For the first time in over a year, I’m resting my elbows on the carved wooden bar at the hole in the wall, only in NYC dive bar underneath our (now former) office.

Undercover cops shot a black security guard on the doorstep in 2000, after the security guard refused to sell them pot. The Grand Jury declined to indict them. Anthony Bourdain,  the Hunter Thompson of our time, drank here. 30,000 New Yorkers have died of COVID since I’ve last sat at this bar.

This bar has five different names — on the sign, on google, inside, etc, including one calling it a “distinguished cocktail lounge.” I recommend buying only bottled beer and paying only in cash.

This bar is a survivor, between a LensCrafters and a Dos Toros. It’s one of three businesses on this block older than 10 years, the others being a hardware store, and a sex shop that has a sign proclaiming its “busines hours.” (sic)

This bar is a survivor, but in between the (mostly) socially distanced bar seats, are ghosts. Of Bourdain, of Patrick Dorismond, the father of two murdered by undercover, unidentified cops, of the 30,000+ New Yorkers killed by “just the flu.”

Much like scars, the ghosts never go away, but they make us who we are as a city. On dark, rainy nights like this, where we can uneasily re-experience something we took for granted for so long, I remember them.