Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York this morning posts about a small but seemingly significant turn of events in the ongoing saga of Chumley’s, the famed West Village speakeasy that’s been closed since 2007, when a partial wall collapse threatened the building. The place has a new door, which seems to be its old one, newly painted green and spiffy, with its famous “86” presumably still tacked on there, too. The old bar was once frequented by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, John Steinbeck, and thousands of other writers whose work probably never got published. Its reputation remains as a literary bar, much to the chagrin of neighbors who fear its reopening will draw scores of “drunk and loud” tourists to the neighborhood. Earlier this summer, a state supreme court judge suggested the bar’s opposition drop its lawsuit aimed at trying to thwart Chumley’s reopening. [JVNY, Related]
