Something changed on August 12 at 304 Main Street in Port Jefferson, the address the village knows as Billie's 1890 Saloon. The trade name over the door is the same one that has hung there for four decades. The company that now stands behind 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 Port Jefferson's longest-tenured neighborhood bar has passed to a fourth corporate name in its history, and that whoever chose this one wrote it down with a straight face and, presumably, a story.

What we know

Whatever else is changing at 304 Main Street, the sign is not. The bar carries on under the Billie's 1890 Saloon name, and the new company is set up to run it for years to come.

Anybody But Gary, LLC is not an out-of-town holding company with a suite in Albany. It was registered on October 31 of last year, a Halloween birthday, as a Suffolk County limited liability company, and the address it gave as its own is 304 Main Street itself. The company was formed for this bar, at this bar.

The previous company behind the bar, Billie's 1890 LLC, had run it since 2023 and stepped back this spring. The stretch between one company's exit and another's arrival 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 corporate names

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 corporate history tells that long story in miniature, one name at a time.

In 2016 the bar ran under Billies 1890 Saloon Inc, and 2016 is the year a fire closed it. The closure held for nearly three years. In November 2018 a company called 1890 Inc took over 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 reins moved to Billie's 1890 LLC. Now they have 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 brand-new company behind an old bar 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 a new corporate roof. Nothing public settles which one this is, and until somebody behind the bar says so, the honest report is exactly this: the corporate owner has changed, the name has not, and the bar is set up to keep pouring for years.

For anyone who drinks there, the practical answer is that nothing on Main Street should look different this week. The taps are pouring, 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.