The owners of the new International Bar, Shawn Dahl and Molly Mulholland Fitch, told Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York they’d open June 18, but it was in full swing this weekend. Until the skateboarding riffraff finds it, this is the spot for grown adults who want the cheap prices ($4 well drinks, $2 Schaeffers) and no-frills atmosphere of, say, B-Side. The jukebox, cultivated by Fitch, boasts the requisite Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, and Stiv Bators, but goes beyond punk.
It also includes (get ready, now) Miles Davis, Howlin’ Wolf, Loretta Lynn, Pere Ubu, Lou Reed, Sonny Boy Williamson, Phil Ochs, Canned Heat, Roberta Flack, the Carter Family, the Fugs, MC5, and — yes — the Kids of Widney High. The latter, a band of mentally disabled students seems about as appropriate for a barroom as the Alvin & the Chipmunks Christmas album we once had to endure at a Polish dive in Greenpoint, but hey, who are we to say. Everything else is 100 percent spot-on, and as Jeremiah’s Vanishing points out in its history of the place, purists need not balk at the “new” location of the bar on the left-hand side of the room. Turns out that’s where it was in the first place. And so everything old is new again!
Related: Inside The New International [Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York]
