Penn Station's Tracks bar gets blessed, and commuters cheer its reopening on the concourse

A Catholic priest blessed the beer taps with holy water. Janno Lieber, head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and self-described “beer sissy,” joked he’d better have just one drink or else he’ll be profligate with the public dollar.

And with the toast of a round of its bestseller, Guinness, Tracks Raw Bar and Grill was officially back open on the Penn Station concourse, which it left seven years ago as stationwide renovations were getting underway.

“Tracks was a place that belonged here at Penn Station. Our customers loved to go here and unwind, and miss a couple trains, because their companions said, ‘Just one more, just one more.’ It was truly a fixture at Penn Station," said Long Island Rail Road president Rob Free, before he, too, drank a Guinness. “Penn Station and Tracks were an iconic duo, like peanut butter and jelly. Or like, in this place, a gin and tonic. Or even Janno and myself.”

Tracks first opened in 2003. It closed in 2019 and moved upstairs to street level, at nearby 220 West 31st St. With Tracks now back on the concourse — it technically reopened last month — Tracks' temporary location on West 31st Street will remain open, albeit under a different name, OBriens, after former partners in Tracks.

Last year, a Tracks opened at Grand Central Madison, albeit a year later than the MTA had hoped.

So it was Thursday afternoon next to Penn's tracks 18 and 19 that the bar was bustling with LIRR passengers drinking from taps blessed by the priest, the Rev. Brian J. Jordan of the nearby Church of St. Francis of Assisi. Wearing a hooded Franciscan habit, Jordan sprinkled holy water on the taps "in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit."

Union electrician Antonio "Huggie" Brathwaite, 48, of Freeport, drinking with his apprentice, had a Corona and a double shot of Jameson, neat.

Brathwaite used to go to the old Tracks two decades ago when he was in electrician school, but he never wound up going to the West 31st Street location.

"I walked by it, but it wasn't the same energy as the one down here," said Brathwaite, who saw the new location after riding down the escalator one day recently and decided to check it out.

Thursday, he sat beside his apprentice, Henessy Rodriguez, 28, of West Harlem. It was 3:15 p.m., and there was still beer and whiskey to drink before riding east to Long Island.

"I usually get on the 2:45," Brathwaite said with a chuckle, "but we're past 2:45!"

He didn't know when he'd be going home.