The wrappings have come off the outside of the new Rudy’s Bar & Grill on Chapel Street near Howe Street. The place has been encased in boxed-out plywood partitions for the better part of a year, while renovations within took much longer than expected. The wooden outer walls had been stenciled with nostalgic enticements, cartoon speech balloons intended to remind regulars of Rudy’s previous location, two blocks down Elm near Howe. (My favorite: the clearly pre-written, or at least forced-seeming “I like the local music that gets played there.”)

 

Rudy’s lost that old site, but legally retains a name hallowed on the New Haven bar circuit. The bar was forced to move when its lease ran out. The landlords at 372 Elm (who run the Main Garden take-out joint in the same building) had been clear for years that they wanted the space for themselves. Turns out they wanted it so they could create their own bar. It opened a few months ago, with several old Rudy’s employees from the bar’s silver age running it, in the mid-‘90s, under the name Elm Bar. The neighborhood may already be taking it for granted—an opening for the new Rudy’s to create a splash, you’d think—yet Elm Bar continues to change, rearrange and renew. They’ve installed a pool table, for instance.

 

Though I haven’t drunk alcohol in a decade now, I watch the split future of Rudy’s with interest, since I lived directly next door to 372 Elm Street for 12 years. My front lawn was used by many regulars as the bar’s second Men’s Room. When the stage was built in the front room and pool room in back was created, it got a whole lot louder, but I didn’t mind. I was such a regular Rudy’s customer that mail would get delivered for me there. I would get nightcaps there in order to sleep, and help bus tables at closing time if I was still awake. I practically had office hours there when people knew to find me for my journalistic pursuits. It was considered an honor to have one’s photo on the walls of Rudy’s, and I was in at least four photos.

 

My wife still remembers staying over one night and being more alarmed than usual by all the noise next door, especially when a couple of men slipped out the back exit and began smoking and chatting just outside my bedroom window. They weren’t supposed to be there—that pool room door was an emergency exit only—but I’d become completely immune to the drone and hum of Rudy’s (not to mention the Yale frat houses and societies which surrounded the courtyard behind my place) and was not just tolerant but tired. Until the guys outside started talking about one of my favorite bands, Cheap Trick. “They suck,” one of them said. “That’s it,” I yelped, staggering to the ‘phone and calling the bartender Jon Flick (the very guy plucked to be the inaugural manager of Elm Bar), who rushed out back and pulled the ungrateful oafs inside.

 

Many people associated with the physical Rudy’s (Elm Bar) and the spiritual Rudy’s (on Chapel Street) have strenuously avoided pissing matches (not even in my old front yard!) and catfights. The bars will need to build their businesses honestly and openly if they want to attract regulars, and petty battles with other bars can’t possibly help.

 

But some will nevertheless take sides, and comparisons will be made. The new Rudy’s has yet to open, but we can see from its gleaming windows that it cares about design and comfort. Sunlight and moonlight will stream through those grand windows. The grand reopening may have taken oodles more time than originally announced, but Rudy’s may actually benefit from the hanging fortunes elsewhere on Upper Chapel. There’s another bar/restaurant opening soon just a couple blocks down the street—a Mexican cantina which will replace the buffet paradise Indochine. The district may well become a regular new destination for drinkers, especially collegiate ones, and Rudy’s may never even have the need to regain “neighborhood bar” status, opting for part of a new club row instead.