We got off the D train at West 4th Street and Sixth Avenue and walked east, past Washington Square Park and NYU, past Lafayette Street, past the two gas stations at Bowery and East 4th, and into the heart of the most Ukrainian neighborhood in New York, the Lower East Side. When I was a small boy growing up in Brooklyn, my father took me regularly to visit his haunts in Manhattan. Well… If you’re still with me, don’t say I didn’t warn you. KGB Bar isn’t even mentioned until page six. The story of the KGB Bar and how it came to be is a long tale and some of you readers may want to skip it. Admission is free, drinks are cheap and strong, and the level of excellence is such that KGB has been named best literary venue in New York City by New York Magazine, the Village Voice, and everyone else who bestows these awards of recognition. Writers hooked up in the publishing world read here with pleasure and without pay to an adoring public over drinks almost every Sunday evening (fiction), Monday evening (poetry), and most Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. In the years since it opened in 1993, KGB has become something of a New York literary institution.
