re: Pictures from days gone by....

McSorley’s Bar (1912)
John Sloan



McSorley’s occupies the ground floor of a red brick tenement at 15 [East] Seventh Street, just off Cooper Square, where the Bowery ends. … It is equipped with electricity, but the bar is stubbornly illuminated with a pair of gas lamps, which flicker fitfully and throw shadows on the low, cobwebby ceiling each time someone opens the street door. There is no cash register. Coins are dropped in soup bowls—one for nickels, one for dimes, one for quarters, and one for halves—and bills are kept in a rosewood cashbox. It is a drowsy place; the bartenders never make a needless move, the customers nurse their mugs of ale, and the three clocks on the walls have not been in agreement for many years.
—Joseph Mitchell in The New Yorker, Aug. 14, 1940



McSorley's, oldest Irish pub in NYC, is forced to admit women customers (after 116 years of being male only) due to a lawsuit by the National Organization for Women. NOW's Lucy Komisar grimly steps up to the bar. (1970)

Walking the dog in the rain, 1957

RIP Sally Kellerman