A Visit to O’Hara’s

On a recent visit to New York City, I found myself in Lower Manhattan looking for a bathroom. Hoping to find a suitable place to have a quiet beer, a yellow O’Hara’s sign beamed nearby. Inside, I called a fellow patron “Sir” and he asked me where I was from. I asked him the same. “Right here,” he said, pointing at our feet. For most of his life, he has lived across the street from the World Trade Center in a building that remained standing after 9/11. Being from a small town, I don’t expect residents of large cities to feel a deep-seated pride for where they live. But this guy did; his expression told me what he didn’t have to say. The event that shook the entire world happened across the street from him. What he felt is embodied in O’Hara’s, a place so unmistakably proud of its city — the walls covered with firemen patches from thousands of Ground Zero workers from across the world.

O’Hara’s taught me that a place doesn’t have to be small to be a community.