OLD BARS.

OLD BARS. Instapundit linked to this post on the ten oldest taverns in the United States. I have gone to the three in New York. One of Mary Jane’s contributions to the women’s liberation movement was to spend time at McSorley’s on two occasions shortly after women were allowed in, despite there not being a lady’s room. I have posted here on the lovely New Year’s Eve we spent at the White Horse watching the snow fall. Jane Jacobs changed thinking about cities and urban renewal when she wrote that the safest place to live in a big city was near a bar (active neighborhood, “Eyes on the Street”—her phrase—at all hours of the day and night). I was visiting the White Horse a couple days after Jane Jacobs died (April 25, 2006), and there were floral tributes to her in front of a nearby building (Jacobs lived at one time at 555 Hudson Street and the White Horse is at 567 Hudson).I realized that she may have been thinking of the White Horse when she wrote about the advantages of living across from a bar.