Local bartenders face life after nightlife

It’s no secret that the hospitality industry is in trouble right now. While New York City’s restaurants have pivoted to takeout and delivery during the coronavirus shutdown, drinking establishments that don’t serve food have closed altogether.

In Red Hook, Seaborne, at 228 Van Brunt Street, has taken to delivering cocktails, but two beloved local watering holes have temporarily disappeared from the landscape: Rocky Sullivan’s at 46 Beard Street, and Sunny’s Bar at 253 Conover Street. The loss of St. Patrick’s Day, normally one of the busiest days of the year, was particularly hard on Rocky’s, an Irish pub.

Local bartenders, as reliably friendly faces and facilitators of conversation and community, play an important role in the fabric of the neighborhood. They don’t know when they’ll get back to work.

Before the pandemic, Grayson Schmidt tended bar at Sunny’s and at 40 Knots Bar in the Columbia Street Waterfront District. “I’m fully unemployed at the moment and for the foreseeable future,” she said.

Signing up for unemployment benefits has been a challenge on the state’s overloaded system.“I’ve had no luck,” Schmidt lamented. “I’ve gotten locked out of the website every time. It either just doesn’t even initiate the process because of the traffic or it times out before I can finish the application.”

David Gonzalez, a part-time bartender at Rocky Sullivan’s and at Red Hook’s VFW, also freelances in fabrication and construction work, but for now, his temporary gigs have dried up, too. “Everything has come to a standstill,” he observed.

In New York State, unemployment insurance often fails to cover independent contractors, although new federal legislation will help on that front. “I have some savings. That, however, is going to be depleted in a short while. I think I can last two months, and then I’m really going to be challenged,” Gonzalez confessed.

Schmidt has kept panic and self-pity at bay. “I have no income, and I don’t know when it’s going to pick back up again, but I think this is a far more dangerous situation for other people. I can get by for a little while,” she said.

Schmidt’s colleague Lillie Haws – who called herself a “self-sufficient person” who has “always planned for the worst” – explained her similar mentality: “You never compare yourself upwards. You compare yourself downwards. That’s how I feel: there are people worse off than myself.”

Haws, who once owned a bar called Lillie’s on Beard Street, has worked at Sunny’s for four years. “But I’ve been going there since the mid-’90s,” she clarified. “They’re kind of like my New York family.”

Spring cleaning

But like Schmidt and Gonzalez, Haws lives alone, not in a “shared-expense household” with a second income to fall back on. She is considering “turning all the stuff I’ve been wanting to get rid of for months into an online shop and surviving that way.”

Clearing out old junk – valuable or not – appears to be a popular activity during the quarantine. “I’ve reorganized many different corners of my house,” Schmidt mentioned. “I’m trying to stay home and do projects that I haven’t gotten around to in a long time. I made a bunch of plant hangers.”

Pottering about the house has been relaxing so far. “I feel like I haven’t slowed down and rested for so, so long,” Schmidt said.

For Gonzalez, however, staying active has been the key. “I keep myself busy with a lot of exercise, which I’m thoroughly enjoying. The ceiling in my living room needed painting – I just painted it yesterday. I’m a cleaning fanatic anyway, and now with the virus, I’m constantly wiping surfaces,” he related. “I can’t sit in one place. My drawers are all organized already. I’m afraid I’m going to run out of work.”

Loneliness hasn’t become a problem. “I’m texting with my friends back and forth. I have conversations,” Gonzalez said. “We share what we’re watching on TV. Most of us stream: ‘Watch this movie. Watch this show. You have to watch this documentary, this comedy.’ We’re still alive, if you will. We’re still conversing.”

What it means to be a bartender

Haws pointed out that, in times of crisis, people have often turned to bars for solace, as they did in the aftermath of 9/11. “Everybody was flocking to bars in this apocalyptic panic of ‘I just need to be around people. I need that comfort,’” she recollected. “It’s unfortunate that we could not be open at a time like this.”

Many Red Hook residents, surely, are wondering how they’ll cope without their favorite barkeep. “It takes a special person to do certain jobs,” Haws mused. “If you’re an actor, a fireman – there are all these different types of jobs out there that are built for certain people, and I think you have to be that certain person to be a bartender, in that you can experience joy from the genuine and authentic ability to give it.”

She continued: “That’s why we’re in this business: we enjoy joy so much. If we can keep that going somehow in our hearts for other people, that’s how we’re going to survive. We have to keep each other happy and keep in touch.”

Gonzalez speculated that, once “the curve” has flattened and bars can reopen, Rocky Sullivan’s usual convivial atmosphere – with plenty of hugs, handshakes, and kisses – won’t be the same unless a coronavirus vaccine has been widely distributed. “We’re going to be cognizant of health and hygiene,” he anticipated.

Still, Haws expects booming business in the future. “When the air is clear,” she predicted, “I think there’s going to be a giant onslaught of people running to bars.”

In the interim, Schmidt hopes Red Hookers will keep in mind the plight of service workers, including those who continue to operate cash registers and make food deliveries in spite of the danger. “I think what would be really important and helpful are people that do still have a steady income coming in, who have the means to give, to donate, to shop locally, to be ordering food and drinks from the places that are still serving, and to throw something in the virtual tip jar for the employees that are out, because we’ve certainly all been there for each other in many times of need, so it would be very special and appreciated if that came back around during these times.”

Sunny’s Bar has organized a fundraiser for staff at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-sunny039s-bar-staff. Donate to the United States Bartender Guild’s COVID-19 Relief Campaign at https://www.usbgfoundation.org/beap.