New owners of this longtime Staten Island bar embrace its place in NYC LGBTQ+ history (2024)

“Pride 2024″ is a collection of stories from members of Staten Island’s LGBTQ+ community, the milestones they have reached and the challenges they still face. If you have someone you would like to nominate for a profile, e-mail their name and a brief nomination to tips@siadvance.com.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The new owners of a popular, North Shore bar rooted in New York City’s LGBTQ+ history are embracing and preserving the crucial role it has played for decades as a safe space for the borough’s queer community.

John Michael Eadicicco, a 32-year-old lifelong Staten Islander, began working as a bartender at Steiny’s Pub in St. George in 2018 after years of frequenting the bar as a patron.

Like many of the borough’s bars, Steiny’s Pub was shuttered in March 2020 during the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, with the closure spanning roughly 16 months before the reopening in July 2021.

Just a few short months after reopening its doors to the community, former owners Jimmy and Antoinette Steinhilber announced their intentions to sell the neighborhood watering hole they had owned for 15 years.

Little did they know, the future stewards of the establishment would soon be brought together by the very bar they now operate.

Eadicicco stepped outside during one of his bartending shifts, at which point he began chatting with Andrew Domini, a 31-year-old Queens native living in St. George.

“He realized that I was the bartender and told me he would come back for my next shift. He did and we’ve been together ever since,” Eadicicco said.

“That’s a very simplistic version of the story, but yes, that’s true,” Domini quipped.

The two spent months trying to find a new owner, but as the bar’s looming closure grew near and no buyers had been found, they decided to take matters into their own hands.

“A lot of people were upset that the bar was seemingly going to close down,” said Eadicicco. “We just decided that after a couple months of trying to find some people, help them out and get this place reopened, we realized ‘you know what, I think we can do this,’ and it’s been a wonderful, wild ride ever since.”

Since taking over, the couple has been asked things like, ‘Is Steiny’s a gay bar now?’ and ‘Is it a queer bar or not?’

“It’s a hard thing to answer in a way because to us Steiny’s has always been queer in some way,” Eadicicco said.

Not only has the bar always held significance in the queer community to them, but for decades before either of them had even been born.

LGBT Historic Spot

The location is designated as an NYC LGBT Historic Site, as the Mayfair Bar & Grill, which previously occupied the space, catered to queer patrons from the late 1950s to the late 1970s.

“Based on an FBI report, the Mayfair catered to a gay crowd by the late 1950s. A 1969 guidebook created by the Mattachine Society described the restaurant as attracting a ‘sweater crowd’ (a white-collar crowd). It also reveals that the Mayfair was ‘mixed’ (meaning that both gay and straight people came here), though the space turned into a gay bar in the evening,” according to the NYC LGBT Historic Site Project.

Having served as a safe space for the borough’s queer community for decades, the new owners look to continue fostering an environment where queer Staten Islanders can feel comfortable being themselves, something that is, unfortunately, not the case at all local bars, according to Domini.

“It’s a space for everyone. It’s not only a space for queer people, but it’s important to us that it’s a space where everyone can feel welcome regardless. I know on Staten Island, in particular, I would say many bars that I’ve visited, there are certainly some that are not welcoming to everyone, and we want to be a place that is,” he said.

The couple repeatedly emphasized that all are welcomed at the bar, regardless of sexual orientation, so long as they treat others with the basic dignity and respect they deserve.

That commitment to fostering a culture of inclusion and acceptance hasn’t gone unnoticed by the community, with Eadicicco receiving rave reviews from patrons of all ilks.

“I’ve always been struck by the different kinds of people and different people who have told me that they’ve been very appreciative of feeling safe and comfortable here. I’ve had members in the queer community, young and old, who have said that they know that we don’t tolerate any BS. We have no tolerance for any kind of hate or prejudice, and we make that known,” he said. “I’ve had members of the queer community tell me that they feel safer while they’re here.”