McAleer’s is the oldest family owned and operated pub on the Upper West Side. McAleer’s was formed in 1953 by John and Frank McAleer. John and Frank were first cousins from Pomeroy, County Tyrone in Northern Ireland.
New York City in 1953 saw a lot of firsts, like the first time subway tokens were used, the first time passenger helicopter service was offered, and the first premiere of a 3-D movie. In the rest of the country there was the first Milton Berle show, the first TV Guide, and Swanson’s first TV Dinner.
Since the formation of McAleer’s in 1953 the neighborhood has seen many changes. The 1950s and early 1960s was a great time for Pubs and taverns alike. However, during the late 1960s and through the 1970s the Upper west side was inundated with drugs and prostitution. Nonetheless, through hard work and perseverance McAleer’s Pub was able to survive into the next generation.
In 1988, Keith McAleer (John’s son) took over management control of the family business and reintroduced great Pub fare to offer the newly gentrified Upper West Side. In 1994, McAleer’s was named one of the top ten places to meet people in New York according to a poll conducted by the New York Post. In addition, McAleer’s has been featured in the television series N.Y.P.D. Blue as the squad’s local watering hole as well as other television and movie productions. The famous mystery writer Dorian Yeager also used McAleer’s as her heroine Vic Bowering’s base of operations throughout her numerous mystery solving escapades.
McAleer’s has and always will maintain the integrity of a local Irish Pub while adapting to changes in the consumers taste. So, please come in and relax, order a pint of your favorite draught, enjoy some great food and conversation.
Charles Bukowski
You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.
But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.
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Could Man Be Drunk Forever, by A E Houseman
Could man be drunk for ever
With liquor, love, or fights,
Lief should I rouse at morning
And lief lie down of nights.
But men at whiles are sober
And think by fits and starts,
And if they think, they fasten
Their hands upon their hearts.
Drunk As Drunk, by Pablo Neruda
Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it – our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky’s hot rim,
The day’s last breath in our sails.
Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.
John Keats
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delv’d earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
Oh, for a beaker of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim.
