Jimmy’s Bar: A few hundred feet from the
tourist and college hangouts of downtown State Street, a cozy bar
offered sanctuary to a merry band of locals. I use the word
“offered” because Jimmy’s closed recently, to the laments of the
regulars: a postal worker, a PR woman, and other assorted residents
of good cheer.
It could reopen, I suppose, but even if the regulars return, “It
wouldn’t be the same,” said PR woman Mo McFadden. Not without the
likes of longtime bartender Willy Gilbert, his wife Esther, and
Tommy Chung, owner of Jimmy’s Oriental Gardens. There was no
jukebox. Willy, an aficionado of jazz and rock, played his own CDs,
Mo said.
Jimmy’s was a handy spot to drink your lunch and nibble at
snacks ordered through the door to the main room of Jimmy’s
Oriental Gardens, where Pearl the server was happy to oblige.
Jimmy’s, tiny as it was, was a hangout for the theatrical crowd,
actors and “techs,” as Mo put it, after shows at the nearby Lobero
Theatre, Center Stage Theater, and Ensemble Theatre. Jimmy’s was
definitely a “friends” type bar. But not, Mo said, a singles bar,
or a place where women would be hit on.