At just 4 years old, Longfellow already feels like a familiar classic ??

One Sunday, a few months before the pandemic lockdowns began, my friend, Peter, and I were sitting at Longfellow, drinking bourbon cocktails after a Bengals game.

It was freezing outside and we took shelter there, the bourbon warming our bones; the conviviality of the place warming our spirits. At some point, a New Order song called "Your Silent Face" came on the turntable they keep in the back (on Sundays, they let customers play their own albums). Outside the Over-the-Rhine bar's large double-hung windows, the sky was a Crayola cerulean blue and it started to snow.

You know the kind of magic a snowy day at a warm bar can work on you. You know how it can call to mind every bar you've ever loved, every friend you've ever had and every snowfall you've ever seen.

[???Check out the other tasty stuff Keith has been writing about lately]

But that snowy night at Longfellow also reminded me of the beauty of this old German neighborhood that's somehow still standing, with its 19th-century Italianate rowhouses and soaring church steeples still reaching toward the heavens. And it reminded me how lucky we are that there's a bar like this one where I can take it all in, a place that allows you to remember and romanticize the old times while staying firmly grounded on your bar stool, pleased as punch to be exactly where you are.

Like a lot of other bars. But not.

Step inside and you might think Longfellow looks like some other bars you’ve visited before. It has exposed brick walls and weathered wainscoting. The people behind the bar are tattooed and seem a lot cooler than you are. Some of them are assembling bar snacks. Some of them are shaking or stirring or pouring cocktails that could grace the cover of a magazine.

But the more you come here, the more you realize there’s something different about it. That it has a unique personality, it's sort of a civilized dive bar that always makes you feel welcome and right at home.

You realize the bartenders (who are, indeed, cooler than you) are outgoing to everyone who walks in, from little the kids who run inside, thirsty for some ice water, to the 20-something hipsters from Northside, to the middle-aged golfers in Polo shirts and boat shoes.

Stick with it and you'll soon know the names of those bartenders and the cocktails they're shaking and stirring and pouring. Stick with it and you'll soon find your favorite drink (in my case, that would be the Hanky Panky bartender Jen  Miller introduced me to one day, a mix of gin, Fernet Branca and sweet vermouth, though I usually just go with a Negroni or a beer).

You might also notice the special flourishes the bar's owner, Mike Stankovich, has placed here and there. Some of the Odd Fellows flags he collects and hangs behind the bar. The old books and even older tchotchkes.

There’s a tea canister they've MacGyvered into taps. But the most personal touch is the pay-it-forward chalkboards, where customers can buy specific drinks for specific people whenever they please. Walk down a short hallway, past the bathrooms, take a right and you'll discover the Other Room, usually manned by manager Joshua Aaron Miller, which is part of Longfellow, but specializes in rum cocktails and serves pierogis late into the night.

The four corners

Longfellow is located one what is arguably the prettiest intersection in Over-the-Rhine, right on the corner of Clay and 13th streets. The other three corners are occupied by a florist, Brown Bear Bakery and Old St. Mary’s Church, the oldest standing Catholic church in the city.

It is distinctly Over-the-Rhine, albeit in its charming 19th-century German village iteration. Sometimes, when the St. Mary's windows are open, you can hear choral music spilling out onto the streets and it makes you want to cry.

The horseshoe-shaped bar encourages patrons to see each other; to look at each other; to talk to each other. I can't think of one time I've walked into Longfellow alone without striking up a conversation with a person I've never met before. Stankovich said he doesn’t understand the point of a bar where your back is to everyone else. Imagine if "Cheers" didn't have a horseshoe-shaped bar. No one would've known anyone's name.

It also has an uncanny ability to repel (or at least effectively deal with) the drunk and the disorderly folks who might otherwise seem to kill the vibe at this sanctuary of mostly civilized inebriation.

Unlike a lot of bars where the music feels as intrusive as an unwanted guest, the bartenders at Longfellow know how to read the room. They play what fits the mood. They know a slow rainy day calls for some torch songs. That a busy night merits some punk rock or soul.

Instead of burgers and wings, they serve the kind of bar snacks your grandfather might’ve enjoyed during his factory days. Radishes with butter and salt, sandwiches made with scraps from a hand-cranked meat slicer; tuna salad, and a hot dog, cooked in butter, that you can top with anchovies. One of my favorite things to order is the Lunch Box – a plate of bread, onions, cheddar, bologna, mustard and pickled peppers – that Stankovich said was inspired by a similar bar snack served at McSorley’s Old Ale House, one of the oldest bars in New York City.

The Peacemakers

The original name Stankovich chose for Longfellow was Peacemaker, which he also thought of as a mission statement. He wanted it to be a place where Over-the-Rhine residents new and old could gather together to talk and help each other out. He knew he was a white cis tattooed guy coming into an economically challenged and traditionally Black neighborhood. But he didn’t want to be an ass about it. He wanted to become a part of the community, not just the people who were moving in, but the ones who have always been there.

It would’ve been a good name. But after a cease and desist order from another Midwestern bar with a similar name, he changed it to honor the poet who first dubbed Cincinnati the Queen City, as well as the street in Washington, D.C., where he lived in his 20s and played in a punk rock band.

At 44, Stankovich is a handsome fella. His short salt and pepper hair always looks Dapper Dan fresh. The last time I saw him, I think he had the makings of a 1940s matinee idol mustache going on.

He's a former punk rock star who worked at some of the most popular bars in Brooklyn. He once had a feature written about him in the New York Times that compared him to Sam Malone. He’s had the kind of life that could turn a lot of men into insufferable jerks. And yet he remains one of the friendliest, most approachable and most humble people I’ve ever known.

Stankovich and his wife, Shailah Maynard, a Cincinnati native, left New York for the Queen City about six or seven years ago. They wanted a place where he could open a bar, she could start a business and they could afford to buy a house.

After they landed in Northside, things just sort of worked out. Maynard, who worked as an assistant buyer at Marc Jacobs in Manhattan, is now the co-founder of Sew Valley, a non-profit sewing production facility on the West End. And aside from Longfellow, Stankovich just opened a second bar called the Cutoff, at Oakley Station. Later this summer, he will also open yet another spot called Mid-City Restaurant, which will be located off a short Court Street alleyway, Downtown.

When I talk to him on the phone, he tells me he's nervous that I'm writing an article about Longfellow because he doesn't want it to come off like he's the reason it's so great. He doesn't want anyone on his staff to feel left out because, if it wasn't for them, Longfellow just wouldn't be Longfellow. I tell him that if even one staff member left, whether it was Josh or Jen or Kristen or Ashley or Nick or Casey or Oz or Drew or Boby or Jordan or the other Nick, it would change the place irrevocably, and I mean it.

And while I'm excited about the two new establishments Stankovich is opening, I also know it means Josh or Jen or one of those other folks I just mentioned might be deployed to work at them; that they won't be at Longfellow as much; that it'll change things a little. But I'll follow them wherever they go, knowing they'll eventually take that same spark that makes Longfellow so special, and light it all over again wherever  they go. The more Longfellow, the better.

Most of them have been at the bar since the beginning. Most of them stayed on throughout the pandemic, and, thankfully, most of them were back this spring when the bar reopened for the first time for more than a year. Like many in the hospitality industry, they're still a little dazed from what they've all been through. So be cool to them, tip them well and be thankful for this bar, this old neighborhood and everything we still have.

111 13th St., Over-the-Rhine, 513-307-4379, longfellowbar.com

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Over the Rhine bars: Longfellow bar already feels like a classic