About Us
In late 1996, Michael McGrail, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York and experience in Corporate hospitality, including the kitchens of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, as well as private bars and restaurants, along with 4 others, decided to build a new kind of gay bar in NYC’s Chelsea neighborhood. They located a space on 19th Street, with a huge archway entrance owing to its original use as a horse stable. They completely gutted the space and built a cocktail lounge with a huge window filling the archway, which provided an open view of the bar’s interior, at a time in which all gay bars had darkened windows, and smelled of sweat, beer and desperation.
Enigmatically named, “g” (the lower case letter g in Clarendon font), and styled after a high-end hotel cocktail lounge, with it’s light wood-paneled interior, comfortable seating on couches and ottomans, and a smattering of cocktail tables, “g” featured a single, large, stainless steel circular bar – which was really more of an oval shape – at its center, and a juice bar / protein drink station at the back, and it was an instant success.
Always busy, live DJ provided music every day from happy hour until closing. It was the kind of place one might bring co-workers, gay or not, for drinks after work, or as the dignified backdrop for a gay man or lesbian to bring parents to “come out,” or where so many members of the gay community would meet their future partners (and ex-partners) or begin what are now, life-long friendships. One local services agreement, counsling newly out members of the gay community-based organization counseling those who had recently come out, would refer them to g to commune with other gay folk in a clean, comfortable, dignified, but decidedly gay environment.
In the very gay Chelsea neighborhood, g and then g lounge, was “safe space.” A place where people found community.
After 20 continuous years, the center of gay life had migrated to Hell’s Kitchen and many of the area’s popular gay establishments,such as “Bisg Cup” (a coffee shop), or “Harry and David’s Splash” (a video bar and dance club), and the infamous Chelsea Gym shuttered. At the end of 2016, g closed its doors. McGrail, with some new and some old partners renewed the lease, closed for renovations, and emerged a few months later, in early 2017 with “REBAR Chelsea,” a very very different type of venue filling the formerly g lounge footprint. It had a utilitarian, industrial feel, and an open floorplan. Gone were the oval bar. the large window-filled archway, and the comfortable seating. In their place were two smaller bars, a dark, colorless interior and an even darker colorless exterior, and hard, wood benches and cocktail tables fixed in place. If it sounds dreadful, that’s because it was. But it managed to function for almost seven years before McGrail’s partners wanted to call it quits in mid 2024..
That’s when McGrail’s husband (and partner of 35 years, an established trial attorney) stepped in, and along with a third partner having formal education in hospitality marketing and tourism, and also in Digital Marketing, as well as a lifetime of experience in nightlife. They bought out McGrail’s former partners in October 2024 and got to work reinventing the space. They reconfigured the space, adding color and comfort, kick-ass new professional lighting and a brand new sound system shaping the bar into a cocktail lounge with dance club “elements.” But the primary mission was to bring the business up to date, making it a warmer, more welcoming environment overall.
The result, aptly named for its historical reference, has been changed back to “g Lounge.” It’s a labor of love, and it’s well-worth the trip to Chelsea..