One of Time Square’s last dive bars is facing eviction : NPR

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The New Yorker Magazine once described Times Square as the place, quote, “where everything fell apart and hell floated through the manhole covers.” Today, one of the last trendy bars in Times Square is at risk of eviction. Jimmy’s Corner has been in the same family for over 50 years. They are now suing their owner. NPR’s Henry Larson reports.

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HENRY LARSON, BYLINE: On the surface, this doesn’t seem like the kind of place worth suing. Jimmy’s Corner is narrow. It’s crowded and they sell cheap drinks. But the regulars all talk about it with this feeling of respect.

EVAN WILSON: It’s a kind of oasis outside of time and space.

MIKE BRASSIC: Is there any possible way for the whole world to become the Jimmy’s Corner community?

LARSON: Evan Wilson and Mike Brassic are both regulars. And hearing them talk about it is like a religion or a legend.

BRASSIC: The legend of Jimmy Glenn will last forever.

LARSON: Jimmy Glenn is the founder of this bar. He died in 2020 from COVID. He was a boxing coach and Jimmy’s Corner is covered in portraits and memorabilia from his life.

BRASSIC: Every time I pass by this glove, I pat it and spread the love.

WILSON: The walls are adorned floor to ceiling with photos of boxing memorabilia, most of them collected by Jimmy himself.

LARSON: Evan Wilson, again.

WILSON: The greatest fighters, the greatest gladiators of the modern era, are all on the walls.

LARSON: Wilson is also – don’t kid me – an archaeologist.

WILSON: There’s a real mosaic in parts of the bar. You can see it coming out of the Earth, and it reminds me of those old Roman villas in parts of Italy. As an archaeologist, he shouts at time.

LARSON: The legend that Jimmy seems to know the most is this one. Jimmy bought the bar in the 70s and turned it into a haven for people looking for a drink in what was a pretty unsavory part of town.

ADAM GLENN: It was difficult. There were pimps. There were whores. There were mafiosi.

LARSON: This is Adam Glenn, Jimmy’s son. He decided to initiate this trial. Another legend, Adam told me, was about the day his father apparently saved the life of a very important man.

GLENN: My father saved the elder Durst – Seymour Durst – from a robbery in Times Square one day.

LARSON: The Dursts – an extremely wealthy New York real estate family and owners of the building that houses Jimmy’s Corner.

GLENN: My dad saw people trying to rob him and, you know, he came. He stopped him. Cut it out. And that just started a relationship.

LARSON: Now, the Durst Organization couldn’t confirm that part. But what they recognized was how the two families – the landlord and the tenant – bonded. For decades, rents remained cheap and things were good. But soon after the turn of the century, things changed.

GLENN: It made my father let his guard down a little. And in one of the changes to the lease, they slipped in a provision that if my father died, they could evict us.

LARSON: This provision foreshadowed difficult days ahead for the bar. Once the pandemic ended, the Dursts began trying to sell their building. Glenn filed a lawsuit last December and the Durst Organization moved to deport him. A spokesperson for the organization said it went above and beyond its rental obligations by giving notice and offering to pay Glenn $250,000. The spokesperson said these efforts were not met in good faith.

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LARSON: Back at the bar, expulsion threatens newcomer Mary Hager.

MARY HAGER: I guess I can’t really understand wanting to evict a paying tenant just because you can extract more money from someone else.

LARSON: Glenn has generated some support for his efforts to save the bar, but he thinks it won’t be enough. His trial is less of a frontal assault, more of a fight in retreat.

GLENN: I have people who work here. I have family. I have customers who love this place. I want time more than money. I want to make sure that all of my workers have a soft landing, no matter what happens, whether it’s at my next location. I want to know that I’m taking care of the community here.

LARSON: The best case scenario looks like this. He buys his team some more time and another bar with the money he hopes to make from the lawsuit. And as regular Evan Wilson hopes, the legend of Jimmy Glenn continues elsewhere.

WILSON: This building is going to be taken. It’s not his to keep in the end. I mean, the owners have the right to own it. It really is the death of New York. I mean, this has been going on for too long, and another institution is about to be killed by, you know, the scourge of the landlords.

LARSON: But for now, the bar still stands. Last week, a judge temporarily suspended the eviction proceedings while the trial proceeded.

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LARSON: Henry Larson, NPR News in Times Square.

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