The Watering Hole for the Bus Station of Life

On the second floor of the Port Authority Bus Terminal is a lone Irish bar called McAnn’s. It has no bathroom and its regulars drink in the absence of sunlight. It has existed behind a blur of miserable commuters for 20 years, and it is the last location of a forgotten chain of New York bars founded in 1945.

The wall clock at McAnn’s is set seven minutes fast to keep customers on their toes about bus schedules. Bartenders stash beer cans into brown paper bags for commuters in a rush. As to being a bar without a bathroom: customers must exit McAnn’s to use Port Authority’s public restrooms — a temporarily sobering experience for the tipsy who instantly find themselves surrounded by crowds and fluorescent light.

During its peak in the 1980s, the McAnn’s chain had almost 30 locations across Manhattan. The chain was known for its steam-table lunches and corned beef. A McAnn’s outpost appears briefly in “Taxi Driver.” Its slogan, “Meet Me at … McAnn’s,” still remains in its familiar yellow logo at the Port Authority location’s entrance. The bar is also a time capsule of a more squalorous Times Square; it has cracked black and white checkered floors, and its green vinyl couches are bandaged up with tape.

Hunched along its bar stools, the regulars of McAnn’s include construction workers with toolboxes, Broadway stagehands and weary finance types with crumpled shirts and loose ties. Conversation there recently recalled a wedding that once happened near the dartboard and a tryst between two commuters at a one-hour Midtown hotel.

McAnn’s regulars are practiced bar stool raconteurs. “Guy came in with a duck on a leash once,” said John Moloney, 54, a union carpenter, one recent Tuesday afternoon. The bartender, Paudie Carmody, 42, nodded his head. “There was also a guy who came in with blood all over his face.” Mr. Moloney continued. “I met my wife at this seat right next to me. I should be cursing McAnn’s.” He corrected himself: “I’m just joking. We’re still married. A guy in the bar that day had two free tickets to a Jackie Mason show and she and I decided to go to it together.”

Later, an 84-year-old man named Manny Muñiz entered McAnn’s. He rested his cane along the bar and ordered a Johnnie Walker Red Label with club soda.

“I am the mayor of McAnn’s,” he said.

Behind the bar, Mr. Carmody agreed: “He is the mayor.”

Nearby, a man blurted: “No. He is a legend.”

Mr. Muñiz then cracked a joke about remembering when Times Square was still called Long Acre Square — the neighborhood’s name until 1904.

As evening approached and commuters flooded into Port Authority, a trio of women known to regulars as the “Ladies of McAnn’s” took their seats at the bar. Teresa Brewer, 50, ordered a vodka soda. For all its rough edges, she said, there was something profound beneath the surface of McAnn’s. “You say things here to people you won’t even say to your friends or your family,” she said. “The person next to you is both stranger and friend, but you may never see that person you’re talking to ever again.”

“All of us become the same here,” she added. “We’re all just going through life while we wait for our bus.”