With its green awning and green ashtray, its name in big, embossed, silver lettering, and a steady stream of regulars bustling in and out its doors, if you didn’t know any better, you might think Coogan’s is just another Irish pub in a city full of them.
But step inside and you’ll quickly realize it’s anything but. Autographed singlets hang from the ceiling. Medals, trophies, banners, and even a Penn Relays wheel line its walls. And a back room showcases hundreds of old Sports Illustrated and Track & Field News issues. At its core, Coogan’s is a track bar. After just about any indoor meet at the nearby Armory, athletes and spectators alike migrate down the block to grab a bite, sip a beer, or talk track at this Uptown Manhattan mainstay.
But Armory-goers will soon have to find a new post-meet haunt. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that Coogan’s will shutter its doors this May when its lease expires. And almost immediately, the track world rallied around its favorite watering hole.
“The response has been unbelievable,” Peter Walsh, one of the bar’s owners, told Runner’s World. “I’m getting calls from Olympians, coaches, meet officials. I just got off the phone with someone from France—before that, someone from England. I knew the track world was huge, but I didn’t realize how far Coogan’s reached.”
Watch: World champion steeplechaser Emma Coburn tries her hand at race directing.
Track bars are few and far between already. Eliot Lounge—a running-themed dive bar considered by many to be the unofficial finish line of the Boston Marathon—closed in 1996, but is still mourned. Through the aid of social media, shock and outrage over the Coogan’s news promptly spread. Within hours of the story going live on the Times’ website, it had been shared thousands of times, including by Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda—a regular patron—and many prominent members of the running community.
“We’ve had fun,” said Walsh. “To see Matt Centrowitz and his father relaxing after a race with you and laughing and having a good time—to have Jenny Simpson come through regularly and interact with the high school runners—we’ve built a beautiful community and we’re really proud of that.”
The building that Coogan’s has called home since it opened 1985 is owned by NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, which will reportedly seek an additional $40,000 per month to occupy the space once Coogan’s vacates it. Rather than attempt to fundraise or beg their landlords for another year, Walsh and company look forward to greeting the usual swarms of tracksters for one final, prolonged hoorah.
“We’re gonna make these last months a celebration of our history,” said Walsh. “We’re not gonna make it a wake—although we Irish are really good at that.”
