With cheap drinks and friendly locals, Jimmy’s Corner is a New York institution. But a real-estate developer has ordered its closure – can it survive?
Founded by Jimmy Glenn, a former boxer turned trainer, in 1971, Jimmy’s Corner has stood, defiantly unchanged, as Times Square has boomed around it.
The neighborhood bar, a New York City institution which attracts locals and tourists alike, has had the same pictures on the walls for decades – some of the bar’s regulars have been coming almost as long – kept the same furniture, and maintained remarkably low pricing. In a perhaps unintentional nod to its history, there is also several years’ accumulation of dust in some areas.
It’s a beloved spot, a piece of New York history that has endured as Times Square transformed from a den of inequity into one of New York’s main tourist attractions. But Jimmy’s Corner may now have met its match, after the building’s landlord ordered its owner to shut down this famous watering hole.
“It felt like losing my parents again,” Adam Glenn, Jimmy Glenn’s son, who took over the bar in 2015, told the Guardian.
