It’s getting harder and harder to find a good, authentic dive bar in New York City. By "authentic dive bar," I mean, of course, a bar that’s been around for a while and has earned its reputation and moniker—not a new joint that designed itself to be one. Every time I make my way back to the city, it seems another one’s closed. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but no, it always hurts—like when you start getting invited to your high school friends’ funerals. The latest to shutter its doors—Billymark’s on 9th Avenue and 29th Street—was a lot like the other irreplicable places that have shut down: it had a history, an atmosphere, and a following.

Opened in 1956 as a neighborhood bar, Billymark’s was small and simple. It catered to the working people of the city, opening at 8 a.m. to catch the night shift getting off work and staying open until 4 a.m. to serve concertgoers and late-night partiers. It was originally called the “White Rose Bar.” White Rose Bars were a chain of small, neighborhood bars that dotted New York City starting in the 1940s. So yes, it was a corporate-owned joint over sixty years ago, but it eventually came into its own and crossed into the legitimate dive category (which is the way it’s supposed to be done). Anyway, in 1999, the tiny dive was bought by brothers Mark and Billy Penza, whose father, Mark Penza, manned the also irreplicable Mars Bar in the East Village until it too closed in 2011.

Once through the simple façade facing the street, you’d find all that’s needed in a good saloon. On the left was a long, wooden bar with a few shelves of liquor behind it. There were bottled and canned beer available, but no taps. A battered old cash register rang out on each sale. The drinks were cheap and honest, but also simple and to the point (think an Old Fashioned or Manhattan, and definitely nothing with elderflower or black currants as ingredients). On the walls was a collection of bric-a-brac you might find adorning a college kid’s dorm room: old movie posters, gold records, and boxing gloves. There were no crushed-velvet lounge chairs, no polished stainless steel, and any exposed pipes and wiring were there because of age, not because of design. There was music to listen to and a pool table to hustle your buddies, but little else to distract you from friends, conversation, and drink.

And yet all that simplicity seemed to work. People were dedicated to Billymark’s, and I mean dedicated. Some regulars had been going to this bar for five decades. They were brought by their dads back in the ’50s, and when they had kids, they brought them along too. The shift workers hit the bar every day at 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., and when there was an event at the Garden, you couldn’t even get through the door. In other words, it was a neighborhood place that also attracted a lot of visitors.

But the beauty of it was the composition of the crowd. White-collared, blue-collared, no-collared—they all met and mingled. Like any good bar, the people were often good, though with a place so long in the tooth, it saw its share of a-holes and tragedies. But most felt safe going there. They loved the octogenarian bartender from Ireland who sang to them while making drinks. They loved the funny but gruff owners who seemed to make up prices on the spot for the booze they served.

Most of all, people loved the authenticity of the place.

“Authenticity.” I use that word a lot when it comes to dive bars, and I know that’s sort of a cop-out because I never really explain what it means.

It’s not something easily described, and it’s often even more difficult to quantify. What makes a bar authentic is also what makes it special. It makes the place a destination. It makes people go out of their way to get there. But I don’t know if I can really tell you what it is. In short, what makes a bar “authentic” is anyone’s guess, but to summarize Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart when he tried to define pornography in 1964: we know it when we see it.

Whatever it is, Billymark’s had it in spades—it was as pure as a dive bar gets, with no frills and no expectations. It was, in all ways, authentic. So, for Billymark’s and for all the dives out there staying authentic and true to the course, we raise a glass.