b'KELLER WILLIAMSMID-TOWN DIRECT CELEBRATESpride monthDave Hunt, Adriano Espaillat, Gale Brew-er, Luis Miranda, Tess OConnor McDade, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Peter Walsh in 2018 on the night Coogans was saved. Jon Michaud with his wife, Zoraida, whose family introduced him to Coogans when they started dating.ots concerning race relations and po-After the bar was saved, the owners cre-ated and hung this banner near the barslicing. By the end of the 90s, homi-outside entrance. cideshaddroppeddramaticallyandProudly Cultivating an Inclusive & Supportive Environment gang activity began to slow. GrassrootsOffices in Maplewood, Coogans for The New Yorker in 2018neighborhood associations sprang upSpringfield & Newark after it was threatened with closure byto tackle other issues by offering after- 973.762.5400 a rent increase of $20,000 a month.school programs, adult education andkwmtdr.com Team Leader: Thankstoagroundswellofsupporthealthcareandneighborhoodclean- Nekita@KellerWilliamsMTDR.comfromthecommunityandlocalgov- upinitiatives,andoftenpartneredEach office is independently owned and operated. Octavio Mendes, Broker of Record. ernment leaders, as well as Lin-Manu- with small businesses. Eventually, the el Miranda, who had grown up in thecommunity became a safer place but it neighborhood, and Mirandas father, ahas been challenged by gentrification: power broker in Washington Heights,rising rents, the displacement of long-the bar was saved. time residents and the closing of small Michaudrecallsshowingupforbusinesses.hisinterviewwithCoogansown- It took five years for Michaud to ers Dave Hunt, Peter Walsh and Tesscomplete Last Call at Coogans in be-OConnorMcDade.Expecting15tween his day job as Collections Man-minutesoftheirtime,theyinsteadagementLibrarianattheMillburn talked to him for two hours. He says,PublicLibrary,buthissixweeksat I walked out of there, like my headhome during the pandemic were trans-was swimming with all the stories thatformative.Hewasabletoconduct they had told me. And I just thought,dozens of interviews with people who wow, you know, Im going to write mywere also stuck at home with nothing piece, but theres so much more heretodo.Michaudsays,Ifiguredout to write about. And if they had closed,what I was doing and how the story all of that would have been lost. Andneeded to be told. And, in part, that I thought, Well, somebody should re- was because I did several crucial inter-ally write this story.[I guess] its go- views during that period that really ce-ing to be me. mented like, Oh, this is what the book Inthebook,Michaudtracestheneeds to be.historyofWashingtonHeightsandTherecurringstorylineisabout detailsthepressuresthatdefineditcommunity and that became clear to over the decades along with the vari- Michaudafterhetranscribedanin-ous mayors and operatives who ruledterview about a romance that budded the city.between an Irish American police offi-In the late 1980s and 1990s, thecer from the Bronx and a Puerto Rican communitysufferedfromthehigh- Americandistrictmanagerwhowas est crime rate in the city fueled by therunningthelocalcommunityboard. crack epidemic, gun violence, and ri- Their first date was at Coogans, after feature story /19'