Bill's Today ...

Even though we’re in the new millennium, you can still get a taste of the old when you walk into Bill’s. It starts with Aldo Leone, (the manager and official greeter), who has been with the place for over forty five years. Whereas the walls at Bill’s are a pictorial history, Aldo is an oral history of New York City. He’s seen it all. And when he isn’t at the racetrack, which he visits every waking day of his life, he’s standing by the swinging doors at the entrance to the Silver Dollar Bar, regaling an eager customer or two with his yarns. Aldo’s great aunt was the famous Mama Leone and it was in her restaurant he sharply cut his teeth. Starting there as a busboy in his early teens, he met everyone from Al Capone to President Eisenhower and forged with many a life-long acquaintance. Aldo’s mother, when she wasn’t working in Mama Leone’s, also cooked at the training camp of Rocky Marciano, so Rocky was also among A ldo’s famous intimates.

But the most important constant at Bill’s spreading warmth and good cheer both day and night, (and by two degrees of separation a link to Bill Hardy), is the proprietress for the past twenty seven years, Barbara Bart. Barbara’s father, O.B. Bart, purchased the business in 1965. After his untimely death in 1979, Barbara handily took over the reins and along with her partner, Jack Sheehy (former Cornell basketball great, class of ’55), has been the driving force of its success ever since. That means that Bill’s Gay Nineties, going all the way back to 1924, has been owned by just two families, the Hardy’s and the Bart’s, and with the mortality rate of restaurants being what it is today, that in itself is a bit of a New York legend.