At a NYC ‘UConn bar,’ customers are scarce
NEW YORK — Legends Restaurant and its nextdoor neighbor, Jack Demsey’s, are known as the “UConn bars” of New York City, and there’s a good reason why.
Both are owned by Enda Keenan, whose son, Shane, was a goalkeeper for the UConn men’s soccer team the past two years. Enda wears his UConn fandom on his sleeve — almost literally — bedecked in a UConn golf shirt while greeting customers inside Legends on Thursday evening.
Of course, there weren’t many customers to greet. Yet another remnant of COVID-19.
“It’s crazy how it’s changed everything,” Keenan said.
Typically, on a day when UConn is playing a block up West 33rd Street inside Madison Square Garden, there would be hundreds of Husky fans jamming Legends. The customers the restaurant couldn’t hold would spill over to Jack Demsey’s.
But at about 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, there was nary a customer inside Demsey’s. A half-hour later, a family of three Villanova fans grabbed a table. They had just watched their No. 1seeded Wildcats get upset by eighth-seeded Georgetown — not inside the Garden, mind you, but at another bar across town.
There are no paying customers at MSG this
week. About 100 tickets were allotted to each team for Thursday night’s game, but only for friends and family of Tier 1 individuals
— players, coaches and staff. That number will go up to a little over 200 tickets per school on Friday, but it’s still only friends and family.
Both establishments frequently hold UConn alumni events when the Huskies are playing in the city.
Not this year.
“It’s a shame,” said Mairead McKiernan, manager of Demsey’s.
McKiernan noted one reason the restaraunts and bars are largely empty is because many recent alumni of UConn and other Big East schools aren’t living in the city, but instead are back living at home with their parents in Long Island, Connecticut or New Jersey.
And, of course, not only are Legends and Jack Demsey’s not hosting group events during the CO
VID-19 pandemic, but the UConn Foundation and other alumni groups also are refraining from any such gatherings.
The restaurants weren’t the only things unusually empty. The Metro-North train out of New Haven, which in normal years would transport hundreds, if not thousands of UConn fans to the Big Apple for a Big East tournament game, was sparsely populated on Thursday afternoon.
The familiar din of scalpers outside of Madison Square Garden — the guys who seem to do it for a living, alongside the fans of teams (like Villanova) whose team has lost and are looking to unload tickets — was nowhere to be found.
A quick walk next door to Legends, a larger restaurant in the shadow of the Empire State Building, unearthed a couple of dozen customers. More were on the way, according to Keenan.
A couple of reservations by UConn fans had been made for 7 p.m. A party of
particularly optimistic Husky fans also made reservations for Friday night — assuming UConn beat DePaul in Thursday’s late game.
Still, in normal times, Legends would have been teeming with Husky fans all day — and all night. Not this year. Not when all New York bars and restaurants must close by 11 p.m. during the pandemic.
“UConn has been so good to us, we love supporting the Huskies ,” said Keenan, who has owned Legends for 13 years and owned Jack Demsey’s for more than 20. “But
these are crazy times. If this were two years ago, we’d have 800, 900 people in here, 1,000 people on game night. Especially now that they’re back in the Big East, which is phenomenal for everybody.”
Just not this year. “Hopefully it’s back to normal next year,” Keenan added, “because there are so many past alumni that will stay in the city for a couple of days, with old friends, and make a weekend of it.”