks, and libraries—which are open to all and encourage the comingling of people from different backgrounds." A substantial rent increase, increased competition, and the Covid-19 pandemic ended Coogan's run in March 2020. Earnest, evocative, and full of crisply rendered profiles of employees and patrons, this is a rewarding study of how communities are built.
