The New York State Liquor Authority issued a new license on August 12 for 304 Main Street in Port Jefferson, the address the village knows as Billie's 1890 Saloon. The trade name on the paperwork is the same one that has hung over the door for four decades. The company that now holds it is brand new, and its name is Anybody But Gary, LLC.

State records do not say who Gary is. They do not say who is behind the company either. What they do say, plainly, is that the license to pour a drink at Port Jefferson's longest-tenured neighborhood bar has passed to a fourth corporate name in the bar's history, and that whoever chose this one filed it with a straight face and, presumably, a story.

What the paperwork says

The new license, number 0370-26-151330, is an on-premises license in the state's food and beverage business class. It was issued and took effect on August 12 and runs through July 31, 2028. The field that matters most is the trade name, and it reads Billie's 1890 Saloon. Whatever else is changing at 304 Main Street, the sign is not.

Anybody But Gary, LLC is not an out-of-town holding company with a registered-agent suite in Albany. Department of State records show it was registered on October 31 of last year, a Halloween filing, as a Suffolk County limited liability company, and the address it gave for receiving legal papers is 304 Main Street itself. The company was formed for this bar, at this bar.

The previous license at the address belonged to Billie's 1890 LLC, which had held it since 2023. That license expired on April 30 of this year. The stretch between one company's expiration and another company's fresh issue is where the handoff lives, and the public record does not describe its terms, its price or its people. The bar itself has kept its usual counsel, posting soup specials rather than announcements.

Forty years, one fire, four sets of paperwork

Billie's calls itself Port Jefferson's neighborhood spot for more than 40 years, in a building on lower Main Street that has stood for over a century. The license record tells that long story in miniature, one corporate name at a time.

A 2016 restaurant license names Billies 1890 Saloon Inc, and 2016 is the year a fire closed the bar. The closure held for nearly three years. In November 2018 a company called 1890 Inc took out the next license as the rebuilt room came back to life, and the bar celebrated its grand reopening in 2019, keeping what it describes as the same old charm with thoughtful upgrades. In 2023 the license moved to Billie's 1890 LLC. Now it has moved again.

Through every name, the room has stayed what it was: a homey bar and restaurant serving American comfort food under low light and dark wood trim, the kind of place that answers a phone number ending in 1890, same as the name on the door.

What the record does not say

A new license in a new company's name is most often the visible edge of a sale, the same pattern this paper traced at The 3rd Rail in Bellmore earlier this month. It can also be a restructuring by the same people under new papers. Nothing in the state's files settles which one this is, and until somebody behind the bar says so, the honest report is exactly what the documents support: the corporate owner of the license has changed, the name has not, and the new license is good for two more years.

For anyone who drinks there, the practical answer is that nothing on Main Street should look different this week. The taps are pouring under fresh paperwork, and the name made it through another change of hands intact. In a village that watched this bar survive a fire and three dark years, a new LLC with a joke for a name reads like one of the gentler chapters. Somewhere in Port Jefferson there is a Gary who knows exactly why, and the rest of the village gets to wonder over a beer.