‘Everybody comes to Demsey’s,’ the New York City bar that always has the UK game on
Zebulon “Zeb” Vance still remembers the first night he spent in New York City more than four years ago, when the surroundings of his new reality fully set in.
Fresh off an undergraduate degree at Kentucky in biosystems engineering and a PhD program at South Carolina in biomedical engineering, Vance arrived in The Big Apple after accepting the first job offer that came his way in July 2018, having never visited before.
Details stand out from his first night in NYC: his apartment on the Upper East Side shaking as trains rolled past, and sirens blaring into the late hours.
“Absolutely terrified,” Vance recalls about his mental outlook at the time. “When you come to New York it’s overwhelming, the sights, the sounds, the smells. It’s intense.”
Originally from Bell County in southeast Kentucky, Vance knew next to nothing about New York City or its residents when he arrived.
But he knew about Jack Demsey’s — and made it a point to visit for the first Kentucky football game of the 2018 season — because everyone in New York City with any tie to the University of Kentucky knows about Jack Demsey’s.
Located on West 33rd Street in Manhattan’s Koreatown — a stone’s throw from the Empire State Building and just blocks from Madison Square Garden, the site of Saturday’s UK-UCLA game — Jack Demsey’s is where Kentucky fans in New York City go.
It’s the official home base of the New York City UK Alumni Club, of which Vance serves as president.
It hosts watch parties for every Kentucky football and men’s basketball game, as Wildcats fans clad in blue and white pack the second and third levels of the multi-floor establishment.
The bourbon and ginger flows (Woodford Reserve is most popular), Waka Flocka Flame’s “Grove St. Party” thunders and hundreds of people pack into the Irish bar and restaurant to cheer, finding comfort in a community created around the Cats.
UK fans from all walks of life go to Demsey’s
Vance’s life has been checkered with memorable Kentucky sports moments.
His freshman year at UK coincided with the arrival of John Calipari and the John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins-led Elite Eight squad.
Vance was a college resident assistant when UK last won the national title in 2012, and he remembers being in the dorm for the championship game before emerging to chaotic scenes of celebration on State Street.
That kind of college experience will leave an impact.
He kept up with UK while completing his PhD at South Carolina by watching games at a Tin Roof, but he arrived in New York City already knowing where to catch the Cats in a communal setting.
Kentucky Sports Radio had long publicized Jack Demsey’s as the place to be. The UK Alumni Association always listed it as the UK watch party spot for those in the area.
“Every time I’ve been in the city (during a UK game), I’ve been here,” Vance told the Herald-Leader while seated at a second-floor table at the establishment on Wednesday night. “I plan my schedule around it.”
Game days at Jack Demsey’s feature all the expected comforts of watching from Central Kentucky: flags for both the state of Kentucky and UK hang outside the building, along with an inflatable UK football helmet affixed to the second-floor balcony.
While the first-floor of Jack Demsey’s remains the same, the second and third floors are reserved for Cats fans.
As many as 500 fans at once have packed those spaces.
For last year’s UK football game at Georgia, when both teams were undefeated, it was a sardine-packed standing-room only kind of experience.
But don’t confuse the Jack Demsey’s viewing experience as one reserved for only a specific kind of UK fan.
Former UK women’s basketball head coach Matthew Mitchell stopped in a little more than three years ago, and is still featured on the Jack Demsey’s Instagram page.
Former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear has also made a past appearance at Demsey’s.
Just two weeks ago while UK played Michigan in London, England, Kentucky Congressman Andy Barr came in to watch the game.
Vance grabbed a photo with the recently reelected politician, and had the presence of mind to ask Barr what he was doing at an Irish bar and restaurant designed for die-hard Wildcat fans.
“We were at The Plaza,” Vance recalled Barr saying. “They didn’t have the game on, and I knew the game would be on here.”
Jack Demsey’s is integral part of UK fan lore
So how did an Irish bar and restaurant in Koreatown come to be known as a singular gathering spot for UK fans?
Erin Burkett has a lot to do with it.
Burkett is Lexington born and raised, and she attended UK from 1996 until 2001.
She moved to New York City for a job in finance in 2005 and soon felt the pangs of homesickness that naturally arrive when living some 700 miles from home.
Burkett learned there used to be a UK alumni club in New York City, but it had gone by the wayside. By October 2008, she had helped revive the alumni club, and later served as its president before Vance.
The club bounced around from bar to bar trying to find a permanent home when word spread through the SEC-school affiliated bar scene in New York that Demsey’s was without a college affiliate.
“We reached out to them and they were completely receptive to all of our requests, basically,” Burkett told the Herald-Leader on Thursday afternoon.
But the relationships formed between people who come for the UK games at Demsey’s often extend beyond pure college connections.
“You’ll be in the bar, there’s people coming in that are alumni from Centre and Georgetown and Western and Morehead and Berea that just want that Kentucky connection, and they know that they can get that at Jack Demsey’s,” Burkett said. “You’ve always got that group here that you can lean on and talk to and you feel that connection to home, just hearing that accent talking to people. So it’s wonderful.”
The camaraderie found inside Jack Demsey’s — which also hosts Kentucky Derby watch parties — not only transcends schools in the commonwealth, but also other countries and sports.
In addition to being the UK bar in New York City, Jack Demsey’s is also the gathering place for supporters of Celtic, a Scottish professional soccer team with Irish connections and a large international backing.
Autographed Celtic kits and framed team photos intertwine with UK flags and Calipari-autographed shirts in the stairways.
Kentucky football had plenty of early kickoffs in the initial years that Jack Demsey’s was the UK bar, which meant Celtic matches in the Scottish Premiership would be ending right as UK football games started on Saturdays.
At some point, Burkett found herself arriving early for UK football games, which meant showing up as Celtic games ended.
She built a friendship with the people in the Celtic supporters club, and soon became a die-hard Celtic fan herself.
She’s gone to Celtic conventions in Las Vegas, and she even hosted one member of the NYC Celtic fan group in November in Lexington for the Breeders’ Cup.
The interest is also a two-way street.
While Burkett — who is now a board member for the UK Alumni Association — was in London watching UK defeat Michigan two weekends ago, she received texts from members of the Celtic fan group about how good the Wildcats looked on the court.
“Never in their life did they think they would be college basketball fans, I’m sure,” Burkett said with a laugh.
What’s it like at Demsey’s when the Cats play in NYC?
The experience at Jack Demsey’s is hectic enough for an average Kentucky game, but it gets turned up a level when the game is played just two blocks away at Madison Square Garden.
The party starts well before tipoff, with UK fans arriving hours before the game to gather and drink before heading to The Garden en masse, often screaming UK chants on their way.
Staff at Jack Demsey’s get a few hours of respite to gather themselves while the game occurs, since most of the regular patrons for the watch parties will have tickets to the game.
Then, they all return to Jack Demsey’s after the final buzzer.
“Win, lose or draw, we’re all coming back to hang out together,” Burkett said.
According to Vance, the NYC UK Alumni Club president, there’s about 3,000 Kentucky alumni in the New York City metro area. Of those, about 100 are regular visitors to Jack Demsey’s for UK watch parties.
The people differ for basketball and football, but the guiding principle of the club remains connecting those with a shared UK interest.
Scholarship funds also exist through the club so that students from the NYC metro area can get scholarships to attend UK.
But of all the anecdotes that explain the special place in UK culture that Jack Demsey’s has, nothing mirrors the desire of so many people in such an entertainment-heavy city to go inside a bar, see old friends and watch their favorite college play on television.
“Everybody comes to Demsey’s,” said Vance, who had his birthday party this year at the establishment.
“All of my best friends in New York, I’ve met through this club.”
