Ruby’s Bar, A Real Shithole

“Finish your drinks!” he told patrons of the venerable Coney Island venue at 5:22 p.m.

The old boardwalk bar was closing early, long before last call or even sunset, due to an apparent “safety hazard,” he said.

As the boozy crowd abandoned their beverages and shuffled out, a slew of firefighters, police and paramedics huddled in the back amid the eerie glow of a bright Coors Light sign near the men’s restroom.

This reporter, too, took one last swig and then headed over to an officer in shorts and a blue polo shirt marked “Community Relations,” who bluntly summed up the situation: “One guy was taking a leak, the floor partially collapsed, and he fell 10 feet.”

He landed in the bar’s dank basement, itself a once-hopping nightspot several decades ago, where even today, amid “rats ... bigger than dogs,” as veteran Ruby’s bartender Frank Gluska once told New York magazine, “you feel like spirits are still there drinking.”

Not that the fallen patron probably appreciated the history lesson. When he finally emerged from the gaping hole in the floor—which firefighters estimated at roughly 6 by 6 feet—he was, in the words of one Ruby’s employee, “literally covered in shit.”