An Irish Bar Where Everybody Knows Your Name
By Warren Israel and Will San Jose
Passed down from father to son, The Ready Penny has been serving drinks and food to Jackson Heights residents for more than 40 years.
JACKSON HEIGHTS — At 10:30 on a recent Tuesday morning, Kevin, a regular at the Ready Penny, a bar in this diverse neighborhood, sat at the counter, watching the television playing on the back wall. Sunlight entered the room as the door opened, revealing another regular customer. “What’s up, Davey?” manager Eddie Beglane called out.
Mr. Beglane, 45, runs the bar, owned by his father Patrick, 86. From 10 a.m. to 4 a.m. it provides “a family vibe” for its patrons, a group the younger Mr. Beglane says is mostly returning customers. Such customers have been returning to the Irish bar for 41 years, even as Indian, Bangladeshi, and Colombian stores opened around it. “Everybody knows each other and gets along,” Mr. Beglane said.
Mr. Beglane is now the manager of the business, which he describes as “a regular, local, neighborhood bar.” As regular customers sit at the bar, he tends bar and works in the kitchen while his father instructs him.
Patrick grew up in nearby Sunnyside, Queens, where he worked as a bartender and cement truck driver. He knew the previous proprietor of the Ready Penny and took over as owner in 1978.
Founded as an exclusively WASP area, Jackson Heights became more diverse after the Great Depression and World War II. Jews, Irish, Italian, and German people began to move there, according to an article in the Yale journal “The Politic.” Then, “a combination of the 1965 Fair Housing Act, Immigration and Nationality Act, and growing white flight to the suburbs caused Jackson Heights to metamorphose into an immigrant destination,” according to the journal. Eventually, Indians, Colombians, and Bangladeshis made Jackson Heights their home.
Due to the bar’s location in Jackson Heights, it has a “very diverse clientele, just like the neighborhood,” Mr. Beglane said. “There’s probably no other neighborhood like it.”
The family atmosphere of the bar is a source of pride for the Beglanes, as Eddie’s favorite part of running the bar is “the fact that it is mostly regulars,” he said. “We’re very lucky that way.”
“There was one guy who had a fight.” Patrick added. “He’s never, never allowed back in.”
When asked about the challenges he faced, Mr. Beglane pointed to Kevin. “Besides him?” he jokingly asked, before turning sincere. “Sometimes you get a rotten apple, but it’s very few and far between.”
