The other night, Kater and I went to check out the Ear Inn, one of the EARiest places in Manhattan. (Do you hate me?) The Ear Inn has been our lists for a long time, and not just because it’s one of the oldest bars in Manhattan, a la McSorley’s. We have especially been excited for it since our West Village Ghost Tour back in the fall. The Ear Inn is supposedly haunted by a sailor gentleman named Mickey and we wanted in on that. Mickey is said to have been a customer of the bar kind of recently in the ghost world (1950s or ’60s) who was hit by a car out front.

The Ear Inn gets its name from Ear Magazine, which had offices above the bar in the 1970s. Instead of getting a new sign out front, they simply painted black over the right side of the B in “Bar”. I’m obsessed with the sign and I hope that it’s never updated.

It is said that Mickey will often pinch women standing at the bar, steal sips or entire drinks from customers, and drain cell phone batteries. He has also been speculated to have started fires in the fireplace and one outside of the fireplace in the ’90s. Kater and I couldn’t wait. We expected (hoped?) to be pinched and grabbed, kept an eye on our drink levels, and checked our battery levels before and after we left.

But Mickey sadly did not want anything to do with us. We were seemingly unattractive to him or perhaps we were playing too easy to get. Nothing apparent happened to our drinks or our cell phone batteries. I did have a weird feeling when we first entered and sat down, but that was most likely nerves. Now, don’t get me wrong. Any night Kater and I have together is awesome (duh), but we had been on a mission and were slightly disappointed.

To make ourselves feel better, we pretended that the pictures we’d drawn in crayon on the paper tablecloth were not of our own volition, but were spirits speaking through us instead. This at least explains why we both strangely drew outlines of Mickey Mouse. If you count that as something, then you’ll also appreciate that later on, a crumb showed up on my napkin that was most definitely 100% a heart. Maybe Mickey was just being subtle.

xx

PS – For more on the Ear Inn & Mickey, listen to the Bowery Boys Podcast #144: Mysteries and Magicians of New York