The Pub:

With New Years Eve upon us there is no other place as famous as New York City.  When I moved to Pennsylvania from South Carolina I placed myself 4 hours from the Big Apple.  In 2007 I made several trips to New York City and fell in love with the pub/sports bar Scruffy Duffy’s located in Hell’s Kitchen.  I loved the wings, the music, the popular wheel,  and the staff were second to none as they were folk from Ireland with great stories from the land and the accent to boot.

Good memory of folk in NYC:

This was a friendly establishment and one memory comes to mind.  As we were sitting there these other people starting talking to us.  It was two females and it turned out they were having a birthday party for one of them the next night at a local night club that I can’t even remember the name of.  So we decided okay we’ll go sounds fun as we had nothing to do at night.  We showed up to the club and there was no wait or anything just yet.  So we went inside and were waved over to where the females we met the previous night were at.  All of  a sudden the area became roped off and the staff started bringing over bottles of Grey Goose and glasses…pretty cool!  Then these people started showing up and introducing themselves as so-and-so.  When asked what they did all of them had some connection in the NHL and there were some VP’s and what not.  Needless to say it was awesome.  Coming from a hockey state and farm town this was the best of both worlds as I got to meet people that had awesome connections in the NHL to owners and players and got a VIP treatment.  Never experienced that before in life as my parties growing were in barns or farm fields…this was velvet rope VIP treatment.

With that experience aside, in the summer or fall of 2007 I learned of this place shutting down due to high-rise.  You had to be kidding me.  I don’t know much about high-rise and income it brings or whatever but all I knew was that they were shutting down my favorite NYC pub due to this atrocity.  So I found out that they were doing a going away New Years Eve celebration of all-you-can-eat food and all-you-can-drink beverages I had to purchase and attend this event as a good-bye to the place I loved and the people behind that bar (that actually remembered us, great stuff!).  So then my New Years Eve  in NYC that I saw so often on the television as a kid from a farm town in Minnesota was about to be experienced.

The hotel during New Years Eve:

Well in renting a room for 2 nights a block away from Times Square at Paramount my room was cheaper the night before New Years but on the night of New Years Eve it was near $500.  Holy hell I was about floored but I had the money at the time and always wanted to say I was in NYC for New Years Eve.  Driving near Times Square trying to get to the hotel was a nightmare.  People were everywhere   Then the street I needed to turn down had a cop waving me on as people were everywhere.  So like a man playing Jenga and trying to make my way methodically I finally made it.  Mind you this was not a posh room but one where you walked in and the bed was 2ft from the door and the 2ft from the outside window with a private bathroom at least but right at the foot of the bed.  Needless to say the damn room fit a queen size bed and had a bathroom.

New Years Eve experience:

On the night of New Years Eve there were cops everywhere and Times Square was blocked off.  I remember leaving the hotel at just after noon and the place was packed.  You mean to tell me these people were waiting there for another 12 hours!  That just deserves a Mike Tyson’s ludicrous to me.  So we ventured to Scruffy Duffy’s and turned in our tickets and commenced to free drinks and later free food.  We then watched the ball drop with enough view and had to be a hell of a lot happier then those folk in the square.  Afterward there were so many people in the streets just wandering around to where there was no way in hell people would be able to drive.  Needless to say that whole area was a mad house, even several blocks over.

So in then end was I happy to experience it, of course I was.  Would I go to NYC again for New Years…hell no!

Below is a commemorative shirt I bought for the going away of Scruffy Duffy’s that I still hold 5 years later:

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