I’m not a drinker, I don’t like to go out at night, and rush-hour on the 6 train makes me claustrophobic, but I would happily brave the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, the stale beer smell, and the hike up 84th Street to be serenaded with live music and good conversation at Brandy’s Piano Bar.
Hidden behind clouded windows and a muted red awning, Brandy’s Piano Bar, a neighborhood institution since 1979, is one of the Upper East Side’s only piano bars, and the only one with a distinctly queer history. After surviving not only the uncertainty and pain of the AIDS epidemic, but also the restaurant annihilation that has been COVID-19, Brandy’s performers are still belting out Broadway show tunes for all to hear.
Actor, singer, and Brandy’s performer Michael Isaacs is known for shouting “the usual suspects” as regulars arrive to hear his set. Strangers come to Brandy’s and leave as friends, promising to return soon.
As I squeeze through a packed entrance and snag a standing spot at the bar, Isaacs, one of the night’s three performers, is beginning a cover of Billy Joel’s “My Life,” whipping his sweat-soaked blond curls as he pounds the keys. It’s just after 10 p.m., and Brandy’s is alive.
I hear whisper-screamed conversations above the chords, as old friends catch up, new friends rejoice in connections made over drinks, and a bartender zips back and forth between tables, joining the chorus with an enthusiastic “I still belong.”
Little do I know that he will take the mic soon enough.
Every night, for the cost of a two-drink minimum, Upper East Siders in the know are welcomed into a cramped but cozy side street bar decorated with Pride flags, old-Hollywood posters, and dark wood paneling. Built in the 1920s, the bar was first used as a prohibition-era watering hole. Bought by a gay couple in 1979, it became Uptown’s favorite queer hang-out, especially important during the 80s when its customers and performers alike were fighting for their lives through the government inaction of the AIDS crisis. Camaraderie is what Brandy’s was built on, and it shines through decades later, seven days a week.
Sipping my ice-cold water and trying not to feel guilty for not paying for a cocktail, I bump elbows with a newlywed straight couple that came to see the night’s performance. “The drinks are overpriced but the music’s great,” the wife tells me, drunkenly tripping over her words.
She smiles wide, grabbing her husband’s hand and swinging it to the beat. He, slightly less in his cups, grins at me apologetically before raising his voice to join the crowd in a rendition of “I Kissed A Girl” by Katy Perry. And he liked it.
I am at once reminded of a boisterous family gathered for Thanksgiving. Audience members young and old raise their voices to scream out song lyrics, while the affable ‘head of the table,’ Isaacs, seated behind an upright Yamaha, yells, with a smile in his voice, at them to quiet down.
During a break in his set, as the audience, energized from singing, gulps down beers and orders more, Isaacs flirts with a nearly 80-year-old woman seated near the piano. In the dim light, I cannot see if she blushes, but she gasps, looking away with a grin and clutching a bronze necklace hanging loosely around her neck.
With a brief exchange, he has convinced her to sing. After a rousing cover of a blues classic I’m ashamed I did not know the name of, Isaacs picks another lucky guest out of the crowd. Open-mic performances are a mainstay at Brandy’s, and amateurs are applauded just as rowdily as the professionals. No one in the bar pays mind to an off-key note or the errant voice crack.
Part of me wonders whether this is just a product of the audience getting drunker, but the young man behind the bar assures me that Brandy’s is a judgement free space. He tells me he is a professional dancer, only pouring drinks to pay his bills. At least it started out that way, he says with a wink. Isaacs beckons him to the front. He puts down his dish cloth and sits down to rousing applause.
As I make my way through the cheering crowd to the door, people sway side to side -- due to the lack of space, dancing is prohibited. I am tempted to stay, clapping and singing and making friends until the wee hours of the morning.
That feeling hasn’t gone away. Not when I got home, the piano still thumping in my belly; not the next morning, as I tried to remember every lyric and song title. Not when I walk by the clouded windows and muted red awning tucked away on 84th Street and memories of the soundtracks to musicals I’ve never seen pop into my head.
Not when I venture back the next week. A “usual suspect,” back for more.
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