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For ten years, the Hudson street incarnation of the Tiger (as it was often called) had offered a vast selection of artisan-made ales from Europe and American microbrewers (nary a drop of Bud, Miller, or Coors was ever served). But the surroundings took some getting used to.

“The Blind Tiger Ale House is Dirty, Unhospitable [sic], Unpleasant, and served Terrible Beer,” protested Brian Ó Broin, an assistant professor of linguistics and medieval literature in New Jersey, on a website he created expressly for this complaint. “Ambience: 0 [not a single redeeming quality],” he railed. To the uninitiated it seemed oppressively small and crabbed, especially on weekends, when regulars shied away. The list could seem by turns eccentric and expensive; there were rare bottles selling for $20, but if you somehow managed to get to the bar to order one, your feet were sticking to the floor. And a visit to its bathroom, a malevolent place at the bottom of a staircase (itself macabre) was not easily forgotten.

And so the Irishman wasn’t much taken in by its charms. Nor was the Tiger’s landlord, who hiked the rent in 2005, forcing the tavern to make way for Starbucks no. 374. Brodrick searched eight months for a new venue to house the Blind Tiger, settling on a former bar across from John’s Pizzeria, but just before the new location opened, Deborah Glick—councilwoman for the neighborhood—wrote a letter to the State Liquor Commission urging denial of the the new Tiger’s liquor license on the basis that it would be “a large bar that primarily serves beer.” Say it isn’t so, Glick! Brodrick launched a charm offensive, opening the new Tiger sans beer—but armed with unusual cheeses, pressed sandwiches, baked goods, espresso drinks, even birch beer (non-alcoholic). No Coyote Ugly, is this. Then he invited Glick to come see what the Tiger was all about. A little business trickled in, but no Glick. The stalemate wouldn’t break, and eventually, Brodrick shuttered the doors. Fifteen hard months of exile began; New York’s beer crowd glowered in their mugs somewhere else, and talked about the Tiger.

Like the Dove, the miniscule Hammersmith, London watering hole once favored by Graham Greene and Ernest Hemingway, or McSorley’s Old Alehouse, the original Blind Tiger was dusty and cramped. It was, at its best, old-world squalor exalted. As the stalemate continued, Brodrick and co-owner Alan Jestice planned their new Tiger, nearly double the size of the original. It would be a beer boutique, a shrine to craft-brewed brews complete with wood-paneled walls and floors, custom bar, temperature-controlled cellar (for aging rare ales), and a selection every bit as Byzantine as the menu at Murray’s Cheese Shop, just down the block. It wouldn’t be easy. But the tigers were restless.

Vive la résistance! Starting in September 2006, a Tiger militia—hailing from the New York area and a handful of foreign countries—began circulating an e-petition aimed at the State Liquor Authority. Thomas Paine, who, 230 years ago cried out for fairness from the Crown on the taxation of beer— “the humblest drink of life”—might have been proud. “[The Blind Tiger] is far removed from those outlets who seek the sort of person that consumes cheap mass-produced drinks associated with binge drinking and uncouth behavior,” wrote Alex Hall, of Brooklyn—the document’s author and John Hancock. “Good beer is the new wine,” wrote David Gould, signer no. 997, adding, a bit unhelpfully, that “drinkers of yellow beer should be drawn and quartered,” a reference to both King George III’s preferred form of execution and the sort of mass-produced dross unfit for the Tigerian palate. Others struck a more conciliatory tone. The Tiger “will be a nice quiet place where you can bring your mother,” assured one.

Carry on, men! “Peace and quiet are to be found in the Catskills, not on Bleecker Street! Prohibition is over!” howled one insurrectionary. Another cited Jane Jacobs’s 1961 manifesto,