Last Call at Coogan's Bar - The Life and Death of a Neighborhood Bar by Jon Michaud

 

The uniquely inspiring story of our beloved neighborhood bar that united the communities it served. Coogan's Bar and Restaurant opened in New York City's Washington Heights in 1985 and closed its doors for good in the pandemic spring of 2020. Sometimes called Uptown City Hall, it became a staple of neighborhood life during its 35 years in operation--a place of safety and a bulwark against prejudice in our multi-ethnic, majority-immigrant community undergoing rapid change. Last Call at Coogan's by Jon Michaud tells the story of this beloved saloon, from the challenging years of the late 80's and early 90's, when Washington Heights suffered from the highest crime rate in the city, to the 2010's, when gentrification pushed out longtime residents and nearly closed Coogan's itself; only a massive community mobilization including local politicians and Lin-Manuel Miranda kept the doors open. This book touches on many serious issues facing the country today: race relations, policing, gentrification, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Along the way, readers will meet the bar's owners and an array of its most colorful regulars, such as an aspiring actor from Kentucky who dreams of bringing a theater company to Washington Heights, a television reporter who loves karaoke, and a Puerto Rican community board manager who falls in love with an Irish cop from the local precinct. At its core, this is the story of one small business in Washington Heights, the people who worked there, the customers they served, and the community they all called home. 

Last Call at Coogan's was much more than just another nonfiction book about a neighborhood bar. It takes the reader through more than three decades of history about Washington Heights and the changes in the area, ranging from gang crime, crack drug use bordering on epidemic, and finishing with a social phenomenon almost as pernicious as those: gentrification. When the bar was on the ropes because its evil landlord, New York Presbyterian Hospital, raised their rent from $7,000 a month to $40,000 a month, the area came to the bars aid, pressuring the hospital, void of any conscience and hard-pressed to explain its not for profit status, to raise the rent to a much lower amount allowing them to survive another three years. Finally, the evil that finally put the last nail in Coogan's coffin was the same evil that did many businesses (and people) in: covid 19. The book is a tribute to the people who both ran Coogan's and those who patronized the bar. All of them were family, the Coogan's family. 

The book was published in June 2023 by St. Martin's Press.