Goodbye to Dirty Precious
I’ve heard it said that the key to loving New York is learning to live with perpetual loss. The longer you stay in this inconstant city, the more rubble accumulates on the map etched into your psyche. There’s the six-person, one-bathroom apartment you first moved to when you were shit-broke and thought everything was exciting. There’s your ex’s apartment and there’s the not-quite-ex, the crush that never materialized into anything of substance, still taking up rent-free real estate in your brain.
The smart New Yorkers, the ones who last, are deeply unsentimental about these erasures. In some cases, new places sprout up in the bones of old ones. Oddly Enough was a great little queer bar in Bed-Stuy where you could furiously make out without anyone batting an eye; now, the space is home to Dolores, where you can order beef tongue tacos with your drink. For years, my favorite dive was Humboldt & Jackson in East Williamsburg, where the bartender periodically did a spot-on Judy Garland impersonation drag show. Now, when I sit at the corner of what is now Cozy Royale, I still see my friends from that time, all of whom have long since moved away.
New York giveth and New York taketh away. I get it. And usually I, too, get over it eventually. But losing Dirty Precious just cut too deep.
“New York giveth and New York taketh away. I get it. And usually I, too, get over it eventually. But losing Dirty Precious just cut too deep.”
Pai, the owner of this most perfect bar in Gowanus, has a photographic memory of all her regulars. Once, she told me she’s been accused of sometimes being a “little precious.” She retorted that she’s more “dirty precious” and the name stuck. The space, like its owner, is a study in contradictions—concrete walls and femme vibes, cheap beers and impeccable martinis. It was that unicorn of a New York bar that, even when crowded, somehow always had room for you, where the drink prices largely defied inflation, and where the volume was never so loud you had to empty your lungs to be heard. There was also something for everyone—an extensive NA cocktail list if you weren’t drinking and a really excellent assortment of snacks and housemade pickles for the vegans—which feels thoughtful in a city that does not always take care of its own.
On my first visit, I swore I would never show it to anyone I didn’t immensely like—no first or second dates, no casual acquaintances, no small talk of any sort. Since then, Dirty Precious has been the site of three of my birthdays, one New Year’s Eve, and countless heart-to-hearts about friends leaving jobs, relationships, or, in one case, the city itself. More than anything, it was where I would go alone when I just needed to eat a plate of pickles and think.
When we mourn a place, we’re really mourning a time in our lives. When Dirty Precious was my local, I was living in a not-quite-legal sublet in Park Slope that was too good to be true. It wrapped around the whole top of a building, with great big windows and high, tin-molded ceilings and that rare New York miracle of ample space. Someone before me had nicknamed it the Healing Haus, since so many of us seemed to land there with hearts in need of mending. During the darkest months of COVID, we’d huddle together on the fire escape, watching the sun set over 5th Avenue.
Of course, such a thing couldn’t last. When we found ourselves with just three weeks to find new homes, we sat at the counter in Dirty Precious, watery-eyed and spilling our woes out to Pai. And as we sat there over three martinis with too many olives each, we swore we’d always come back here, that this would be our forever place, especially since we had just lost our place forever.
Four years later, right before the bar shuttered, my two former roommates and I went to pay our respects for the last time. Nothing drives home the passage of time quite like returning to a once constant place. Since we left our pandemic house, there have been multiple weddings, several moves, one green card, and other markers of adulthood. Our lives feel less transient now, less precarious—a thing only possible to miss in hindsight.
“On some level, I’m afraid that I’ll forget— that they’ll really become lost, at least for me.”
We weren’t alone at Dirty Precious. I always felt this bar was mine, somehow, but after the announcement came that its days were numbered, I was surprised how many people I knew had loved it, too. They posted selfies in front of the printed bathroom wallpaper and leaned over the bar to hug Pai. It had always belonged to everyone.
Sometimes I find myself back down that way, haunting the streets west of Prospect Park. I’ll walk past my old corner and look up at the way the light hits the fire escape, knowing someone else has made it their home. I’ll find myself outside the iron door on 4th Avenue that used to house the bar, knowing there’s nothing behind it, but that someday it will again mean something to somebody else.
The truth is, even after eight years and seven apartments in New York, I’m no better at letting go. I hoard matchbooks and coasters and useless memorabilia. On some level, I’m afraid that I’ll forget— that they’ll really become lost, at least for me. So each year, the graveyard of places now gone in my Google Maps grows ever larger, an expanding digital mausoleum.
When I asked Pai why the place was closing, I wanted the answer to be something nefarious—shitty landlord, the looming threat of a high-rise. I’ve seen it happen too many times before. When I walk down North 6th Street, all I can see is Zablowski’s, where I played pool and once cried hard on a rainy summer afternoon. Now, there’s an Hermès store.
But no developer had laid claim to this unassuming spot on a four-lane street in Gowanus. Pai’s answer was a lot simpler: “Ten years is a really long time to own a bar.” She was ready for something different, even if she was sad to go.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Diana Hubbell is a two-time James Beard Award-winning journalist who has spent over a decade reporting across three continents. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, WIRED, Condé Nast Traveler, VICE, Esquire, Eater, and Travel + Leisure, among other places. She lives in Brooklyn.
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Header photo by Steve Smith.
Edited by Anya Tchoupakov.
