Foley's Pub

Foley's billed itself as an Irish bar with a baseball attitude, and the walls made the case: more than 3,500 autographed baseballs, game-worn jerseys and a stadium seat^{1, 2}. Shaun Clancy opened it in 2004 in a space on West 33rd Street that had gone through many names and themes since 1913^{1, 2}. It was named for Arthur "Red" Foley, a longtime New York sportswriter and official scorer³.

Clancy created the Irish American Baseball Hall of Fame to honor Irish Americans in the game, and Foley's was its home^{2, 3}. Back then we said the tourists and office workers kept coming back, lunch after lunch, for something the neighborhood sorely lacked: a soul.

In May 2020, during the pandemic shutdown, Clancy announced that Foley's would not reopen².

Next came Finnerty's, a New York bar for Bay Area sports fans that had also closed in the pandemic: in April 2023 its owner, Seelig, came to see the old Foley's space⁴. A remodel began the next February, and Finnerty's quietly reopened in 2025, directly across the street from the Empire State Building^{4, 5}.