Regulars Mourn Neary’s, an Old-Time Bar That’s Closing

Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll say goodbye to a real-life New York bar where everybody knows your name, even if you’re new in town. We’ll also get details on a move to mandate air-conditioning for tenants.

Patrons at Neary’s Irish Restaurant in New York City in 2016.Credit…Casey Kelbaugh for The New York Times

New York can seem daunting when you are new here. You can feel bewildered and lonely in a city of 8,258,035 people where 8,258,034 of them are strangers. Wherever you go as you learn your way around, you think you are the odd person out. You think there’s some secret local code you just can’t crack.

And then you discover a place where you are comfortable.

For Ashwin Bharke, 27, whose job brought him to Manhattan from London in January, that place was Neary’s, a bar and restaurant on East 57th Street. It’s an artifact from a now-distant New York with wood paneling on the walls and red banquettes in the back, along with regulars who have been bellying up to the bar for 30 or 40 years.

“It’s got the charm of a Fitzgerald novel, the warmth of a home-cooked meal and the most eclectic crowd of people,” Bharke said.

He was the newest of newcomers, and he was welcomed.

“Cheers,” the sitcom about another bar where everybody knew your name, ended in 1993 after 11 years on the air. In real-life New York, it has been two and a half years since the death of Jimmy Neary, the Irish immigrant who opened Neary’s 57 years ago. And “old New York” bars never seem to last much longer than the proprietor whose personality defined the place as much as the drinks or the often heavy-on-the-cholesterol food.