• Ruby’s Bar & Grill

  1213 Boardwalk

  The photos of old-time Coney Island that hang behind the 45-foot bar aren’t gratuitous: They were collected by the late Rubin Jacobs, who went from peddling knishes on the beach as a kid to presiding over a place where countless boozers sucked down clams and enjoyed the boardwalk scene that Jacobs called “the elixir of life.” From April to November, when Ruby’s is open, octogenarian regulars sing along with Sinatra and Perry Como on the jukebox and shoot the sea-breeze with the gruff porters, some of whom have filled plastic cups here for more than half a century, as curious tourists and refugees from the Mermaid Parade look on.

From the 2006 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine