Sounds like Billy's kind of place.

Met History wrote:

> ...John McNulty, often set his New Yorker stories of the 1940's and 1950's in
> Costello's bar, at Third Avenue and 44th Street.  In "Two Bums Here Would
> Spend Freely Except for Poverty", he wrote:
>
> "Each man makes himself into an island, standing in front of the bar, and
> everyone keeps a space on each side of him the way water is on the sides of
> islands....  Each of them keeps staring into the mirror in back of the bar
> and saying to himself   'Look at you, you'll never amount to anything.  You
> went to school and gerw up and everything and now look at you, you'll never
> amount to anything.'   Old veteran Third Avenue bartenders call this fighting
> the mirror, and they all think it is very bad for a man."
>
> Best,  Christopher

--

F. Mitchener Wilds, Senior Restoration Specialist
Restoration Branch
State Historic Preservation Office
919/733-6547
http://www.hpo.dcr.state.nc.us

***My opinions may not be those of my agency.***