For Henry, the kitschy religious iconography that covers the walls of Church isn’t meant to be in-your-face transgressive - rather, it comes from a place of endearment. He got married to a woman and got divorced, went to a Presbyterian seminary and then left because he didn’t feel like he could perform literal Christian belief. In the 1980s, he got a bachelor’s degree from a Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism program, but his life would take several left turns before he could put that education to full use. Like the bar he created, Henry defies labels. Now I was among LGBTQ+ family at a bar ripped straight out of a Magnetic Fields song. I had spent much of my closeted childhood singing his music alone in my room “Luckiest Guy,” a bouncy little tune about unrequited love in the big city, was a particular favorite. My love for the place spilled over when I wandered upstairs to the karaoke room and saw that the song list included “The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side” by the Magnetic Fields, a band helmed by the prodigious gay songwriter Stephin Merritt. “I want people to come in and think,” Henry says, “because then they grapple with who they are, and then they grapple with themselves and become more authentic.”
