I once kissed a man on the mouth at the original Stoneleigh P. This was not an act of romance. It was an act of irritation.
The kiss happened on a night when my editorial staff and I—we worked for a publication called The Met—had notched multiple wins at a journalism awards ceremony. We decamped the awards event to celebrate at the P. And, after a round or two or maybe three, two colleagues at the bar began making out. This man and woman had no prior relationship. One of them was married.
The old Stoneleigh P in Uptown, opened in 1973, seemed to encourage that kind of thing. It was dark enough in there that you could convince yourself no one would see what you were doing. Christmas lights glowed behind the bar year-round. Bras hung from a light fixture above it, donated by patrons over the years. In a nod to the building’s earlier life as the Stoneleigh Pharmacy, the walls were lined with sepia photographs of an old-timey drugstore. The place felt preserved, not polished. It felt lived in…