RIP Tommy Flynn
Tommy Flynn
Dunkirk NY – No, you don’t know him, unless you worked in Buffalo theatre somewhere between the mid-80s and the late 90s. He was the proprietor of Ray Flynn’s, a little hole-in-the-wall dive of a bar on the 800 block of Main St. in Buffalo, next to the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo building. It was at one time the city’s theatre bar, where theatre people of all stripes used to come and hang out after rehearsals and shows. There was a time in Buffalo when your day’s or night’s work in the theatre wasn’t complete until you went over to Flynn’s for a drink and some conversation. There was always someone over at Flynn’s to talk to, and even if there wasn’t, there was always Tommy himself. Everyone was Tommy’s friend.
(UPDATE: click here to see Jeff Wilber’s reminiscences about The Golden Dollar at Buffalo Rising, and then check out this page on Forgotten Buffalo on the history behind Tommy’s bar, which includes an image of the Buffalo News story about Flynn’s final night.)
When I first came to Buffalo in 1989 it wasn’t long before I was taken over to Flynn’s. The place was named for Tommy’s father, Ray, who started the bar. Before it started hosting the theatre crowd, it was a popular hangout for newspaper people, in particular those who worked at the defunct Buffalo Courier-Express. The C-E had ceased operations in 1982, and slowly the patrons of Flynn’s morphed from the newpaper crowd to the theatre crowd. The bar was a two-block walk from Buffalo’s Theatre District, an area around the 600 block of Main St. It was close enough to walk to after a show or rehearsal, but in just a bad enough section of downtown that nobody but theatre people wanted to go there. There were maybe four or five booths, three or four tables, a curved wooden bar, and one hell of an odorous bathroom. You had to get buzzed in by Tommy due to the potential for robbery. Continue Reading »
