JIMMY’S CORNER
140 W. 44th St.
212-221-9510
Take a trip back to the grungy old Times Square that New Yorkers used to know. Stepping into this sliver of a saloon offers an entrée to a hard-lived life—specifically, that of former boxing trainer Jimmy Glenn, who opened it in 1971 to help pay rent on a gym he ran in Harlem. The gym is long gone, but the walls of Jimmy’s Corner carry remnants of his career, from photographs with Muhammad Ali to polyurethane-coated snapshots of customers affixed to the bar top. A crew of aged regulars drink $3 pints of Bud Light and yell at the ballgames on television, and most nights, Jimmy, now a spry 74, is right there with them, manning a terrific jukebox: Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Sam Cooke, Al Green. “32-13,” he whispers. It’s Gladys Knight’s “The Best Thing That Happened to Me.”