Derek M. Norman

Chris Ferry, a 61-year-old insurance agent from Linwood, New Jersey, found himself fielding calls from as far away as Germany, the Philippines and Kenya after his two sons surprised him with a now-viral birthday prank: his face and phone number plastered on a billboard over the Black Horse Pike highway stretching toward Atlantic City.

“WISH MY DAD HAPPY BIRTHDAY,” the sign blared, just above his cellphone number. “Love, Your Sons.”

Ferry’s sons — Michael, 28, and Christopher, 30 — moved to Florida from New Jersey more than five years ago after struggles with substance abuse. The two now run a drug abuse clinic in Boca Raton.

The men grew up in Ventnor City, just outside Atlantic City, and had been playing birthday pranks on their father ever since they were young boys traveling to hockey tournaments. Both recalled getting into silly-string-type trouble at the hotels, and always telling waiters and waitresses at restaurants that it was their father’s birthday.

“Hundreds of times,” Christopher Ferry said. “And never on his birthday.”

This week’s gift was just a continuation of that loving jest, but it took on far more momentum than they ever anticipated.

“The ultimate prank,” Christopher Ferry said.

The idea grew out of a conversation about what to get their father for his 62nd birthday, which was last week. The older son said inspiration struck as he was on the phone with the billboard company Interstate to order advertising for his Florida drug treatment center.

“He’s going to kill us,” his younger brother recalled thinking.

The sons had expected some friends, relatives and a few locals from their small New Jersey town to call Ferry, and maybe crack a few jokes.

But when the billboard was installed, Christopher Ferry posted a selfie that his father had taken with the billboard and shared it on Facebook. Before long, the post had more than 200 shares. The rest is high-jinks history.

Their father has gotten an estimated 20,000 telephone calls and thousands of texts.

“He’s actually handled it really well, but last night he was a bit overwhelmed,” Michael Ferry said. “He deleted about 3,000 texts, which took him about an hour and a half to do, and then got about 2,500 within 15 minutes when more news stories aired across the country.”

Despite the nuisance factor, the sons said they were happy to see their father get so much attention.

“You know, we’ve tortured him for years,” Michael Ferry said. “He’s our dad, and he had to see us through our drug addictions, and it really took a toll on him. So, we wanted to do something really nice for him, while also taking a little jab.”

Unless their father threatens to disown them, the men said, the $2,000 billboard would remain on that stretch of New Jersey highway until April 6.

As of last week, Ferry was no longer answering calls to the number plastered on the billboard. He was busy, according to his wife and sons, at the AT&amp;T store ordering a new phone line.

This article originally appeared in <a id="9ff23d8e-a041-4525-844f-5310b1e0b6cf" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/nyregion/happy-birthday-billboard.html">The New York Times</a>.

A Gift Keeps On Giving, 20,000 Times and Counting

It’s one thing to get an out-of-the-blue birthday call from a friend. It’s another to get 20,000 from strangers around the world.

A gift keeps on giving, 20,000 times and counting

<h1>NEW YORK — “You can’t wear your hair down in a sequin dress,” a voice echoed through a corridor backstage, while fixtures of New York’s ballroom scene primped and prepared. “It snags!”</h1>

Outside, a dazzling line of stylish guests waiting to enter El Museo del Barrio on the Upper East Side stretched from the entrance to the end of the block, around the corner and then some.

They all had arrived Saturday afternoon to celebrate the life of Hector Xtravaganza at a memorial held at the museum. Friends, family and followers gathered to pay their final respects.

Hector was a fashion designer, a night life denizen, a dancer and a community activist who aimed to help lift the social stigma surrounding those who were HIV positive. He has been credited with helping bring the city’s vibrant ballroom circuit and vogueing scene into the mainstream.

He died of lymphoma in late December of last year at age 53.

Hector — born Hector Crespo — was an original member of the House of Xtravaganza, one of several groups from the 1980s New York ballroom scene who were thrust into the limelight by the popular documentary film “Paris Is Burning.” At the time of his death, he carried the title of “Grandfather,” acting as the patriarchal figure who prioritized looking out for members of his family.

In the 1970s and 1980s, a New York City LGBT community was forming in the Harlem ballroom scene and at the Christopher Street pier in Greenwich Village — a popular hangout that Hector would frequent. Teens who had run away or been kicked out of their homes by families disapproving of their sexual orientation found acceptance in the ballroom world. Many joined “houses,” or chosen families that would compete at balls.

A large number of the dancers from that era attended Saturday’s memorial.

Guests in stylish attire filled the museum’s auditorium. There were feathers and sequins. Elegant hats rested atop faces covered by oversized sunglasses. Men strutted with open, sternum-exposing dress shirts. Everyone usually greeted one another with a kiss on the cheek.

The room seemed to be a combination of veterans from the scene embracing longtime acquaintances and bright young disciples honoring their newly found family by paying respects to the man who introduced it to them.

A large golden X stood on each side of a stage set up for eulogies. A giant red, gold and silver crystal-encrusted stiletto heel accompanied those who spoke at the lectern.

“I will sum up my cousin and quote him: ‘Blood does not family make. Those are relatives,'” said Jose Disla Xtravaganza, a member of the house and Hector’s longtime friend. “'Family are those with whom you share your good, bad, and ugly, and still love one another in the end. These are the ones you select.'”

The room was decorated in burnt orange and many of those who spoke also wore that color. Disla Xtravaganza said Hector had been fixated on burnt orange toward the end of his life.

Jennie Livingston, director of “Paris is Burning,” recalled her time working with Hector and spoke about his dedication to outreach. Dominique Jackson, a star of the FX network show “Pose,” set in the ‘80s New York ball scene and on which Hector appeared and worked as a consultant, spoke of Hector’s generosity and support during her gender confirmation surgery.

Father Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza, a house leader, dancer and choreographer known for his work with Madonna in the early 1990s, reminisced about ballroom competitions with categories like “Butch King,” which Hector regularly won.

“Back in the day, the ‘Ganza kids really had nothing, but we had each other and we had our truth,” he said. “We had to fight for everything, including respect in the ballroom scene and the world. We had to fight for our dignity and to have our identities even recognized. We even had to sometimes fight for our lives. We looked out for one another. We were family, and those that didn’t have, never went without. That was Xtravaganza.”

A flute rendition of “Amazing Grace” played while black and white photographs of a young Hector danced across a backdrop onstage. Sobs and sniffles from attendees accompanied the music as if they were written into the melody.

A printed proclamation from City Hall was presented and read aloud, which carried a message from Mayor Bill de Blasio recognizing Hector Xtravaganza’s contributions to the culture of New York City, his volunteer work and mentorship of the youth of the city’s LGBT community. The mayor had officially declared the date as “Hector Xtravaganza Day.”

To close the ceremony, four women in glimmering golden gowns performed a spirited and emotional lip sync of “The Other Side of the Rainbow” by Melba Moore. A subsequent standing ovation brought one performer to her knees in tears.

As guests filed out of the spacious hall to say their goodbyes, Hector Xtravaganza’s urn, capped with a crown, and embellished with deep red, shiny silver, and burnt orange gemstones was left onstage.

This article originally appeared in <a id="ed117955-e0ae-454d-8faa-0291f753e8db" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/11/nyregion/hector-xtravaganza-memorial-death.html">The New York Times</a>.

A glittering goodbye to Hector Xtravaganza

They all had arrived Saturday afternoon to celebrate the life of Hector Xtravaganza at a memorial held at the museum. Friends, family and followers gathered to pay their final respects.

<h1>NEW YORK — Scouts BSA Troop 222 gathered last month at the Aspen Knolls Estate clubhouse on Staten Island for its annual induction ceremony. One 13-year-old recruit stepped across the ceremonial bridge, recited the Scout Law and swore the Boy Scouts of America oath, right hand lifted into the three-fingered salute.</h1>

Lora Panepinto, an eighth-grader, is one of the first girls in New York City to be officially welcomed into the club that for more than a century had been called the Boy Scouts.

“I didn’t necessarily think about it as creating history — because it’s not always about being first,” Lora said. “It’s about being involved.”

As of Feb. 1, the Boy Scouts of America began accepting girls into all its ranks, including Boy Scouts, the 11- to 17-year-old age group that’s been rebranded as Scouts BSA. In New York City, at least 77 girls have registered so far. Eight all-girl troops have been fully formed in Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island and Westchester County, according to Boy Scout officials, and 20 other troops are in various stages of formation.

It is the final phase of a decision made in 2017 to begin fully integrating girls into the organization — a progressive change in membership policy that began in New York last September when girls were accepted into Cub Scouts, a program for younger children.

“I think it’s fair to say, and pardon the cliché, ‘It’s no longer my grandfather’s Boy Scout troop,'” said Ethan Draddy, chief executive officer of the Boy Scouts of America Greater New York Councils.

Nationwide, more than 8,000 girls have signed up for Scouts BSA, according to a spokeswoman for the Boy Scouts of America. (By comparison, about 1.7 million girls across the country are active with the Girl Scouts, including more than 20,000 in New York City, according to a spokesman for the Girl Scouts of the USA.)

The Boy Scouts of America’s 2017 policy shift was hailed by the organization as a way to shape new women leaders, but it was met with immediate backlash — including vocal opposition from within the 109-year-old institution and from the Girl Scouts, which saw it as an attempt to siphon off its members to offset declining Boy Scout enrollment.

In November 2018 the Girl Scouts sued, arguing the change in membership policy was infringing on their trademark and causing confusion among potential members. The lawsuit is still proceeding in Manhattan federal court.

Lora had spent years tagging along to her older brother’s Boy Scout meetings. The Girl Scouts, which she had tried twice, was less appealing because it offered fewer of the outdoor activities she craved: fishing, regular camp-outs or practicing how to properly use a knife. Lora hopes to one day be an environmental conservationist.

“We knew a lot of people wouldn’t be as into it,” she said about the addition of girls into the all-boy bastion. “But we wanted to lead the change and show people that we could do scouting too.”

Girls are for the first time eligible to earn the rank of Eagle Scout, a prestigious achievement and the highest attainable rank within the Boy Scouts of America.

Lora’s goal is to become an Eagle Scout.

Though girls are now fully incorporated into the Boy Scouts of America’s program, each troop consists of scouts of the same gender. The boys and girls in many of the region’s troops come together at the start and end of meetings for a traditional flag ceremony, but they remain separated for most activities during weekly troop meetings and on camping trips and outings.

Lora’s patrol — a subgroup within her troop — consists of four other girls. They named their patrol The Riveters, after Rosie the Riveter.

“It reminded us of the World War when all the men went off to war and the girls had to take all the jobs that they normally wouldn’t,” Lora said.

Each of the all-girl troops must have a registered female adult leader present.

“It’s long overdue,” said Snazzy Panepinto, Lora’s mother and the scoutmaster of Troop 222. “In American society, it’s all about women being equal and able to do everything they want to and are capable of.

“There are girls who love to be outdoors, who love learning new skills. And it will help them in life, in leadership and independence.”

Since the 1970s, the organization has had several programs that included girls: Venturing, Sea Scouts, STEM Scouts and Exploring. But Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts had been exclusively male.

In 2018, about 77,000 girls under 11 and their families joined Cub Scouts, including about 2,100 in New York City, during the first phase of the transition.

“If we’re not going to embrace this change here in New York City, how is the rest of the country going to do that?” Draddy said.

He said the change is a way to appeal to children who have never been exposed to scouting of any kind — not an effort to lure participants away from the Girl Scouts.

“There’s plenty of girls, hundreds and thousands of girls, that might have nothing,” Draddy said. “They don’t have any options and we’re interested in serving that market. Both my daughters were Girl Scouts and my sisters were, too. I don’t want to poach a single girl from the Girl Scouts in New York City.”

A priority of Draddy’s during the transition is to recruit in areas of the city that are underserved or largely absent from his organization’s map.

To be sure, it also offers a chance to increase the organization’s shrinking membership.

A 2018 report from the Greater New York Councils showed a more than 5 percent dip in Boy Scout membership from 2017, and a similar but smaller decline in the Cub Scout feeder program.

“Unfortunately, with gentrification and as New York City has shifted, we’ve lost some Scouting programs and I will say, at times, we have not paid attention to that,” he said. “But now we are.”

Volunteer board and staff members, as part of a future outreach campaign, plan to use current membership data to map out neighborhoods in the New York City region that do not have active BSA troops, according to Draddy, in order to focus on recruitment in those areas.

“We’re going to serve both girls and boys in 2019, 2020 and moving forward,” he said. “And we, by God, better look like the communities we’re trying to serve.”

The Boy Scouts of America began loosening membership requirements in 2013 when it lifted a ban on openly gay members. In 2015, it allowed openly gay Scout leaders to volunteer, and in 2017, it announced it would accept transgender members, reversing a century-old stance.

The decision to accept girls was welcomed by many as yet another milestone for the classic-American outdoor-based youth program, but as a result, the two major Scouting organizations are now pitted against each other in court.

The lawsuit aims to end aspects of Boy Scouts of America’s promotional campaign that the Girl Scouts of the USA believes infringes on its trademark, and it asks Scouts BSA to no longer use the word “Scout” without distinguishing context that would properly identify the organization.

Parents may go to sign daughters up for Girl Scouts and are unwittingly steered toward Boy Scouts, the lawsuit said. Also, the use of the word “Scout,” without gender context is causing confusion among potential members, the complaint states several times.

Despite the pending lawsuit, the Girl Scouts of the USA maintains that it does not object to Scout BSA’s gender integration; it does not plan to make any changes to align with the new competition, according to a spokesman for the organization.

“Girl Scouts’ programming, informed by over a century of expertise in serving girls, is unrivaled in its ability to transform today’s girls into tomorrow’s leaders,” he said in an email.

Scout BSA’s transition has not been without complications.

Pack 9963, an all Muslim Cub Scout pack in New Hyde Park on Long Island that formed about two years ago, is sponsored by the Hillside Islamic Center, and some conservative residents are looking to their mosque to ensure that the new integrated Scout activities properly adhere to their spiritual practices.

“In the community, there’s been some issues,” said Sanaul Islam, an assistant den leader for the Cub Scout pack. He added, “We have a fairly large group of both girls and boy Scouts. We’ve been making progress.”

The Boy Scouts of America has said that the decision to expand its program to include girls into all its ranks came after years of requests.

“I have five kids, and my husband. And we’re all registered with the same organization now,” said Elaine Griffiths, who was a Cub Scout den leader for her daughter’s group in Yorktown Heights, in Westchester. “It’s not a small thing getting to all these meeting places, even if you’ve got just one kid, especially for busy families.”

Her 11-year-old daughter, Kelly, along with 11 other girls joined Troop 164 last month. Kelly, like Lora, was attracted to Scouts BSA after years of watching her brothers participate in classic outdoor Boy Scout activities.

“This feels really awesome,” Kelly said. “There are all these famous women of history and I feel like I deserve to be one of them.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="ddeb1a9c-bb4b-407e-b9e9-f8eee944b1fd" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/03/nyregion/girls-in-boy-scouts-bsa.html">The New York Times</a>.

Not 'My Grandfather's Boy Scout Troop': It's Now for Girls, Too

Lora Panepinto, an eighth-grader, is one of the first girls in New York City to be officially welcomed into the club that for more than a century had been called the Boy Scouts.

Not 'my grandfather's Boy Scout troop': It's now for girls, too

Nationwide, more than 5,000 girls have signed up for Scouts BSA in the first weeks of the expanded program, according to a spokeswoman for the Boy Scouts of America. (By comparison, about 1.7 million girls across the country are active with the Girl Scouts, including more than 20,000 in New York City, according to a spokesman for the Girl Scouts of the USA.)

The Boy Scouts of America’s 2017 policy shift was hailed by the organization as a way to shape new women leaders, but it was met with immediate backlash — including vocal opposition from within the 109-year institution and from the Girl Scouts, which saw it as an attempt to siphon off its members to offset declining Boy Scout enrollment.

Each of the all-girl troops must be anchored by a permanent female scoutmaster.

The lawsuit aims to end aspects of Boy Scouts of America’s promotional campaign that the Girl Scouts of the USA believes infringes on its trademark, and it asks Scouts BSA to no longer uses the word “Scout” without distinguishing context that would properly identify the organization.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/03/nyregion/girls-in-boy-scouts-bsa.html" id="7ac93c40-bb12-3cf8-ade6-a1e10a030431">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — Boy Scout Troop 222 gathered last month at the Aspen Knolls Estate clubhouse on Staten Island for its annual induction ceremony. One 13-year-old recruit stepped across the ceremonial bridge, recited the Scout Law and swore the Boy Scouts of America oath, right hand lifted into the three-fingered salute.

<h1>Calls were made. Texts were exchanged. Word spread that these two seasoned conflict photographers, </h1>

Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, were killed in action, and their closest friends and colleagues were meeting to regroup and attempt to digest the tragic news together at a familiar spot: a small bar nestled just below the High Line on the corner of 23rd Street and 10th Avenue.

“We’re meeting at the Half King,” a text would read. Before long, the shocked and devastated had arrived to grieve at this impromptu meeting place by the hundreds. Friends and colleagues cried together. Acquaintances embraced in grief. And strangers shook hands, bonding over tragedy.

“It seemed like there were hundreds of people there, without exaggeration,” said Timothy Fadek, a New York-based photojournalist who was close with Hondros. “But when I think about who was there, I can’t even remember it. It was all such a blur. We were all just so enveloped in our grief. That was really telling about the Half King — how it organically developed into a locus for war photographers and photojournalists.”

A spotlighted portrait of Hetherington equipped with his camera and standing in front of armed Liberian rebels has since hung alone on a portion of the wall at the far corner of the bar.

The Half King, a bar and restaurant in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, has been for the better part of two decades a watering hole for writers, photographers and filmmakers. On a given afternoon, you might have seen journalists and their editors discussing projects over coffee at one of the pub’s wooden booths. You may have passed publicists sharing baskets of jalapeño poppers with prospective authors in the adjacent dining room. You may have overheard war-hardened combat photographers swapping violent scenes of faraway places over $5 happy hour draft beers along the lengthy stretch of bar top.

But after Jan. 26, the Half King, along with its in-house reading series and photography exhibits, will permanently close. With the bar’s rent having nearly tripled since it opened almost two decades ago, the market value of the neighborhood’s commercial real estate had finally caught up to the owners, and the bar, according to them, had become financially unsustainable.

“For the last few years, the only reason this place still existed is because we loved it,” said Sebastian Junger, a co-owner of the Half King, longtime war journalist and author of “The Perfect Storm.” “We wanted to take one last stand against the ‘generification’ of New York City. It finally got to the point that we were actively losing money and we just couldn’t sustain that for very long. I can’t imagine opening another bar, because we’d face the same headwinds that this one is being forced closed by.”

While not the only bar in New York City that caters to the arts — KGB Bar still hosts regular readings and bars like the Arts and Crafts Beer Parlor in Greenwich Village organize art exhibits — it filled a unique niche.

— ‘Just Nothing Too Shiny’

Steps away from an entrance to the High Line was the Half King. Inside was a dimly lit bar and a few wooden booths. About twice a month or more, since the bar opened, an invited author would set up shop toward the back of the bar’s spacious dining room. The doors would close, and for a couple of hours, the writer would discuss his or her most recent book with a moderator and a mixed crowd of fans, colleagues, and any unaware diners that may have found themselves present and yet to finish their meal. The event, which was held about 30 times this past year alone, became an integral part of the bar’s identity: The Half King Reading Series.

“I introduced every reading by saying, ‘There’s 10,000 different things you could do in New York any single day, and we don’t take for granted that you’ve chosen to be with us,” said Glenn Raucher, who assumed the role of curating and moderating the series a year ago.

“I wanted to make sure that the experience was organic, holistic and that everyone in the room got something from it,” said Raucher, who ordered a Widow Jane whiskey, neat, before moderating each reading. “And I sweated over time trying to make that happen. Even on the nights when we only had a few people, you could say the conversation only took on more importance.”

In his early days of curating the series, Raucher remembered asking how much “carte blanche” he had in choosing the guests. “You have all the carte blanche you want,” Junger replied. “Just nothing too shiny.” The goal was, according to Raucher, to keep true to the ethos of the bar and present works that touched upon a wide-range of topics and issues, and more important, create a discussion that guests felt worthwhile being a part of.

Since the launching of the Reading Series, speakers have ranged from authors like Bill McKibben, the acclaimed environmentalist, to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, to writer Vegas Tenold, who wrote the book “Everything You Love Will Burn,” about his time embedded in the American far right.

But beyond the readings, the Half King was a pioneer in its photography exhibits. Every six to eight weeks, fine art photographers and world-class photojournalists would showcase their work, usually with a presentation given by one of the photographers. The exhibits, since 2010, have been curated and moderated by Anna Van Lenten, among other experts. And in its early stages, James Price, a photo editor at Newsweek, was involved.

There was a show devoted to shots of Jimi Hendrix playing at Woodstock, and one of the most popular exhibits was a showcase in 2014 of melting icebergs by photographer Camille Seaman, which included a climate change discussion with the director of the NASA Goddard Space Institute.

“We’ve shown photographs from 1917 of Lowell Thomas following Lawrence of Arabia around the Middle East,” Van Lenten recalled. “I mean, literally from when Lowell followed him around with a big box on his back and making glass plate negatives.”

“Photographers here were just as much respected as storytellers as writers were as storytellers,” Van Lenten said. “People are drinking beer and eating sweet potato fries, while we are talking about spotlighted art. For me, that’s pushing the democratic feature of photography.”

— ‘This Place Kind of Became a Mecca’

The bar opened in 2000. Junger, who also directed the war documentary “Restrepo” with his close friend Tim Hetherington, started the Half King with Scott Anderson, an author and longtime magazine journalist who covered war extensively, and Anderson’s wife, Nanette Burstein, an award-winning filmmaker. But the bar’s conception began sometime before 2000, on a few bar stools at Sunny’s Bar on the Red Hook waterfront.

“Let’s buy a building in Red Hook,” Junger recalled thinking. “We’ll have a bar on the first floor. We each take a floor. And we’ll have a fireman’s pole that would run down into the bar from our apartments.

“Our idea wasn’t to make money, but to pay our mortgage and break even,” Junger added. “Who wants to break even anyway? We just wanted our own bar and our own fireman’s pole.”

A fourth partner, Jerome O’Connor, already an experienced bar owner, may have been the one to put the dream of a firefighter’s pole to rest. After he came on, the location on the West Side of Manhattan — a pretty derelict stretch of 10th Avenue back at the turn of the century — was chosen. It was remodeled entirely, much of it with lumber salvaged from a 200-year-old barn in Pennsylvania.

Despite its isolation, the Half King quickly picked up a following. Artists and gallery folk would dine in. Soccer players from Chelsea Piers leagues would swing by for drinks after matches. The tables were constantly occupied, and as intended, including by those friendly with the owners.

“I remember when I was in Darfur for The Times Magazine, and I realized the Half King started to hit,” Anderson said. “I ran into a Dutch photojournalist, and we were just hanging out and talking. I told him about owning a bar in New York and mentioned the Half King, and he goes, ‘Oh, I know the Half King.’ This place kind of became a mecca.”

The bar had barely been open a year when the World Trade Center was attacked on Sept. 11. In the aftermath the Half King was one of the first bars open and reachable from ground zero. It drew a crowd of emergency medical workers, firefighters and police officers who were making pit stops for lunch or drinks during the cleanup. Much of the traffic heading from ground zero to the morgue uptown passed by the Half King.

“So they would all turn right here,” Anderson recalled. “It was constant. I can remember virtually every night for weeks, there would be a long line of ambulances. Especially if they would recover a fireman or policeman’s body, there would be a long motorcade of ambulances.”

Just a couple years later, during the blackout of 2003, the Half King again kept its doors open. Inside was lit by candle, and cold food was being served before it inevitably spoiled. People stranded in the area sought respite in the bar, but rather than eating, took to drinking heavily.

While her partners were away from the city, Burstein had to manage the chaos alone. “The cash registers weren’t working and the food was going to go bad,” she said. “It could have been madness. At one point, I had to literally stand on top of the bar and shout, ‘Everybody calm down!'”

And in 2012, Hurricane Sandy ravaged Manhattan, leaving the bar to fend for itself. It was once again without power and in the declared “dark zone,” which began at about 30th street.

“We were flooded with two feet of water,” Junger said. “I got a generator from somebody. We went outside of New York, somewhere in New Jersey, and got big jugs of gasoline. It felt like ‘Mad Max,’ and the gasoline was gold. If you had two 5-gallon jugs, you were king.”

After a major cleaning and overhaul, the bar survived, despite not having received any federal assistance, which the owners had applied for.

— ‘Suddenly, They’d Be There’

In the end, it wasn’t a disaster that changed the fortunes of the Half King; it was the High Line. The railbed turned pedestrian park opened in 2009 and was finally completed in 2014. During those years, commercial real estate prices rose exponentially based on the massive influx of tourists. Many art galleries in the area closed and local residents moved out. The Half King, the owners realized, had changed.

“I remember friends saying, ‘God, you guys are so lucky, you’re right there.’ But it really did change the clientele,” Anderson said. “And so we had a lot of out-of-town tourists coming here, but it stopped being a destination area for a lot of New Yorkers.”

Despite the changes to the neighborhood, a core group of writers, journalists, photographers and war veterans have stayed loyal to the Half King.

On Sept. 11 last year, C.J. Chivers, a Marine Corps veteran and war correspondent for The New York Times, read from his book “The Fighters,” which was moderated by fellow Marine turned author, Phil Klay.

“He’s a friend of the bar, so there were many people there,” said Raucher, who noted a striking number of veterans in the crowd. “There were at least 70 or 75 people in the room, and yet when they were talking,” Raucher said, “you could hear a pin drop. You could feel the electricity of how important what he was talking about was to everybody in the room.”

For some, the bar has served as a bridge between New Yorkers and the foreign lands they visited. (The origin of the bar’s name comes from an 18th-century Seneca chief who served as an honorary spokesman between tribes and foreign armies.)

“I had a lot of friends that, in the beginning, I had never seen outside of a war zone,” said Michael Kamber, a combat photographer for The Times and now director of the Bronx Documentary Center. “We had only seen each other in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia or wherever, and you could go to the Half King, and suddenly, they’d be there.”

Kamber said that he appreciated the simplicity of the place. “It wasn’t a precious fine art space where they were selling work for thousands of dollars; it was for working photojournalists.” He had met Junger while covering the civil war in Liberia, and later worked on assignment with him for Vanity Fair, in Nigeria. A photograph from that assignment still hangs on a wall in the bar’s private room.

For nearly two decades the original Half King sign had hung above the doorway, but over time it became weathered and worn. Some time ago, Junger thought a replacement was needed. He ordered a new sign, but weeks passed, and then more weeks passed. By the time it had arrived, the decision had already been made to close the bar for good. The new sign was hung anyway.

The Half King Is Dead. Long Live the Half King.

NEW YORK — It was a late-April evening in 2011 when news broke that two photographers were killed by a mortar blast in the besieged city of Misrata, one of the last anti-Gadhafi rebel strongholds of the Libyan civil war.

The half king is dead. Long live the half king

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