on Broadway
FEBRUARY 2 0 1 8 I BOROMAG.COM 21
“I'm a Jersey boy myself,” Higgins said.
“Grew up on the boardwalk, worked on
the boardwalk, was under the boardwalk
a few times.” He wanted to bring that feel
and energy to Astoria.
Higgins and his business partner, Barry
Spellman, also run the similarly quirky
Judy & Punch bar on 30th Avenue, which
they opened about four years ago. They
saw that there was room to expand in
Astoria and began renovating the space
— previously a Croatian soccer bar — for
Madam Marie’s last year. Paul Rafferty, a
bartender at Judy & Punch, is also a coowner
of Marie’s, and they have another
partner named Ted Gaylor, who also owns
a sports bar in Brooklyn.
Higgins and Spellman did all of the renovating
themselves, with help from Spellman’s
brother, Mark.
“We probably made a thousand trips
to Home Depot,” Higgins said. Their
soft opening was on Dec. 15, 2017, and
they’ve been spreading the good word of
Marie’s through social media and wordof
mouth. Although he said finding the
bar’s decorations was “a nightmare,” their
work paid off: Eclectic, slightly deranged
objects line the walls, like a mounted stag
head draped in Mardi Gras beads. And