The Bar Method

To Dave Zirin, a journalist who writes about sports and politics, “the newsroom just isn’t the newsroom anymore.” So he bought a bar for drinks, tacos, and gathering.

Last fall, Chilo’s—a bar in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, known for its excellent backyard taco truck—announced it was closing. Over its decade in business, Chilo’s had developed a loyal local following; its demise was met with the usual laments. This time, though, a familiar story had a twist: weeks after shuttering, Chilo’s reopened with Dave Zirin, the sports editor for The Nation, as its new majority owner.

Zirin, a veteran journalist focusing on the intersection of politics and sports and the author of a dozen books, has been good friends with Lev Gewirtzman, one of Chilo’s longtime owners, since the nineties. (They grew up together on the Upper West Side.) When he heard Chilo’s was flatlining, he offered to take over. And since, he has worked to transform Chilo’s into an unofficial community hub for New York City journalists. “I have no idea how to make a drink,” said Zirin, whose latest book, The People’s Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn, comes out this summer. “I barely know what the word ‘inventory’ means. But I’ve been a journalist now for over twenty-five years. One thing I do know how to do is put on a meeting.”