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Chumley's, Historic Pub and Former Speakeasy in West Village - Closed Since 2007 Due To Fire


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Chumley's: 1922.  In the Village.  Once a speakeasy, it closed in 2007 due to a chimney collapse.  Re-construction has been slow and sporatic, but promises are still being made that it will re-open.

I just discovered (OK, I was flipping around in Wikipedia) that Chumley's may have been the place where the term "86", meaning to get rid of something or eliminate it, originated.

Chumlet's had two entrances, 86 Bedford and around back on the unmarked Pamela Court.  The story goes that, during Prohibition when it was a speakeasy, the friendly cops would call the place before a raid and tell them to "86" the customers, which was code for ushering them out the 86 Bedford door while the cops would enter through the Pamela Court door.  May or may not be the root of the term, but certainly another colorful story from among the 8 million in the Naked City.

Worth mentioning, which I didn't previously, that Chumley's gained its fame in part due to the long roster of literary figures who patronized the place and, it is said, occasionally wrote there, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Arthur Miller, James Agee, e.e. cummings, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, Allen Ginsberg, Erica Jong, Jack Kerouac, Sinclair Lewis, Norman Mailer, W. Somerset Maugham, Margaret Mead, J.D. Salinger, Orson Welles, and Thornton Wilder among others.   F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have once trysted in one of the booths.

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