Citing rat problems, vermin and a live-in rat catcher cat, the NYC Health Dept. shut down iconic McSorley’s Old Ale House in the East Village of Manhattan last week. It is considered the oldest Irish pub in the city. What do you think?
It’s always appeared scruffy; guess a line was seen to have been crossed.
Did the cat vote for Trump?
Inside source says the problem is from construction next door. McSorley’s will be open soon.
This anti-cat policy by the health department is super annoying. I know it’s become common practice around the whole country but it’s still super annoying. For god’s sake keeping rodents and insects away from food is what humans domesticated cats to do in the first place.
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40 years ago the cob webs on the fixtures looked phony but the beer, cheese and crackers, and onions after a cooper union test was the best. Time marches on and it’s time cleanliness caught up. They use to have only a men’s bathroom too …
If you talk about how they used to be… I remember first going there in the late 70’s and the bartenders were still complaining that the city had forced them to allow women. Before 1970 women were not allowed in. That’s why they only had a men’s room.
@jmf of course that is why there was only a men’s room my first visit was in 72 and I think there was a sign on the front window men only and that was when the 2nd ave deli was really on 2nd ave and the east village was heroin city - a bowl of hot and sour soup in Chinatown was 35 cents and pot was smoked openly in Washington square park - come to think of it that last one is the same …
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Eater is reporting that McSorley’s has reopened…
If it were any other place in the city you may think twice about going - but when you said it was McSorley’s I just kind of shrugged and thought of course they were - must have missed a bribe payment.
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I worked in a restaurant that employed a live in-house “mouse” catcher
Well, make that two cats. The first one aged out and went home to live with an
employee. The second one was not as lucky.
The cat was confined to the basement of the restaurant every day all day.
At night it would roam free…guess what, the mice visited the dining room
during business hours … the cat escaped through a door that was
carelessly left open and was hit and killed by a car … heartbreaking.
There are some cats that adapt to or enjoy this lifestyle and there are those that don’t … choose your cats wisely actually, let your cats choose you
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I drank there in the early 60s. There was a sign in the window that said “Good Ale, Raw Onions, No Women.”
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And yet another beauty !!!
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Just another gratuitous cat shot - we adopted a pair of little brothers this weekend! Mama was feral so perhaps they’ll make good mousers.
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Congratulations … they look like little minks
Good luck with that once they’ve been fed 
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Ours like to live trap. That way they can play with their food longer.
Such an adventure, getting the mouse out of the house.
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Ha … mine is just really a lazy player … she will sit for hours not moving in hopes of conquering the
elusive creature … she did actually catch one once and I mistakenly thought it was dead, my bad, it ran
away but was recaptured and it was all good!
Three on one is not fair!
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