AND THE NIGHT LORD JOHN CLEANED OUT McSORLEY'S

...Will he make changes...

...And so, one more tradition into the dust . bin, a tradition that began in 1854 when John McSorley, fresh from County Tyrone, modeled his tavern on the pubs he remembered back home...

...Tradition is the key word at McSorley's...

...Whenever John Coyne spotted a woman heading toward the bar, he'd ring the bell three times, a bull horn sounded in the back room, and the patrons stood and shouted: "No Women...

...The guest book includes the names of Eugene O'Neill...

...And on 25 June, District Court Judge Walter R. Mansfield ordered McSorley's doors opened to both sexes...

...Cassius Clay...

...Brendan Behan, who composed his last published work at one of McSorley's battered wooden tables and whose wife, as a special courtesy, was served a mug of ale outside the door...

...But the demand to drink in McSorley's is no more legitimate than the demand to establish residence in the rest room...

...James A. Farley, The Alternative'sfavoritepolitician...

...you wanted at all...

...But the best waiter in Manhattan is also called John Coyne, a Galway-born Irishman who serves up ale and porter-fifty cents for two mugs-at McSorley's Old Ale House, birthplace of this great journal of opinion...

...None...

...Finally wouldn't most women prefer their mates off drinking together than prowling through go-go joints...

...The executors of our laws should exercise prudence in applying those laws...

...And there's publicity, of course...

...Thus reads one newspaper account of the last sharp skirmish in the siege of McSorley's, just before the fall...

...There's an old song title," says O'Connell Kirwan, "that I think sums it up...

...Coyne refused the soprano-voiced demands for entry, and the girls took up positions preventing either exit or entry for about a half-hour...

...The first and foremost rules were no hard booze and no women...

...The same ale and porter can be purchased all over the city...

...Mayors O'Dwyer and Wagner...

...Jackie Gleason...

...The most remarkable thing of all," says Dorothy's son, Daniel O'Connell Kirwan, the present manager, "is that McSorley's is owned by a woman...

...Not that women don't have a case in general-hiring practices, that sort of thing...

...No sentient man, conservative or Liberal, will disagree with O'Connell Kirwan about the legitimacy of many of Women's Lib demands...

...It may be argued," wrote Judge Mansfield wistfully, "that the occasional preference of men for a haven or retreat from the watchful eyes of wives or womanhood in general, to have a drink or pass a few hours in their own company, is justification enough: that the simple fact that women are not men justifies defendant's practices...

...Customers stand on a sawdust-covered floor and take their ale at the original mahogany bar, behind which money is still arranged by denomination in cups...

...Dylan Thomas, who wrote poems there...

...It is not an arsenal of offensive weapons to be summoned by busybodies and exotics in their attempts to coerce others...

...It's the age of protest, I guess," muses O'Connell Kirwan, speculating on why women want to ruin his tavern...

...But maybe it's all over...

...I know...

...Bill McSorley, John's son, had no children, and in 1936 sold out to Daniel O'Connell, a policeman, on the condition that the old traditions be continued...

...You're in, ladies...

...The first few days there've been a bunch in to have their pictures taken...

...And before the final battle John also served as lookout, watching for ladies from Betty Friedan's National Organization for Women (NOW), a Women's Lib outfit that had vowed to belly up to the bar of Manhattan's oldest men-only tavern for ale and cheese and onions...

...It seems Lord John's profoundly informed conscience advised him of the sacred right of the male and female of the species to guzzle together, and he could do no more than to sign a bill opening all the city's public places to women-thus rendering McSorley's appeal academic...

...And until Lord John's feminist legislation, the bell still signaled the beginning of a fight, although of a different nature...

...The walls are lined with pictures of the athletes, actors, writers and politicians who have frequented McSorley's through the years...

...And so O'Connell Kirwan is to be coerced into opening his property to unwanted, disagreeable, and often bellicose customers...

...John McSorley's strictures were stringently observed for over a century...

...After you get what you want, you don't want what you wanted at all...

...But McSorley's...

...John Coyne writes for The Alternative...

...Which is to say that according to this learned man's reading of the equal protection clause, the law will protect busybodies attempt-ting to slip their snouts into another fellow's business but will not protect McSorley's dangerous misogynists who endeavor to drink peacefully in an atmosphere of their choosing...

...They're really only interested in the right to come in, I guess...

...The area around McSorley's is not the Gobi Desert, and any lady with a kiss for the hops can inoffensively indulge within a few doors of O'Connell Kirwan's empire...

...For the past thirty years, my mother has been willing to carry on the traditions of her father...

...The troubles began last spring, when two NOW ladies from Syracuse (and maybe that's why they're bitter) sued for admission...

...But it's all a case of mistaken identity...

...Yet Lord John allowed the busybodies to manipulate him into an act of imbecilic intolerance...

...The place has been here for 116 years," he says, "and it will be here 116 years from now...

...If women want total equality, I don't see why the concept shouldn't extend to rest rooms...

...and, most recently David Eisenhower...

...How about such things as rest rooms, presently consisting of one toilet and three huge urinals...

...the Tammany politicians who drank their way through Prohibition...

...Still it was not this juridical double standard which closed the case...

...The American Constitution exists for the comfort and well-being of all Americans...

...The Liederkranz and onion sandwich is legendary, as is the chili, and McSorley's corned-beef hash has sent New York Times food editor Craig Clairborne into ecstasies...

...Nevertheless, albeit reluctantly, the judge concluded that "McSorley's is a public place" and that "the preference of certain of its patrons is no justification under the equal protection clause (of the Constitution...

...The warning bell may not sound again soon, but Daniel O'Connell Kirwan intends to fight to keep the tavern's traditions intact...

...John McSorley, says Brendan Behan, was "a rather puritanical man," a teetotaler who believed that "ale was strong enough spirits for any man...

...That's what she said too...

...But when the papers get tired of the whole affair maybe they'll go away...

...But perhaps the most famous tradition of all has been the ringing of the bell which hangs over the bar, according to Daniel O'Connell Kirwan the same bell that used to mark rounds at the original Madison Square Garden...

...Sixty cents buys a meal-sized plate of cheese, crackers, onions and the hottest mug of mustard this side of Shanghai...

...The ale and porter costs more now, but at two for fifty cents it's still the best buy in town...

...And what next...

...John Coyne, at his usual post guarding the door, spotted the women heading for the place and quickly locked the door...

...But then the Lord Mayor of New York, renowned defender of Women's Winebibbery, took on McSorley's and it was curtains...

...Four years later O'Connell died and willed the tavern to-of all things-a daughter, Dorothy O'Connell Kirwan...

...American womanhood suffered no material nor spiritual damage from the exclusive tradition of a solitary (and comparatively insignificant) bar...

...McSorley's could and did appeal Judge Mansfield's decision...