Entering the local world of Healy’s Pub in Rockaway Beach
This 55-year-old bar makes you feel like a local, even when you feel like a straight up alien.
This sound bite (above) echoed inside my head as I sat on Rockaway Beach last Monday afternoon. I hadn’t felt this uneasy in a long while.
I had just spent almost 2 hours on the subway and was hoping for a relaxing moment by the ocean before going to Healy’s Pub. That, however, was not in the cards for me. Between the mob of Lantern flies and the hordes of Hasidic women, I was feeling anxious and confused and alone.
It’s not that I’m scared of Hassidim (I am a purebred Jew, after all) — I was really just bewildered at how many females sans men there were and how they were acting.
Picture it: Dozens of women, wearing long denim and wool skirts on top of pantyhose with socks, frolicking loudly, skipping in and out of the ocean, going knee-deep into the surf. I had never seen anything like it in my life.
If the idea of wearing all that fabric in sandy salt water doesn’t make your skin crawl, then try imagining a handful of Lantern flies taking turns crawling on your skin.
In case you haven’t been in NYC recently, know that these asshole bugs are an invasive species, rapidly taking over the city, and they’re GIGANTIC. Like, ~8x bigger than your standard housefly. They’re as stealthy as they are big, and, clearly, the farther outside the city you go, the less they care about invading your personal space.
After I found a fifth fucker crawling on my ankle, I officially felt outnumbered by flies and Hassidim. It was time to seek refuge inside Healy’s Pub.
My good friend Adri recently moved out to the Rockaways, and since we are both beach girls from Miami, I wanted to visit ASAP before the warm weather left. I heavily associate the Rockaways with another friend named Sarah, a born ’n’ bred New Yorker who I used to work with.
I’ve been to the beach with Sarah once or twice over the years. One time, we went with a former co-worker, who I quickly learned was in an open marriage after he showed up with the three(!) women he was dating, all of whom freed the nipple immediately upon landing on the sand.
By the way, her name is Sarah Healy— the descendent of George Healy, who founded Healy’s Pub with his brother-in-law Billy Hynes in 1968. She’s told me before that her family’s owned a bar out there for forever, but I didn’t realize it is the oldest family-owned bar in the Rockaways.
According to a write-up in The Wave, George opened Healy’s to support his 9 kids after his wife died young. My father-in-law is one of 8 kids, so I presumed George was also Irish Catholic as heck. The lore of joint made me curious to see how it has survived for so long.
When I told Sarah I was heading out to the area and planned on writing about the Pub, she became a very necessary source of information for me. You’ll see what I mean as you read on.
I was walking to the Pub when I realized that yet another Lantern fly was on my person. I found it crawling on my boob.
“FUCKING FUCK SHIT,” I hollered. I flung it off and stomped on it hard enough to feel it in my knee.
I looked up and saw a young-ish, very straight couple walking toward me. By the look on their faces, I realized they witnessed my whole freak-out. I awkwardly giggled.
“Sorry! Lantern fly!” as I rolled my eyes with a smile.
“……”
They just… kept walking by me, acting as if they didn’t just see me get ASSAULTED by the MODERN SCOURGE OF OUR CITY. Again, I felt alone.
As I turned the corner, I thought about who was more rude, the fly or the couple.
Definitely the couple. But they didn’t really look like locals… maybe they didn't even speak english. No matter, I’ll see them in hell regardless.
It took me a second to figure out where Healy’s was. That’s because there was zero signage to speak off. I texted a picture of it to Sarah and asked what the deal was.
“The sign blew down a few storms ago, so they are figuring out what to do next,” she said. “Since the storms aren’t getting any better, [they] don’t want another to blow away.”
Fair enough. I inferred that their regulars probably didn’t need a sign anyway.
I opened the door and took 2 steps inside. It felt like I could hear all of the necks at the bar cracking to look in my direction. Their eyes followed me as I walk in. They were all AARP-aged men with varying shades of silver hair, all wearing navy t-shirts.
I believe that one of my real gifts is being a chameleon. Not in a manipulative way, but in a I-want-to-hang-out-with-anyone way. But dang, even I had to admit that this crowd was intimidating to me.
But then, I remembered my grandpa, Buddy. I don’t talk about it often these days, but he was a longtime police officer on Miami Beach. As a kid, I would tag along when he hung out with all of his retired cop buddies. They all treated me like one of their own granddaughters. I tried to tap into that memory as I sat down at the far end bar.
Only when I sat down did I notice that there was another woman in the room! Not only that, but she was an amazon — tall, blonde, tan, and wearing a Harry Styles shirt. She was gorgeous, but I could tell that her estrogen levels were suppressed while serving this crowd at 3pm on a weekday.
I kind of panicked when she asked me what I want to drink.
“What’s good here?”
“Anything, really.”
I spied out of the corner of my eye something pink. Maybe it was my own estrogen barking from within, but I wanted that pink shit.
Well, despite the color, it was an extremely masc collab from New Amsterdam and Barstool Sports called Pink Whitney, consisting of vodka and pink lemonade flavoring. I continued to live well outside my comfort zone by ordering a vodka soda with it.
Y’know when you feel someone starting at you? I gave in and met the gaze of the guy sitting catty-corner to my right. I found out, almost within the same breath, that his name is John and that he has type 1 diabetes. He asked, as politely as he can, why I’m at the bar.
“Oh, so you’re a writer?! Get out your pen, my whole life is a story!”
Virginia, the bartender, laughed as she brought me my pink drink.
The three of us chat for a minute before I tell them that I know Sarah Healy, who of course they both know. Before I knew it, John is screaming across the bar.
“Ey, Tommy! This girl says she knows Sarah!”
At first, I couldn’t tell who Tommy was, since all the men — again — turned to look at me. Tommy eventually made himself known by waving and nodded as I loudly said, “Sarah’s great! I like her a lot!”
I texted Sarah that picture of the guys, and she replied, “All the stars are out.”
“Tommy is holding court right now. All the guy’s are coming to kiss the ring.”
“As they should."
John continued to chat me up. He’s a sweet guy, but he kept repeating questions and anecdotes to me, which made me think he might’ve started drinking when the bar opened (11AM, 7 days a week). I noticed that many of the men were coughing without covering their mouth as they stared at the TVs. All the screens had sports on except for one that was opposite the bar. It was playing the Kelly Clarkson show, so I assumed that TV was reserved for Virginia.
The quiet in the bar was broken when a big, floppy yellow Lab burst through the door with his owner clutching his leash. The duo saddled up to my left. Naturally, I needed to know EVERYTHING about this puppy, and thus began my breakneck friendship with a man named Roland.
Between disciplining both Scooby the Lab and John for being too hyper, Roland adjusted the suspenders holding up his shorts and ordered a beer and a double shot of Jäger, neat. I checked my watch; it was 3:30PM.
John sat back at his seat and Scooby calmed down. I introduced myself to Roland just as John tells him that I’m a writer, which gets zero reaction from Roland.
Then, I’m treated to a rare delicacy for me: unfiltered old man bullshitting in the 21st century.
“So what’s doin’?”
“Nothin’. Oh, I think I saw something with you on Facebook or something…”
“Oh yeah… You saw us playin’ with a that… the…”
“Was it a flamethrower?”
“Yeah! The flamethrower.”
I’m still giggling as Roland whips out his phone to show John and me the video of the flamethrower in question.
I tried asking Roland more dog questions as I sipped on some Dewars on the rocks. He said that he got Scooby after his other dog died and that the pup will become a support dog to help with the PTSD that he has from serving in the Marines. That’s as much as I could get out of him before he went back to showing me random photos on his phone.
I felt I could trust Roland and Scooby to watch my stuff while I went to the bathroom. I usually have the constitution of a camel, but I really needed to go.
Now, listen… Healy’s is a very clean bar, but it’s still a sport-y, dive-y bar at the end of the day. So, when I walked into the John, I was STUNNED by what I saw.
It was like walking through some sort of portal into Poop Heaven. Bright and immaculate, even the urinal looked inviting to me.
“Can you tell me why the bathrooms are SPOTLESS tho???” I texted Sarah, along with some pictures.
“Ohhhhh Dory, if you only saw the old ones,” Sarah replied.
“Only a liiiiiitle bit of blood,” I texted along with the picture of the smeared brown spot near the mirror.
“Drinking casualty.” Fair enough!
According to Sarah, Tommy and some Healy cousins renovated a whole bunch during peak COVID times. “I also assume they did the renovations to not scare off the hotel guests.”
The hotel she’s referring to is The Rockaway Hotel, a luxury resort that’s trying to revive the spirit of “the Queens Riviera.” I might feel a little awkward inside Healy’s because I’m not a regular, but I always feel detached among the upper-upper class, and that seems to be the main clientele for this swanky spot. Even though they opened in November 2020, the hotel has been doing gangbusters. Even weirder, it is literally across the street from Healy’s.
I asked if Healy’s and the hotel have any sort of interaction with each other, and she said they have a friendly understanding with each other.
“I can imagine the bar is intimidating to the guests at an expensive boutique hotel, lol,” she elaborated. “But, they renovated and it so much nicer in there [now].”
I got back to my seat; Roland’s still on his phone. Before I even sat down, he began showing me pictures of him paddle boarding and some sunsets taken from the beach.
Tommy was on his way out the door, so I stopped him to say how nice the bathrooms are. He thanked me and kept a’movin’. He’s probably a little exhausted from being here all morning, I thought to myself.
Then, I had one of the best conversations I’ve ever had in my life.
I’m chatting up Virginia as she tops off another one of John’s drinks. When she asks about my writing, I tell her that, “I’m trying to be the cross section of Hunter S. Thompson and Carrie Bradshaw, but for bars.”
“Terry Bradshaw? You wanna be Terry Bradshaw??” asks John.
“Nooo, no. CARRIE Bradshaw.”
“Oh, I don't know, I don’t watch a lot of football these days.”
“It’s ok, Carrie is the main character from Sex and The City.”
“Ohhhh, right… that guy.”
I physically cannot tell him that Carrie is a woman because I’m keeled over from laughing so hard.
I came up for air and noticed that about five people who don’t look like pensioners came in, but they didn’t stay for long. There had been some turnover at the bar, however; now, there were some silver-haired men with white shirts on. Very exotic.
Roland taps me on the shoulder to show me more photos on his phone. As he haphazardly swiped through his album, a picture of his old dog, Snickers, popped onto the screen. He stopped swiping.
“I had to put her down a couple months ago after she had a massive stroke.”
After a beat, Roland calmly turned away from me and started crying. I reached into my purse and handed him a tissue. I gently rubbed his back as he tried to get himself together, and I tried my best to hide my misty eyes as well.
“I think we could both use another drink,” I told him.
As I scanned the back bar, I clocked a bottle of Southern Comfort that Virginia had poured for someone earlier. My mother used to freeze some SoCo on a small rabbit-shaped towel while I was teething as a baby. Just what the doctor ordered.
Before I could even order a shot of Comfort, I heard Virginia and other regulars talking about the country nights they had during COVID. They would play songs by the likes of Carrie Underwood (“The lady who busted up her boyfriend’s car,” says Roland), and locals wore cowboy hats and had a right ol’ time.
“Do people around here just have cowboy hats ready to go?” I ask.
“You’d be surprised,” said Virginia.
Originally, I planned to meet Adri at Healy's, but I decided to nix that idea. I thought that maybe Adri, a tan, tattooed Colombiana, might feel too othered to have a drink in there. It’s absolutely no fault of the spotless Pub or the patrons inside who all happen to be white; it’s just a reality of being a POC in 2023 that I try to be sensitive about for my friends. A redheaded Jew like myself can at least pass for Irish on the surface, but even my chameleon capabilities couldn’t shake the feeling of not fully fitting in there.
When I said I wanted to close out and held out my credit card, Virginia said it was “cash only right now.” I don’t know if I misheard her or what that meant, but I didn’t question it as I took out 20 bucks from the ATM. I tipped her $7 on a $13 bill — apparently, John covered one of my drinks before he left, which I thought was exceedingly nice.
As I tell Virginia to keep the change, I added, “I feel like maybe you need it?” and subtly motioned toward the men who haven’t moved an inch in over 2 hours.
“Nah, that's the good thing about a local bar. They take care of of me here”
It’s hard writing about a place when you have a personal connection to it. I never, ever want to badmouth a bar when it’s tied to a friend. With that said, I would absolutely come back to Healy’s after basking on Rockaway Beach. While it was clear I was a newcomer, everyone inside was kind and let me be. But, I wouldn’t invite just anyone to come with me. They would need to be able to hang with the locals, and some of my city friends simply can’t nor would want to, especially when there’s another option directly across the street.
At the end of the day, Healy’s Pub deserves our respect. They’ve lasted this long, despite Mother Nature’s wrath and multiple economic recessions, so they are definitely doing something right. Plus, those bathrooms are to die for. I would bet money that they rival the hotel’s in terms of cleanliness, newness, and shittability.
I waved goodbye to Roland and Virginia and the locals near me and headed back to the sand to wait for Adri. There were now at least 100 Hasidic women at the beach at 5PM, and they’re having a ball.
I called my mom to tell her about the women and the flies and the men at the bar. I told her about how I felt like I was an alien all day, quietly lurking on these vastly different communities, who each seemed perfectly content in their own unique ways.
My mom laughed, but then said something so poignant that basically summed up my whole experience at Rockaway Beach.
“Everybody has their own world.”