Manhattan Red Sox Bar Thumbs Nose at Yankees

“No spitting. No foul language. No Yankee fans.”

A sign inside the Boston (212) Cafe in New York City

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NEW YORK -- Dana Metes is tired of the taunts.

A lifelong Boston Red Sox fan, she was born and raised in New Hampshire but now lives here. And wearing a Red Sox hat or T-shirt on the sidewalks of New York can be an adventure, she has found.

“I’ve had people yell nasty things at me in public,” the lawyer said. “And people can get pretty rowdy at Yankee Stadium when you go there wearing a Red Sox hat. Now that the season is beginning, I’m sure it’s going to heat up all over again.”

It goes with the territory here in Yankee land -- a fact of life amid baseball’s fiercest fan rivalry. So Boston fans living in the Big Apple mostly suffered in silence, given their history of losing to the Bronx Bombers.

But now, with a World Series championship finally under their belts, many are walking tall. The question is: Where to party?

There are thousands of Red Sox faithful in New York. Many of them jammed into a handful of local bars last fall to cheer as Boston humiliated the Yankees in a seven-game playoff series, then beat St. Louis in the World Series. Watering holes like the Riviera in Greenwich Village offered a place to watch the games in safety.

But those saloons had become Red Sox magnets by accident; die-hards were just as likely to find Yankee fans or tourists sitting next to them.

Now, the city’s first bar designed for Beantown fans has opened its doors in Manhattan. And the crudely written sign at the entrance to Boston (212) Cafe, hanging next to T-shirts mocking the Yankees, sets the tone.

The bar’s slogan is “Think Outside the Bronx,” and backers say the goal is to give native New Englanders a sports and cultural home away from home.

“We want to capture all of the passions and the hunger of New Englanders who are displaced here in New York City and very much need a place of their own to go,” said Charlie Garland, a marketing executive who helped start the business.

“We’re focusing initially on baseball, but ultimately we want to be a home away from home for all of the people who miss Cape Cod in the summer. This place is for people who love authentic New England clam chowder and truly dislike the Yankees.”

The bar, which had its grand opening Friday, is a little hard to find. It’s in the basement of an Italian restaurant on Madison Avenue at 28th Street. Boston (212) Cafe holds about 150 people; the “212” refers to Manhattan’s area code.

There’s a long bar on one side of the room, and tables are scattered beneath the low ceiling. Garland and his partners have decorated the walls with banners from Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth and other New England schools. Eventually there will be banners celebrating the three-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, the Boston Celtics and the Boston Bruins.

As the Red Sox prepare to invade Yankee Stadium for the first game of the season tonight, many of their faithful here were amazed to learn that such a place existed.

“It was a revelation to me,” said Deborah Pittorino, who runs a hotel and spa with her husband on Long Island’s northern shore. The couple found out about the bar through word of mouth, as well as advertising on several baseball Internet sites.

Pittorino said she became a Boston fan “through marriage” and that her husband was “addicted to the team. I’ve seen him crushed when they would lose to the Yankees year after year. Then he had what can only be called a religious experience when Boston won the pennant and World Series last year.”

Although she liked the baseball signs on the walls of the bar, Pittorino also took note of the New England clam chowder: It was thick, creamy and seasoned with salt pork.

“There’s no comparison between New England and Manhattan clam chowder, and you can’t find the real thing here in New York,” she said.

Minutes after walking into the bar, Pittorino and her husband began talking with strangers about the Sox. They met people who knew people they knew.

Others in the crowd on opening day included Ryan Gormady, a Gotham-based Boston fan who helps run “Chowdaheadz.com,” a sports website; Matt Slossberg, a tech-support worker who talked about the community among the Red Sox faithful; and Erica Stakutis, a marketing consultant who was homesick for “real Boston people, not phonies.”

New York is no longer a forbidding place for Red Sox die-hards, said John Quinn, who writes a column under the name “Brooklynsoxfan” on a Boston sports website.

“We’ve had to overcome years of humiliation, years of losing every season to the Yankees,” he said. “But now I’ll be able to walk down the street in this town and look Yankee fans in the eye. This has been the winter of my content.”

In past seasons, Quinn had been hanging out at the Riviera and other local Red Sox bars. He said the rowdy, packed crowds had become a problem.

“Those places were mob scenes, and maybe this new bar will be a little less crazy,” he said. “But it will always seem a little strange, going to a Red Sox bar in the heart of New York City. No matter how much the Red Sox win, we’re the ultimate outsiders.”