Author Archives: Kyle D.

Tucked away on a quiet block not too far from the main NYU campus, Formerly Crow’s celebrates over a year since reopening, rebranding and withstanding the pressure to conform to the many dive bars of the area which the NYU crowd seems to adore.

“It feels good not to have to break up a fight every weekend,” says the new owner of the local West Village staple bar, Marshall Mintz.

After reopening in early September of 2012, Formerly Crow’s has been fighting to shed its former reputation as the “anything goes” bar.

“It was the freakin’ Wild West. Coyote Ugly had nothing on this place,” Mintz says of the old bar’s lax rules. “Fake ID’s, fights, people [getting sick], girls dancing on the bar. I mean I kind of liked the girls on the bar part, but dealing with the nonsense every weekend takes a toll on a business.”

Mintz, 43, was a bartender at the original The Stoned Crow Bar, located at the same spot at 85 Washington Place. He took over the bar in early 2012 from former bar owner “Kitty” who he said was “drowning in old age, stress and underage assholes.”

“It’s sort of a Catch-22,” says bouncer Joel Rodriguez. “People who used to come to this spot back in the old days knew they could get away with [anything]. That’s why they came. It was always a packed house, but when a cop was on the block half the bar was in nervous mode. Now that people know we’re stricter than before, we empty out quicker. They’d rather go down the block.”

The “down the block” that Rodriguez is referencing are the many dive bars that are found on Sullivan Street, about a four-minute walk from Formerly Crow’s. These bars, increasingly more popular with the NYU crowd, have more lax rules of conduct, cheaper drinks and the invitingly grungy ambiance that seems to attract college students.

The old Crow was known for its grungy environment. The walls and ceiling were covered in old magazine pages used to hide the many stains that had accumulated over the years. The bathrooms were nicknamed “the hole” by staff and regulars alike for the literal hole that was in one of the closed-off stalls in the unisex bathrooms.

The senior staff reminisces on the “good old days” when they got away with everything from drinking on the job to disappearing for hours on end to deal with hangovers. This blasé environment trickled down to patrons, who racked up huge to-be-paid-whenever tabs, bribed the bouncer to look the other way for underage drinkers, and smoked inside the bar after three a.m.

Jillian Wowak, a senior bartender at Crow’s, is not a fan of Sullivan Street or its patrons.
“Those bars are so stupid. You get watered-down beer and crappy alcohol. But the kids don’t care as long as their obviously fake ID works and they can get as wasted as possible for cheap,” says Wowak. “If they don’t come here, that’s perfectly fine with me! We get to leave earlier, we deal with less [stuff] and our new people tip way better.”

Since reopening, Mintz has totally redone the decor of the bar, creating more of a relaxed upscale feel rather than the grungy look it donned in its old days.

“Happy hour is big here. We get the suit-and-tie crowd now. And that was exactly the goal,” says Mintz. “We get a lot of groups all coming from work looking to relax and kick back. It’s funny. I think how we decorated the place might scare college kids off; like they think they won’t be able to get their underage friends in. Either that or they think we are a boring bar. After years of cleaning up NYU puke, I’m pretty content with being boring.”

Ron Connelly, 28, who now works in the securities department of Goldman Sachs, was a regular at the old Crow’s while attending NYU.

“I used to smoke in here after like three [AM],” says Connelly. “Beers used to be like four bucks, two dollar shots some nights. Plus, the last night of the old place, bartenders were literally giving drinks away. But I’m glad the bar changed up. Now I feel like I can come here and just relax, watch the game, and shoot some pool. I’ve even brought a few dates here. They think it’s charming. It’s like the bar grew up with me.”

Although Mintz does say that he is happy with the changes that he and his staff has made, he does realize how losing the college crowd to other bars affects his bottom line. “Well, sure. Sometimes it is 1:30 on a Friday night and we’re half full and I know that bars like Off the Wagon are wall-to-wall packed. It definitely makes me think about trying to get some of the older college kids back in here. But at the same time, more kids mean more security, not as many top-shelf servings. It is always a toss-up,” says Mintz.

Jordan Epstein, a waiter, admits he wishes that he would have worked at the old Crow’s. “I always hear stories about the crazy days. I mean, honestly, it seems fun. I would rather work at a place that has energy to it than a place where everything is all stuffy, all the patrons are stuck up and I’m fighting to stay awake,” says Epstein.

Like it or not, according to Mintz, Formerly Crow’s new identity is here to stay.

“It’s been a crazy ride, finding ourselves and all,” he says. “But this is us now. This is where we are at.”

Check out Formerly Crow’s here: http://www.formerlycrows.com/

For my project I was thinking of doing a day in the life of a bartender. I would basically document that goings on of the bartender at my local spot from happy hour when the bar opens until the end of her shift. I’d show the changes in how she interacts with coworkers and customers based on the time of shift and crowd that is there. I’d also get snippets of interviews from fellow coworkers and customers about her, the bar and bartending in general.

This will be interesting because we all know how fun Friday nights could be…for customers, but this shows the flipside of that…how bartenders find fun ways to be working while everyone around them is playing. Plus Bar Rescue is an AWESOME show and this would be SOOOOOOO much better!

I would like to do a story focusing on 3 different music acts that perform at Union Square. There are about 3 or 4 main areas where people choose to do performances in the station so at anytime there are multiple artists giving shows. My intention is to spend an hour or so with each of the performers and observe them doing at least 2 or three sets. Talking to them and witnessing how they interact with onlookers, MTA workers and even other artists should give an interesting profile of these artists.

It would be interesting to find totally different types of acts, that congregate in different areas and garner different types of crowd. The diversity of images and information will show the wide spectrum of entertainment that gathers to show off there skills at “The Square”. I would most likely go about doing this project by hanging around Union Square for a few hours on Friday and Saturday and talk to a few different artists. I would snap a few photos initially before meeting them, then use that as a way to strike up conversation with them after their first set. Then I would stick around for a couple more sets getting different, more intimate and detailed angles of the performer and audience. I would then pick out the best photos that fit into the image that I am trying to paint of Union Square.

So many people pass through Union Square everyday not noticing the amount of culture and entertainment that the station hosts at any given time. I think that this hub of culture deserves its story to be told.

I wanted to focus on different forms of the music industry in the city. As a city where many come to “make it,” there are so many events, players and processes that could be reported on.

One idea would be to do a report on a studio that cater to artists at different level of the industry and their career. I would love to chronicle a couple of days at the studio, interviewing the engineers and vast types of artists that come through. I would want to find a studio with some history or has some type of interesting story behind it as so I’m not just randomly interviewing people.

Another idea that I had was to do a story on street musicians. I would be really interested in doing a piece on either the many that performers that are in and around Union Square or focusing on one of those artists and doing a sort of “day in the life”. In both instances I would focus on how these artists financially survive, and how music effects other aspects of their lives. I feel like there MUST be a lot of stories between the negative and positive aspects of being a street performer.

On the flip side of interviewing artists struggling to be recognized for their music, I would also be interested in doing a piece on artists who have made it. Since it would be particularly hard to garner the attention of major artists, I would want to focus on the people who cater to these artists. I think it would be interesting to do a story on people who cater to artists through various forms such as night life, fashion, make up, public relations etc. These people are much more accessible and will have as much, if not more information than the artists will about the details of their day.