Blue and Gold Tavern, East Village

Overview

By Chris Lukic

An enormously popular East Village dive. Comfortable and lively during the week, packed to capacity on the weekend. Always cheap.

Blue and Gold has been an E. Village fixture since the '60s and for good reason. The beer is cheap, the vibe is relaxed, and whatever size group you show up with it ends up being larger by the end of the night.

Why you should go

$3 Import drafts, $3 well drinks
The Guinness is well above par.
Draws a diverse crowd that spans ages and socioeconomics.
The pool table is competive enough to be fun, but not so competive that grabbing a pretty coed of dubious skill as a partner is necessarily going to get you knocked off the table.

What you should know

If you're talking loudly outside you run the risk of the old lady on the 3rd floor dumping water on you (sometime's seasoned with cat piss)
If you want to play pool. Put your name up on the chalkboard don't leave quarters on the table.
Take over a booth early. They're more comfortable than they look and make a great home base for a group of friends.
The guy's bathroom gives the expression wretched sesspool a bad name.

History

Slovak mountains, Ukrainian colors

Before it was Blue and Gold, the bar at 79 East 7th was named Tatra, for the mountain range in Slovakia¹. The lot was once Stuyvesant family farmland, and in 1946 the building went to the Slovak Welfare Club, a fraternal organization founded in 1933¹. A decade later Constantine Liszczynsky and Michael Roscishewsky Sr. bought it, and Roscishewsky's grandson Michael still owned the building in 2015¹.

Three generations of Roscishewskys have owned the bar, which takes its name from the colors of the Ukrainian flag¹. Its crowd has gone from old Ukrainians to musicians, poets and artists, and then to college students². In 2010 Time Out found a grime-encrusted dive where locals on a budget crowded into rickety booths and around the red-felt pool table, downing $15 pitchers of beer³. We said it was more than a dive: a way of life.

It shut down in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic and reopened on October 1, 2021⁴. Punch calls it cheap as hell and universally likable, and in September 2026 a reviewer called it an amazing neighborhood bar, so the way of life carries on^{5, 6}.

Sources

Researched October 2026.

Blue and Gold Tavern

In 2026