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In 1903 the Wright Brothers out of Dayton, Ohio built the world’s first successful airplane. By 1965, 20 percent of Americans had flown commercially and
Whatever Happened to the Singles Bar? The 1960s gave birth to a new era of urban nightlife centered around the singles bar"—a genre of male- and female-friendly watering holes that proliferated along the far reaches of Manhattan's 1st Avenue and spread around the country.
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Aaron Goldfarb on the life and death of the singles bar, and whether they’re really gone for good. Share story: In 1903 the Wright Brothers out of Dayton, Ohio built the world’s first successful airplane. By 1965, 20 percent of Americans had flown commercially and tens of thousands of stewardesses were stationed in urban hubs like San Francisco, Chicago and New York. Due to strict airline criteria, most all these women were unmarried, trim and under the age of 30. In 1960 G.D. Searle & Company out of Skokie, Illinois, first submitted to the FDA for approval a new product they had developed called Enovid, better known as the world’s first oral contraceptive. It was an instant hit and, by 1965, 6.5 million American women were on “the pill.” Also in 1965, Alan Stillman, a 28-year-old essential oils salesman in New York City, was trying to figure out a better way to meet single women in his neighborhood. “It was an extremely parochial time, even in New York. It wasn’t easy to meet women and get into bed with them,” Stillman told me over the phone. “Believe me, it wasn’t easy for women either.” Stillman lived on the far east side of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, which was a popular neighborhood for younger people—particularly flight attendants, as the nearby 59th Street Bridge gave them a quick exit to Queens’ two airports. “There was a building on East 65th they called the ‘Stew Zoo.’ Girls would fly in and out, in and out, it was a real ‘hotbed’ place. You might have six stewardesses sharing a three-bedroom apartment,” says Stillman with a laugh. “Back then, we joked the laundry room in that building was surely the easiest place on the Upper East Side to meet single women.” In fact, New York Magazine claimed 90 percent of the 15-story building was occupied by stewardesses—maybe 400 attractive single women in one location, by Stillman’s estimation. (An article from 1966 about this part of the Upper East Side was titled “The Girl Ghetto: Manhattan’s Swingiest Square Mile.”) Unfortunately, these flight attendants didn’t drink at bars. Before 1965, your average couple met each other via setups from friends or family, they had been high school or college sweethearts, maybe even co-workers or fellow churchgoers. But they almost certainly hadn’t met in a bar. Stillman wanted to change that and, in doing so, would inadvertently change dating in the latter part of the 20th century. Stillman was a regular at a bullet-riddled, 1st Avenue saloon called Good Tavern. He’d hit the dive after work for an occasional beer and, annoyed there were never any women around, one day suggested to the owner that he might want to clean the place up and start serving the kind of food and drink that would attract a female crowd. The owner didn’t like that idea, but did like Stillman’s offer to buy the bar for $10,000. Even if he didn’t realize it at the time, Stillman’s idea to make a bar friendly to women was revolutionary. Thank God It’s Friday!—then a popular expression with college kids—opened on the northeast corner of 63rd and 1st Avenue on March 15, 1965. Stillman painted the building bright blue with red-striped awnings and stocked the interior with Tiffany lamps, stained glass, brass rails and a floor lightly brushed with sawdust. He had his waiters wear loudly colored soccer jerseys and offered a menu both affordable and enticing to a younger person—burgers and fries, cheap beer, Long Island Iced Teas and Harvey Wallbangers.
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