A Tradition Ends as Bars Shut Their Doors to Dogs

Miles has been going to Ace Bar all his life.

His face has grayed there. Friends have come and gone. He never paid for a drink, but rarely walked out of the East Village bar with an empty stomach. He may have purged his dinner on the floor a time or two, his fellow bar patrons said, but who among them hadn’t done the same?

Over the past year, though, Miles has become the latest subject of what may be the city’s least funny running joke: A dog walks into a bar — and the health department threatens to issue a violation for allowing live animals in a food establishment.

“He’s a dog, but I swear he looks sad,” Mike Israely, 33, said of Miles, his 9-year-old boxer-pug mix, as the dog peered through Ace Bar’s glass doors Thursday night. “Coming here was part of our evening walk.”

Of course, it has always been a violation of the city’s health code to allow a dog anywhere near a beer tap. But for years, this has been one of the most widely — and gleefully — violated rules in the city.

Not any more.


http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/a-tradition-ends-as-bars-shut-their-doors-to-dogs/

I feel safe and secure.

Where dogs are welcome in restaurants, trains,etc.

be expected to teach their dogs how to behave, and they also likely have the common sense to leave them at home if they are the least bit sick. Americans, not so much.

I was blessed to live there when it was gritty, Times Square didn't look like Disneyland, it looked like an episode of Kojak or the French Connection.

I left at a good time or I'd have become heartbroken.

Subways were top to bottom graffiti.

And you could take a dog into a fuckin bar if nobody minded.

K/R

Thanks for posting, DB.

:thumbsup:

harmless friendly dogs get banned from bars because a snitch ratted him out..but bazillions of retirement dollars vanish & no one know how on earth THAT happened, or who-dun-it:(

When I was in college, a bar we loved had a skunk as a mascot.. Charlie was "de-scented" but it was always fun to see the expressions on faces of new people who did not know that, as Charlie scampered down the bartop, begging for peanuts & shredding bar napkins:)

where so many stores tackled a severe rodent problem by hiring a store cat. I knew a lot of those cats and it was always so much more friendly in the places than the fluorescent lights and "drop your money and get out" decor would have been without them. There were even store cats stashed into restaurant basements here and there, but those kitties were usually tucked out of sight when the places were open. You'd just see them patrolling when the place was closed and you looked in a window.

I was a hell a lot more paranoid about rat shit in the stew than I ever was about a stray cat hair here and there.

I've seen human patrons that are more of a health hazard than someone's dog.