...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 grew 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