Chumley's Is Chummy Again
The rich history of Chumley’s precedes its latest iteration. Opened during Prohibition, in 1922, by the activist Lee Chumley, the bar was a reliable place to get a stiff drink for writers including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Willa Cather, and Dylan Thomas. It even has its own contribution to the lexicon, as the birthplace of the term “eighty-sixed,” derived from the back door at 86 Bedford Street, through which patrons were advised to skedaddle when the police were en route. Chumley’s lived on for decades as a boozy dive proud of its literary history, with sawdust on the floor, grungy graffiti-carved wooden tables, and book jackets lining the walls, until 2007, when a major chimney mishap caused extensive structural damage. Last fall, it finally reopened, reimagined by the owners, the firefighter Jim Miller and the Sushi Nakazawa restaurateur Alessandro Borgognone, as a swanky restaurant, offering steak for more than a hundred dollars and cocktails with names like Basement of Thieves and Mr. Easy.
From “The Rich Literary History of Chumley’s” by Shauna Lyon for The New Yorker; Photo by Christaan Felber (@christaanfelber)
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