There is a particular kind of grief that belongs to people who moved across the country and then lost the one bar where their team was on. Finnerty's was that bar for Bay Area transplants in New York for more than a decade, in the East Village, until the pandemic closed it. It stayed closed for five years. Then it came back — a soft launch in December 2024, a new address at 18 West 33rd Street, directly across from the Empire State Building — and it came back in time for a baseball season.
Playoff baseball is the one sport where the schedule is not announced far ahead, which means the good rooms get booked in a forty-eight-hour window. Ask Karpo which bar near you hosts your team's crowd, and whether it is taking reservations for the series that just got confirmed.
The two objects worth finding
Most sports bars decorate with signed jerseys in frames. Finnerty's has two things that are not decoration. The first you touch before you have even walked in: the front-door handles are made from old reclaimed suspender cable from the Golden Gate Bridge. Braided steel that used to hold up a road, cut down and bolted to a door in Midtown Manhattan. It is an absurd thing to do and it is the best detail in the room.
The second is the pennant that hung over the Polo Grounds from the 1951 National League Championship Series — the actual one. For a bar built around a team that left New York in 1957, hanging the physical object from the last great New York season before the move is a pointed piece of curation. If you are in the room on a playoff night, find it. It will be the only thing anybody there wants to explain to you.
What the new room is like
The honest assessment from people who knew the old one: the new location is sleeker and more corporate, with high arched ceilings, and it does not have the beaten-in quality of the East Village room. That is what happens when a bar is rebuilt rather than inherited. What it does have is twenty-four big screens and a kitchen that runs all day, which the old room did not, and which matters enormously during a postseason where games start at 4pm on the East Coast and finish after midnight.
It also has a speakeasy section, separate from the main floor. On a quiet night that is where you go for a conversation. On a playoff night it is the thing to ask about when the main room is three deep and you have a group that wants to sit down.
October needs booking, and the window is tiny
The specific problem with playoff baseball is that you cannot plan for it. The regular season has a schedule published months ahead. A postseason series gets confirmed a day or two before it starts, and the game times are announced later still. That compresses every decision into a couple of days, and it means the rooms that host a particular fanbase go from empty to fully committed in about forty-eight hours.
Finnerty's takes group watch party reservations, and the practical advice is to make one the moment the series is confirmed rather than the morning of the game. For a weeknight elimination game with an evening start, a room this size opposite the Empire State Building will be absorbing tourists as well as fans. The difference between a booked table and a walk-in on those nights is the difference between watching the game and watching the back of someone's head.
Why a regional bar beats a team bar in New York
There is a structural reason bars like this exist in New York and almost nowhere else. A city with nine million people contains enough displaced Bay Area residents to fill a room, but not enough to fill it every night for one franchise. Pool three teams across three seasons and the maths works. That is why the successful transplant bars in Manhattan are almost always regional — Boston, Pittsburgh, the Bay — rather than built around a single club.
The consequence for you is that the crowd changes character depending on which sport is on. A Sunday football crowd is larger, younger and more casual. A weeknight basketball crowd is smaller and more knowledgeable. A playoff baseball crowd in October is the one that contains people who have been coming for fifteen years, through two addresses and a five-year closure, and it is by some distance the best night to turn up if what you want is the feeling of the place rather than just the game.
It is not only a baseball bar
The room covers the whole Bay Area sporting calendar rather than one team, which changes how you should use it across the year. Baseball in October, football on Sundays through the autumn, and basketball from the winter into a playoff run in the spring. That breadth is why it survived as a concept for a decade before the pandemic: a single-team bar in a city this far from home has too few good nights to stay open. A regional one has something on almost every week.
It also means that on a busy calendar day you may be sharing the screens. Worth asking at the door which game is getting sound, because in a twenty-four-screen room that is the only question that actually determines your evening.
Practical notes
Finnerty's, 18 West 33rd Street, New York, NY 10001, opposite the Empire State Building. Reopened with a soft launch in December 2024 after the original East Village location closed during the pandemic. Twenty-four big screens, kitchen open all day, a separate speakeasy area, and group watch party reservations available. Bay Area specialities on the menu. Front-door handles made from reclaimed Golden Gate Bridge suspender cable; the 1951 National League Championship Series pennant from the Polo Grounds hangs in the room. Nearest subway is 34th Street-Herald Square for the B, D, F, M, N, Q, R and W, or 33rd Street on the 6. Book as soon as a playoff series is confirmed. Hours change with the sporting calendar — confirm before travelling.
Please drink responsibly. Must be of legal drinking age.
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Ask Karpo first
Playoff baseball moves fast — a series gets confirmed on a Sunday and the game is on a Tuesday, which leaves almost no time to organise a room. Ask Karpo which bar is carrying your team this week, whether it is booking tables for the series, and what the fallback is if the first choice is already committed.
