Ale, Cheese, Onions and Women

John Coyne, at his usual post guarding the door, spotted the women heading for the place and quickly locked the door . . . Coyne refused the soprano-voiced demands for entry, and the girls took up positions preventing either exit or entry for about a half-hour.”

Thus reads one newspaper account of the last sharp skirmish in the siege of McSorley’s, just before the fall, I know. That’s what she said too. But it’s all a case of mistaken identity. John Coyne writes for national review. But the best waiter in town is also called John Coyne, a Galway-born Irishman who serves up ale and porter—fifty cents for two mugs—at McSorley’s Old Ale House in Manhattan. And before the final battle John also served as lookout, watching for ladies from Betty Friedan’s National Organization for Women (NOW), a Women’s Lib outfit that had vowed to belly up to the bar of Manhattan’s oldest men-only tavern for ale and cheese and onions.

JR

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John R. Coyne Jr.

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John Coyne, at his usual post guarding the door, spotted the women heading for the place and quickly locked the door . . . Coyne refused the soprano-voiced demands for entry, and the girls took up positions preventing either exit or entry for about a half-hour.”

Thus reads one newspaper account of the last sharp skirmish in the siege of McSorley’s, just before the fall, I know. That’s what she said too. But it’s all a case of mistaken identity. John Coyne writes for national review. But the best waiter in town is also called John Coyne, a Galway-born Irishman who serves up ale and porter—fifty cents for two mugs—at McSorley’s Old Ale House in Manhattan. And before the final battle John also served as lookout, watching for ladies from Betty Friedan’s National Organization for Women (NOW), a Women’s Lib outfit that had vowed to belly up to the bar of Manhattan’s oldest men-only tavern for ale and cheese and onions.