Out and About in the East Village

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.



By James Maher

Name: Zachary Mack
Occupation: Co-owner, Alphabet City (ABC) Beer Co.
Location: Avenue C between 6th and 7th.
Time: 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 16

I grew up in Massachusetts, north of Boston in a town called Swampscott. I left Boston for college when I went to McGill in Montreal. I came here when I was still in high school to visit friends and a lot of them would take us here. I had no desire to come to NYC until I came to this neighborhood. It got to the point where I started to spend my summers here instead of going back to Boston. Then when I graduated New York felt like the only logical place to move.

So the first thing I did when I graduated in 2007 was jump on a train from Boston and move here with $150 to my name. It sounds like a cliché but it was true — I had $148.70 in my bank account. My friend let me stay with her until I could find a job and an apartment. I gave myself two weeks and I found both. My first apartment was above In Vino and I’ve living in the neighborhood since then.

My first job here was for a food website called Eats that was trying to compete with Yelp. They let me do food writing for them and some sales. It was a catch-all job. The site eventually ended up becoming Delivery.com, but back then it wasn’t going anywhere. I moved here right before [the recession]. I had to pay my own way, so it was tough. The first few months were tough trying to make it without the pay that I thought I would have after college

My roommate at the time had just started the paperwork to purchase In Vino, an Italian restaurant and wine bar on East Fourth between A and B. I told him that I needed to make some extra money. I began working there right as the [Wall Street] collapse was happening.

Around 2010, when things started to look up a little bit, I ended up taking an internship, which led into a full-time job at Gawker Media. The job was a writing internship for Gawker TV, condensing what had happened on shows the night before and running recaps. That was big at the time — 2010 was the year when they went from being obscure to becoming more mainstream. The friends I made working there are the best friends I have now.

That turned into a job with the Webby Awards, which is kind of the Oscars for the Internet. For a couple of years I was working 70 to 80 hour weeks and still not making any money. Then I realized that I was maybe going down the wrong path. I had moved to New York wanting to work in media but it was killing me.

So the opportunity came. David Hitchner, my close friend who owned In Vino, called me one weekend and he said, ‘Do you want to open up a beer store/bar in the East Village?’ I said absolutely. It took about a year to plan everything and get money together. I was still working the day job while this was going on.

We opened in May 2012. I realized that I had made the right decision the first week that we were open. I like working in this neighborhood so much. I felt like I had been disconnected from the neighborhood when I was working in the office and this brought me back into interacting with people instead of staring at a screen all day.

The first few months were incredible. We were going along great, and then five and a half months later, Sandy happened. We got flooded — so much damage. In a weird way it was the worst thing that could have possibly happened but also one of the best things because we learned a lot from it. This neighborhood just totally stepped up and everybody helped each other so much. There was a lot of camaraderie on the street.

It didn’t seem like we would survive for a time and it was stressful but we got through it. Our basement flooded to the ceiling like a swimming pool, so we had to replace everything down there, from electrical systems to the hot water heater to our walk-in fridge with the draft lines. It took us at least four months to feel any semblance of normalcy.

We open up at noon every day. That’s one of the things that I enjoy most. A lot of the people who come in for daytime hours with laptops to do work, have a coffee or a beer with a sandwich and use the free WiFi. People come in here for all kinds of things. Not even just to have beers, to hang out. Some of our best regulars never come in after 6 p.m. Most people don’t have the luxury of having huge living rooms in the city, so what David and I wanted to go for was something that felt like an extension of your living room. There’s no pretense here. It’s just come and hang out.

I moved for the first time since I came here a couple months ago and I realized that I’m married to the neighborhood. I love the sense of community here and I think that’s why I’ve stuck around the city. I think we’re lucky to live in the middle of a neighborhood like this because we’re supportive of one another. We not only have people who have been here for 30-plus years, but also people who have been here for three who seem invested in the vibe that we create. I feel very lucky to be here.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.