Jimmy’s Last Round: A Tribute to Jimmy Glenn and His Bar, Jimmy’s Corner

It’s no secret time-honored New York City institutions are on the decline. HiFi Bar, Angelika Kitchen, Coffee Shop, and Sunshine Cinema, just to name a few venerable mainstays of New York life that have faded into the annals of Gotham history. Some would say there’s a type of city life that just doesn’t exist anymore in New York. One of the holdouts, however, is Jimmy’s Corner, a pocket dive bar located smack in the unlikeliest of Manhattan neighborhoods: Times Square.

The owner of Jimmy’s Corner, Jimmy Glenn, died Thursday due to the COVID-19 crisis that grips New York City at the time of this writing. He was 89. I worked in Times Square in the 2010s, writing and producing TV promos for many of the networks whose marketing offices are located in Times Square. I frequented Jimmy’s, often. What follows is my favorite memory of the place.

You either knew about Jimmy’s and loved it or you didn’t believe a place like it could exist — not in Times Square.

Whether it was for a happy hour or a much needed respite from an overnight shift despite, or because of, the establishment’s gritty New York charm and diminutive size (about the size of a Manhattan 1-bedroom apartment), everyone eventually fell in love with Jimmy’s.

And to fall in love with Jimmy’s Corner was to fall in love with the legacy of Jimmy Glenn, an accomplished boxer and trainer, whose dusty pictures and fight posters line the walls of the establishment from floor to ceiling. Jimmy himself was always there, perched behind the bar, polishing pint glasses and chewing on a toothpick, among artifacts that enshrined a storied career in the ring.

It was on one overnight shift that a colleague and I found ourselves jammed in the narrow passage (if you can even call it a passage) between the west wall of the entrance and the backs of the patrons bellied up to the bar. “Jimmy’s-jam” is a ritual — and perhaps the very reason why the bar remains tourist-free, even though it’s in the middle of 44th St. between 6th and 7th Avenues.

The 40’s between 6th and 7th are a kind of world unto itself. Woody from Toy Story ambles with Minnie Mouse up the sidewalk, their costume heads under one arm, idly thumbing their phones with the other. Businessmen and women jaywalk hurriedly to, I imagine, meetings. European tourists with their luggage collect under wafts of air conditioning and atmospheric perfume from the Millenium Times Square lobby.

Then, of course, there’s the tell tale cacophony of Times Square’s crowds and car horns blaring from every direction.

It’s among the crash and clamor of this unmistakably New York scene where a shabby, green vestibule sits quietly on 44th St. with the unbranded words, “JIMMY’S CORNER” emblazoned in default san serif lettering. The doorways is the kind of seasonal canvas temporary room stretched over a metal frame that most bars and restaurants use during cold winter months to help separate the outside cold from the inside warmth.

At Jimmy’s, the vestibule remains year round and serves as an antechamber between the world outside and the bar within; a place diametrically opposite to Times Square crowds and honking yellow cabs.

Jimmy’s exterior is unwelcoming and that’s the point. It looks like the type of place you should pass by and never think about. When you step in, however, the bar is often packed, but not in the way of most midtown screamatoriums that cater to basic bros sweating through open collar shirts and sucking at bottles of Blue Moon. Jimmy’s is the kind of place with severed streamers from five Christmases ago, the remnants of which still taped to the ceiling. Shabby lighting and thrift store quality tables (if you’re lucky enough to find an open one), coexisting with aged photos of a younger Jimmy standing with the likes of Muhammad Ali, make for a singular, time-honored, New York experience. Jimmy’s is indeed tiny and sometimes very uncomfortable, even if you’re lucky enough to avoid the jam at the bar. But it’s so worth it to escape the swirl of Manhattan and just temporarily be in a real place.

As I balanced between the barstooled patrons and the wall that night with my coworker, Jimmy leaned behind the bar with a towel over his shoulder, chewing on a toothpick with a zen-like calm. He must have been 78 or 79 at the time. What makes the shoulder-to-shoulder crush at Jimmy’s particularly challenging is that your chest is sometimes right up against the backs of patrons seated at the bar and your back is smashed up against the aforementioned pictures, which hang precariously from the wall in their frames. Feeling a strong desire to sit and relax after a long night of work, I suddenly remembered a tip my buddy gave me when he originally recommended Jimmy’s Corner to me years prior.

“If you want a seat at Jimmy’s,” He said. “You have to be really nice to Jimmy’s wife.”

Back then, Jimmy’s wife, Swietlana, was the bartender. With a strong Eastern Bloc accent and a shock of platinum hair, Swietlana’s personality filled every square inch of Jimmy’s Corner. Remembering my friend’s sage advice, I craned myself between the heads of the two guys whose backs had been unintentionally massaging my chest for the past 10 minutes.

“Excuse me! Hi!” I called out above their heads. “Is your name Swietlana?

Swietlana leered at me from behind the bar. Sticking to the plan, I smiled and persisted.

“How are you?” I said. “Having a good night?”

Jimmy watched me, still leaning in the background. Amused now with his hand on his hip, he nodded to his wife in approval. Swietlana magically softened.

“Yes, that’s me,” She said politely with a big smile. “How are you?”

Before I could answer, Swietlana snapped into business mode, training a scowl at the two men at the bar in front of us.

“You guys have enough, yeah?” She said with a Soviet-era directness. The two men looked at each other, confused. “I think you have enough.”

They guys finished up their beers and left.

“Come, boys.” Swietlana, then said, gesturing to the now-empty barstools. “Sit!”

I couldn’t believe my friend’s advice worked — and so effectively. I mean, where else in Manhattan can you get a seat at the bar just by showing a guy’s wife some respect? Jimmy sauntered over, chuckling, and poured my friend and I a round of whiskey shots.

From there, Jimmy and Swietlana chatted with us for the rest of the night. We joked around with them, chasing our shots with bottles of Budweiser. For whatever reason, I never saw Jimmy again after that. Life took me to other parts of Manhattan for work. On the odd occasion I managed to stop in for a drink, Jimmy was absent. My hope is that he was resting at home during this time, satisfied with his remarkable life.

Between my friend and I, we must have left at least a $20 tip that night — and for just a handful of drinks. It was so worth it, though, if only to spend a little time in a real place.