Snug Harbor serves up attitude, whiskey, PBR

By 1967, the name changed to the Little Vienna Restaurant.

During the 1970s, change struck the building once again. The 36 Main side of the building became a clothing store called Top It by ’77. The 38 Main side had become The Rib Room restaurant — one of its well-known uses.

Hickory Renadette, one of the current owners of Snug’s, still keeps an old business card from 38 Main’s days at The Rib Room on the corkboard in the bar’s employees-only back room. He’s proud of that history.

“It was actually a pretty famous rib joint. People would come up from New York City just to come here,” he said.

For people familiar with Snug’s as it is now — The Rib Room looked a bit different. Where the end of the bar is now was the back wall of the restaurant. The area with the pool table is a later addition.

Snug’s beginning, books and candles too

After its time as The Rib Room, 38 Main became Snug Harbor — a bar and restaurant — in about 1983, according to archival phonebooks. The nautical theme has stuck. However, at some point, the name was briefly changed to “Mr. Vogh’s Harbor Tavern” — but it soon went back to plain old Snug Harbor.

At the 36 Main side of the building, in 1995, the well-loved bookstore The Painted Word opened up. Painted Word also held a coffeehouse serving espresso and cappuccino. According to a Huguenot Herald article from 1999, New Paltz’s fight against Wal-Mart was mostly waged and organized in that coffee shop.

But by 1999, The Painted Word closed. Old Flames Candle Store replaced it. And a short-lived effort to keep the bookstore’s café open could be the origin of the shortened “Snug’s” name.

In December 1999, Snug’s Café — run by Monique Caputo, the owner of the bar at that time — opened. It was a collaborative project meant to keep the coffee flowing over at the candle shop. It didn’t last.

While Snug Harbor stayed and remained a bar, pretty much the same as it is today, change kept coming for 36 Main. After the candle shop vanished, Biggy’s BBQ Bistro held its grand opening in May 2006. And 36 Main Restaurant — short-lived but critically acclaimed — opened in 2008.

Hipsters, art students and PBR tallboys

In the late 2000s, as the Great Recession hit, Snug’s had morphed into a haven for art students, hipsters and drinkers searching for something different. Part of their charm had to do with Snug’s seeming like an underdog to Bacchus Restaurant, Oasis Café, Cabaloosa, P&G’s Restaurant or even The Gilded Otter.

With more of a laid-back “anything goes” vibe, Snug’s didn’t seem like the place to go to pick up a date. It was a place to meet friends and party. Unlike some other venues in New Paltz, it consistently hosted hardcore rock and punk shows.

It’s about that time that Snug’s current owners, Renadette and Ben Miller, purchased the establishment from their predecessors — who were looking to get out of the business. Renadette, who usually goes by the nickname Hick, went to SUNY New Paltz for a theater degree and moved here in 1993. He graduated and became a professional stagehand, working at the Ulster Performing Arts Center, Bard College and with large national productions.

He toured as a stagehand with the international tour of the Broadway musical “Chicago.” Hick also worked on the ill-fated Cirque Du Soleil production “Banana Shpeel.” While Cirque shows usually please crowds and critics, the press tore “Banana Shpeel” apart and the show ended.

But those days on the road with big-name productions were good to him. “That’s basically where I got the money to buy the bar,” Hick explained.

Renadette knew his business partner Ben Miller — a local landlord — because the two men went to SUNY New Paltz together. Hick was burnt out on theater work and looking for a change. That’s when the two men decided to invest in the bar.

“They were selling and somebody needed to take over the place,” he said. “I’d been coming here since 1993.”

Before he became the co-owner, back in the 1990s, he was a patron. Hick fell in love with the tavern on either a Thanksgiving or Christmas night early in his days at SUNY. Alone in the dorms on the holiday — and with no plans to go home and visit family — Hick hit the streets to find something to do. He remembers Snug’s as a welcoming place to a lonely college kid.

That’s part of the reason Snug’s stays open on Thanksgiving and Christmas now. “On Christmas, I always make sure everybody gets a present,” the owner explained.

Snug’s gives out “a box of random” — an assortment of items ranging from free drink coupons, to batteries and even a lump of coal — to every patron who comes on Christmas.

As far as what the future holds for Snug’s, Hick said he was trying to listen to what customers were ordering. For instance, they’re a bit more focused on whiskey at the moment based on demand.

Because Snug’s is a tenant, not everything that its owners want to do can happen easily.

“I’d love to get rid of this cement,” Hick said with a laugh, pointing the concrete floor below the pool table. “But I don’t want to invest that kind of money if I don’t own the place.”

To learn more about Snug’s, search for them on Facebook.

Snug Harbor is the third installment in a six-part series featuring the history of local taverns. Next week, the spotlight will be on McGillicuddy’s.