Madison Square Garden And Yankee Stadium...

That sounds like a great trip. Two stories.

One is the Frying Pan. That rusty old boat has been docked on the Hudson forever. About 15, 20 years ago, someone I knew rented out the boat to have a party. By late night, everyone on the thing was drunk, and one of the funniest things I have ever seen happened. The boat had a top deck and a few levels below. People were hanging out on the levels below. There was a woman on the level just below the top deck who was really drunk, and there was a door or a latch to the outside for some reason. She was drunk and thought it was a door to leave and get off the boat (you entered and exited to the pier from the top deck) and for some reason the latch wasn't locked. So she opened it and stepped through. . ... And fell probably about 20 to 25 feet right into the Hudson River -- which was even more disgusting at the time than it is today. We ran down to the pier when we heard her yelling and splashing around, and a bunch of guys fished her out of the water. She was OK thankfully, but demoralized. The whole thing was just ridiculous ... from us spending the rest of the night drunk and reenacting the moment she was in mid air like a cartoon character in freeze frame and about to fall. ... to her getting fished out of the water like an old Chevy.

The other is the Minetta Tavern. It is now a high-priced restaurant, that supposedly has one of the best burgers in the city. Before these guys, it was owned for about 15 or 20 years by two partners, one a little Eastern European guy (who was there all the time and wore garbardine European suits; I think he had once been a busboy in the place) and a second guy who reminded me of the comedian Colin Quinn, and often was behind the bar. I loved that place. I was not the type to hit a bar by myself, but I'd go there after work by myself and have a drink and see who was around. The food was decent, too. I always felt comfortable in that place. There were always these guys in there who looked like they had stepped out of central casting for a low-level hood. ... Staten Island edition. But I never really thought about it. Maybe I should have. One day I went in there and Joe (the Colin Quinn guy) wasn't there (he usually was), and a couple of guys I knew were at the bar talking all hush hush. I found out that Joe had been running an ecstasy/molly ring out of the bar, right under my nose. ... proving once again that I am usually the last person in a room to know what is going on. Two of his couriers had been nabbed at JFK airport with several hundred thousand dollars worth of pills from Europe and they put a wire on them and nailed Joe at a meet a few days later. He went to prison. It was the beginning of the end for the place. They let him stay out of jail before he had to go away, and a few nights before he had to turn himself in, I was in the place with some friends. It presented me with the first and only time I have ever felt like I needed to wish someone luck before going to jail. I couldn't have been more awkward:

Me: "So, you are going to jail for X years." [nodding my head sympathetically]
Him: . ... something about "you do the crime, you have to do the time."
Me: "Yeah. Well good luck with that!"

 

Montero's. All the way down Atlantic Ave. other side of Hicks St, toward the BQE and where the south entrance to the park now is?

That place has a ton of history. Not sure exactly how old the place is, but the neighborhood changed A LOT, especially within the last 15 years, but that place remained pretty much intact. It was a longshoreman's bar back when the piers were still operational and the south side of Atlantic Ave. was "South Brooklyn," not Cobble Hill, and it was all mobbed up around there. Before my time. And yes, they do a karaoke night there. You wandered into that? It gets some of the oddest people on earth, from what I have heard. I have never actually checked it out. It also has a long story about the Montero family, which had a falling out decades back, and it ended up with half of them opening the Long Island Bar and Grill a block away, which also kind of survives. That place closed for a while, and was brought back recently by new owners with a foofy drink menu.

 

Yup, that is Montero's. I wasn't in town, but if I had been and I had known, I would have met you over there for a beer! Interesting choice by your son's friend. That whole area, whether it is Atlantic. Ave., or Court Street where you had dinner, is constantly changing. Yet you went to a restaurant that has probably been there since the 1950s and a bar that has probably been there since the 1940s, and I suspect they look pretty much the same as they did back in the day. That is pretty cool.

 

I figured the reincarnation would have a website: Menus

The longshoremen and hoods from the Gallo family who drank there once upon a time would be rolling their eyes.