In the most commercially saturated half-mile in America, Jimmy Glenn carved a narrow room out of a Times Square building and filled every inch of wall space with boxing memorabilia — fight posters, signed gloves, photographs of champions he trained and corners he worked. Jimmy was a boxing trainer who opened a bar in 1971, and for over four decades he poured cheap beer to a crowd that included off-duty cops, Broadway stagehands, journalists, and anyone else who understood that the best bar near Times Square was also the least interested in Times Square. Jimmy passed in 2020, but the room survives exactly as he left it: narrow as a rail car, jukebox stacked deep, pints under five dollars, and the feeling of being somewhere that exists because one person willed it into permanence.
Location
Times Square, New York
Map
Insider Intel
A cheap beer — Budweiser, PBR, whatever is coldest and cheapest. A shot of bourbon if the mood calls for it. This is a bar where the drink costs less than a bottle of water at the Marriott next door, and that is the entire economic philosophy. Feed the jukebox — it is one of the best curated in Manhattan.
Pre-theatre for an antidote to the Times Square sensory assault — the contrast is medicinal. Late night after 11pm for the real regulars, when the narrow room fills with people who work in the neighbourhood and drink here because it is theirs. Any time you need proof that authenticity survives in Midtown.
140 W 44th Street, Times Square. Times Square-42nd Street station (1/2/3/7/N/Q/R/W/S). Beers $4-6, shots $5-7. Cash preferred, cards accepted. The narrow room gets crowded on weekend nights. Jimmy Glenn trained boxers and ran this bar from 1971 until his death in 2020 at age 89. The boxing memorabilia on the walls is museum-grade and genuine.