Lease holder: ‘Uber and Beacon killed us’
Whistling Willie’s American Grill, the tavern and restaurant at the intersection with Cold Spring’s only traffic light, served its last burger and beer on Wednesday (Jan. 22)
Willie’s has been owned since Jan. 1, 2013 by Frank Ciafardini. He purchased it from founder Bill Sohan, who sold the business due to poor health. As part of the transaction, Sohan stipulated that the restaurant’s name, which honored his grandfather, would not change. (Sohan died eight days after the sale at age 65.)
Ray DiFrancesco, Ciafardini’s stepfather and grantor of the business’s lease, was active in the restaurant’s operation, along with his son, Ray, and daughter, Brianna.
“Uber and Beacon killed us,” said DiFrancesco, explaining that groups typically stopped at Willie’s only briefly before taking Uber to Beacon, where opportunities to barhop are more plentiful.
Ray DiFrancesco (File photo by M. Turton)
An altercation with a customer alleged to have occurred in the early morning of Jan. 1, 2014, that led to DiFrancesco’s arrest on charges of assault and reckless endangerment also hurt the restaurant’s reputation. (The Putnam County district attorney eventually dropped the charges.)
“It cost us business,” DiFrancesco conceded. Events booked by groups from Haldane High School and other organizations were canceled, “but they came back 19 months later,” he said, adding that even during his lengthy legal proceedings, organizations had no trouble asking the restaurant for donations.
The franchise appeared to be on the upswing by 2016 when the family opened Whistling Willie’s II in Fishkill, which thrived but then closed in August, another victim of Uber and Beacon, DiFrancesco said.
DiFrancesco said both of his sons have moved on and are no longer working in the restaurant business. All but one of Whistling Willie’s employees, including his daughter, have already found new jobs, he said.
The Hotel Manteo, at right, around 1912 (Putnam History Museum)
Asked if he would consider getting back into the hospitality business, DiFrancesco said: “Yes, but not here and probably not in this state.”
For now, he said he may simply spend some time at a small farm he owns in the Catskills.
The future of the building that has welcomed customers for more than 170 years is uncertain. DiFrancesco said much of the building’s infrastructure, grandfathered as acceptable when he and his family took over Willie’s, will have to be upgraded at great expense before a new business can open there.
Most of Cold Spring’s commercial buildings have seen widely varied uses over the years, but 184 Main St.’s history has always centered on hospitality, first as the Diamond Hotel, which opened in 1849. The upper floors served as a veterans’ hospital during and for a short period after the Civil War, with a ground-floor saloon.
The Hotel Manteo in the 1970s (Putnam History Museum)
After its use as a hospital, the building was remodeled and reopened as the Hotel Manteo, a name that lasted until 1978.
In 1986, the restaurant became Henry’s-on-the-Hudson. After two more ownership and name changes, Sohan established Whistling Willie’s in 2007.
The south end of the bar at Whistling Willies featured the remnants of a wooden Hotel Manteo sign that the DiFrancesco family discovered in the basement. Much of the present-day mahogany bar is believed to date to the Diamond Hotel era.
We love this place! I’m so sad that you closed! Good luck in your future!
I do not use Uber and I don’t spend a lot of time in Beacon — reasons given for the demise of Whistling Willie’s in Cold Spring — but I had been a regular customer for a long time. However, I did not spend a single dollar there after the 2016 football season, and I know I am one of many sports fans in the area who would say this.
At that time, the front door of Willie’s was covered with a large red, white and blue mural with bold letters that read “We Stand!” This, as everyone at the time was aware, was a show of support for a blatantly racist (i.e., typical) position staked out and harped on repeatedly by our wonderful president.
The display struck me at the time as an extremely unwise business decision, and while Uber, Beacon and other factors may have played a role in Willie’s fortunes, perhaps the lesson is that one’s business is not the best place to trumpet divisive political views.
If you can’t help yourself, please spare us the snowflakey complaints about all the other things that took customers away.
Select comments from The Current’s Facebook page:
I think their food killed them. ~Eileen Brady
They should have let the old-timers who hit the antique stores be their business. Beacon belongs to the young. I love the Depot and always go there. ~Gail Miller
I stopped at Willie’s several times after hiking and had great fun. ~Samantha Jones
I gave it a couple of shots after Bill [Sohan] passed, but it was never the same. The Listening Room [live music on Wednesdays] was a high point. ~Mark Westin
Food went downhill, prices went up. Not a lot of choices with good food in Cold Spring. ~Joanne Kenna
I used to go all the time in the 2000s and never had a problem with the food. The service was pleasant but just took forever. ~Paul Volpicelli
I wonder if Barber and Brew had an effect. We love it there and walked past Willie’s to have a drink there. ~Michelle McCoy
There’s nowhere to hear live music anymore. We would eat the yucky food when we wanted to hear live music. ~Mindy Jesek
I remember that “We Stand” mural – so obnoxious… and dumb. Every time I walked in to that place they treated my friends (from the east side of Putnam) and I, terribly. Horrible management and terrible customer service. Good riddance!