Bash Compactor: God Save the King

“Ask everyone at the party if they have had sex in those bathrooms, because everyone I know has,” a friend told me when I mentioned that I would be covering the 10th anniversary of beloved Chelsea pub The Half King.

At the festivities, a band in the corner played Irish folk music and an eclectic crowd of various ages (dressed a little too nicely for a pub known for debauchery) took advantage of a buffet of fried foods and an open bar. Co-owned by war correspondent and filmmaker Sebastian Junger, the bar originally started as a place for publishing industry types to hang out and do readings, but it’s evolved into something else entirely while still maintaining its charm.

“It’s the last bar of its kind for jerks like us,” the same friend eloquently put it.

Speaking of which, an elderly lady dressed like a circus clown gave me some shit about elbowing up to the bar to get a drink, and I calmly reminded her that it was a fucking bar, and an open one at that.

A group of marines, possibly friends of Junger’s from his days shooting the recently released award-winning documentary Restrepo, moved about the room while Junger’s partner on the film, photojournalist Tim Hetherington, joked with wellwishers who stopped by to shake hands.

I asked Junger whether it was more stressful being a war correspondent or a bar owner in New York City. “If it works, there’s no better job, and I mean that about both. If it doesn’t, they’re each their own hell,” he said We switched subjects to the reputation of the bathrooms. “Things happen in bathrooms all over the city,” he said. “A young couple… ah, I shouldn’t tell that story,” he chuckled as he excused himself.

Chef Greg Baumel, a born and bred Manhattanite, was more forthcoming. “This young couple had their first night out in two years here after just having a kid. They broke the sink right off the wall,” he said.

Why did he think the bar was such a success? “If I could answer that, I’d bottle it up and open a hundred of ’em.” [Danny Gold]