Lawrence Mauzey, owner of Chez Charlie, at the bar’s vintage jukebox.
Sponsored Post by the Uptown Arts District
Call them neighborhood bars, dive bars, whatever: two watering holes in the Uptown Arts District have served Midtown for decades and are attracting a whole new generation today.
Now Larry Mauzey, known as Moe, owns both of them and can walk to work from his home in the Valentine neighborhood.
Both Chez Charlie and the Blarney Stone are on this block of Broadway, known by many but not calling attention to themselves.
One of his bars, Chez Charlie, at 3809 Broadway, doesn’t have a sign.
“The customers like it that way,” Mauzey said.
“They found it and if someone else wants to go there, they think they should find it, too.”
On the website Yelp, customers rave about the dart boards, dj’s playing 50s music, and friendly staff.
Mauzey’s other Midtown tavern (he is also an owner of the Piano Room in Waldo) is the Blarney Stone.
Mauzey said he bought it this year because it had gotten too rough. He tore out the stage where punk bands played, removed the pool tables, replaced them with classic dart boards.
He took out a metal stock tank for iced beer that had prompted mold, he said, and that ended the bad smell.
He painted over graffiti, prettied the place up some, he said. “It’s a good looking bar.”
The bar at 3801 Broadway became the Blarney Stone in 1964. Before that it was called the Thunderbird. As a too-young college student, Mauzey was once tossed from the Thunderbird for being underage.
Chez Charlie, just down the block, dates to 1968, when it was started by Charlie Gilloti, “an old lightweight boxer with a mean left hook.” He gave it that name because another bar he owned across the street (later Kenny’s News Room and now Woody’s Classic Sports Pub) was called Chez Joie, a name from a Frank Sinatra movie called Pal Joey.
Mauzey started working as a bartender at Chez Charlie in 1977 and later bought it.
Now he only bartends when someone doesn’t show up for work, he said, “which is way too often.”
The bars are still part of a dart league.
He showed off the place last week: small round tables with stools, dartboards, outside rear deck for smokers, a glistening jukebox with 45 rpm records from his big collection.
Jazz is on the right and more popular stuff on the left. It’s 25 cents a play or 75 cents for seven.
As he spoke, three dart fins stuck out above his shirt pocket, ready for a league tournament.
Awards hang on the wall for dart teams like the Chez Charlie Dirtbaggers.
His crowd there varies with the hours, he said. Some daytime customers are starting to gravitate over to the Blarney Stone in the evening.
At about 10 or 11 in the evening, Chez Charlie gets hipsters, he said, musicians, artists, the occasional news reporter.
As far as his bars go, he said, “Everybody is welcome unless you start to bother other people. Then you go.”
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