Goodbye, Mulligan's Brick Bar
Another Allen Street landmark bites the dust
Fire has again hit Allen Street and we have lost another historic bar. Above is a picture I drew of this age-old tavern. Of course I drew Mulligan’s — who hasn’t? I drew it sitting on the curb across the street with my friend Meghan.
Sitting on the Allen Street curb, I also drew the Old Pink, which we lost back in June. I wrote then about the Old Pink, and I posted my sketch.
It is strange, the buildings I have sketched that are no longer there. I am always grateful that I have the drawings of buildings that are going or gone. At least I can rest assured that I appreciated them. When you draw a building on location, it is not like snapping a picture. You study the building for hours. You look at it from various angles. You consider the building’s surroundings. You get to know it closely. Anyone who does urban sketching would tell you the same thing.
And in the case of Mulligan’s, I loved the look of the bar, the old building and its brickwork, the cute sign and adorable old windows. And I loved how it looked on the corner of Allen and College streets, part of the historic cityscape.
I see people writing dumb jokes about Mulligan’s, and that irritates me. I was never a big Mulligan’s patron — as was the case with the Old Pink, I just was not in that crowd. I went only once or twice. Haha, the one time I remember visiting Mulligan’s, when I was 19, I do remember that distinctly. It was memorable because I was in this medieval group, the Society for Creative Anachronism, and in the bar’s bedlam, I lost the crown I had been entrusted with because I was at the time the Queen of the East. God knows how I would have explained that, that I lost the East Kingdom crown in this bar. It was worth some money, as I recall. What was I doing in there with it? Was it Halloween? Who knows. Luckily the crown eventually made its way back to me.
However I went other places on Allen Street, in my, ahem, bar-going days. And I worked right in that neighborhood for a couple of years. I have always appreciated the street’s historic character. Now a little more of that is gone.
Wow, just as in the case of the Old Pink, when Mulligan’s burned, it really burned. Roof gone, windows blown out, just a shell. These fires are never caught in time. They happen in off hours, nobody there, nobody aware until it is too late.
And so we hear again — you guessed it — emergency demolition.
Maybe it has already been demolished. I almost had to smile, you know, reading back on my account of the Old Pink. I griped on that occasion that everything else in Buffalo takes years, but oh, these emergency demolitions — just say the words, “emergency demolition,” and it is done.
It is too bad, I guess, that these dive bars are often located in cool old buildings. We seem to be in some weird era where some bad apple can have a fight with the establishment, then burn it down. That is what happened to the Old Pink. Dive bars do attract a certain element.
On the other hand, both the Old Pink and Mulligan’s survived for years. And on the other hand (you can keep going like this forever), it’s hard to be the judge and jury on what should be on a street and what shouldn’t.
I do think the sun is setting on the dive bar business, and not just because of fires. No one with any sense wants to drink and drive. College kids aren’t old enough to drink anyway. Kids and 20-somethings, the demographic that used to keep dive bars in business, I do not even think they go out that much any more. They meet people online. They stay home. Would they even have the social skills to walk into a bar? I am not sure. I am not blaming them. I am just saying.
We could go on and on about this situation. I just wish it weren’t too late for Mulligan’s.
Well — at least I did my sketch!