An East Villager box got an assist at an ad-hoc phone-charging station outside Percy’s Tavern.
BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | Hurricane Sandy put a damper of epic proportions on Downtown. But here and there, a few hardy watering holes helped locals take their minds off all the water and wind they’d been lashed with, and were sanctuaries both during and after the storm.
Candles lit the bar inside Doc Holliday’s, on Avenue A at E. Ninth St., Tuesday evening while bottled beer chilled on ice was the quaff of choice.
Doorman Vincent Rispoli said business had actually been good during the storm and the following evening, better than usual for a Monday and Tuesday, typically the bar’s slow days.
Keith Laban, swigging a brew at the bar, quipped that the place should start having “Blackout Tuesdays.”
Seriously, Rispoli said he was enjoying the mellow vibe.
“Nobody’s checking their Facebook every five minutes — people are actually talking to each other,” he noted approvingly.
Brad Spencer said another plus for powerless partying was environmental: “It’s green.”
Some things never change, though. Rispoli had to 86 a woman who had had too much to drink.
“She can’t handle blackouts,” Laban joked.
Meanwhile, a major morale-raising operation was going on at Percy’s Tavern up the avenue at 13th St. The bar’s co-owners, Larry Watson and Paul Byrne, had rigged up a generator outside the place to keep their meat fresh, and when residents had asked to charge their phones off of it, the owners slapped on some surge-protector strips.
Watson figured 2,000 to 3,000 people had charged their phones on it by last Tuesday evening. Watson’s car was parked up on the curb on Avenue A with its headlights angled toward the generator, while down 13th St., Byrne’s car was throwing its high beams toward the phone-charging confab.
In a nice touch, the charging cells sat atop an East Villager news box. Watson said the box had been blowing around Monday night and that he had tied it down beside the bar.
He said they were advising people that they had to go as far as Third Ave. to get reception.
Families with small children were eating dinner at the place. They planned to open up at 8:30 the next morning to serve eggs — and, again, the much-craved coffee.
“I came here in 1985,” Watson said in his Irish brogue. “I lived at 11th and Second. My kids went to P.S. 19. Now I live on 12th St. It’s my neighborhood. This is New York at its best — people come together. There hasn’t been one argument.”
Watson planned to close at 11 p.m., not stay open till 4 a.m.
“It’s after a hurricane,” he said, “people have to go home.”
