A New York City bar is blasting Taylor Swift and beau Travis Kelce for causing them to lose thousands of dollars in revenue after the couple closed down the streets in front of the business for their wedding events.
The bar, O’Briens Bar & Grill, which sits on 31st Street across from Madison Square Garden, has been empty of customers for days now, ever since Swift and Kelce had New York City authorities block off the entire street so they could hold rehearsals for their Friday nuptials.
Now, the bar wants to be compensated for all the lost business since customers can’t get down the street to enter the bar because city officials put up barricades to close off the area.
O’Brien says that on any given Thursday, they may have up to 150 patrons in the bar. But this week they had six.
“You’ve wronged us, make it right,” Michael O’Brien told Us Weekly.
The bar owner says they have spent days reaching out to the city, the Gardens, and Swift’s people to get some sort of response to their offers to work with them to make up for the lost business, but no one has bothered to respond.
“We’ve reached out to the city, the mayor’s office, NYPD, Travis Kelce’s PR team, Taylor Swift’s management company, I believe owned by her family or run by her family,” O’Brien added. “Travis and Taylor stonewalled [us]. No replies to emails or phone calls or messages left.”
He said he’s offered all sorts of solutions, from offering to rent out the place for the crews working on Swift’s. event, to just asking Swift to buy them out for the week so they can just close without losing thousands of dollars. But there has been no response.
The NYPD has claimed that they have not closed off access to the bar, but O’Brien says the barricades seem to be blocking the entire area, not just the walk in front of the Gardens. And his customers are simply turning around and walking away.
“If you look outside, you see nothing but barriers at either end of the sidewalk, not allowing people down the street,” O’Brien told Us.
O’Brien adds that they even expected higher than average foot traffic to the bar because the World Cup is still ongoing and other events are happening.
“We expected a busy day,” O’Brien said. “World Cup is on, tourists are in town for the wedding and for the 250th anniversary. The big ships are sailing, the fireworks are on town in town. The World Cup, especially, is the main event for us as a bar.”
Taylor Swift is one of the richest performers in the world today, with an estimated net worth of $2.1 billion.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: Facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston, or at X/Twitter @WTHuston