Dive Alive

Is Park Slope’s Beloved O’Connor’s Being ‘Ruined’ or Revitalized?

Photo: Kate Attardo

Hickey’s is gone, and Lost City is worried that another great dive bar, O’Connor’s in Park Slope (one of the greatest, in fact), is going to turn into “something completely different and far blander.” The blog Here’s Park Slope talks to Mike Maher, who bought the Fifth Avenue fixture three years ago, and hears that he’s expanding it to three times its original size by adding a back room with a kitchen (for Irish pub fare like fish and chips) and a second floor with an outdoor beer garden. Maher says he’s “modernizing the room, but a priority is to keep the old look” — he’ll be “saving the bar and the booths and as much of the room as we can,” but everything else will have to be brought up to code. Though Maher thinks “the O’Connor family would be happy with what we’re doing here” (he promised not to change the name of the bar or build condos on the roof when he bought it), Lost City predictably isn’t impressed with additions like live music and draught beer: “I loved that O’Connor’s was just a bar, didn’t have food besides those little bags of chips you could buy … This City has declared war on the dive bar.”

Big Changes In Store For O’Connor’s [Here’s Park Slope via Lost City]

Is Park Slope’s Beloved O’Connor’s Being ‘Ruined’