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Behind the bar: The culture of sexual harassment, racism, and workplace toxicity at 1020

By Beatrice Shlansky / Senior Staff Photographer
By Elizabeth Karpen • November 4, 2021 at 5:09 AM

Editor’s note: This article deals with topics of sexual harassment. Some of the names included have been changed to protect the anonymity of the subjects.

1020 Bar was the first bar that Riley Callanan, BC ’22, had ever walked into. While she had no previous bartending experience, Callanan had been encouraged to apply for the position by one of the male bartenders who served her during first-year orientation. As a student on financial aid, Callanan was looking to find a job, and being a 1020 bartender seemed like an opportunity that she could not pass up.

“I came to school in New York because I wanted to have adventures. And I wanted to expand myself and have experiences. So it felt like one had just fallen into my lap,” she said.

Spectator spoke to former bartenders at 1020. Again and again, a pattern emerged: Many of them, like Callanan, stepped into the job because they needed money, and as a result, were forced to endure sexual harassment from co-owner Michael McKiernan without any real attempts from co-owner Gene Steinhart to stop the continued abuse.

When evaluating prospective employees, McKiernan reportedly ushers potential employees up to his apartment above the bar for interviews that often last well over an hour. Many former staffers claimed that in their interviews, the topic of bartending was not even addressed. Instead, they say, McKiernan told them made-up stories about his former careers—including that he was the prosecutor on the Brown v. Board of Education case and had won a Grammy—weighed how attractive he deemed interviewees to be, and discussed sexual relationships he claimed to have had with former bartenders. Some claim that McKiernan glorified his past and an era in which he said “​​girls used to like getting drugged and then taken up into [men’s] rooms.”

During her interview for the bartending position, Callanan initially sat in a chair, but said she was pressured by McKiernan to sit next to him on the couch as he attempted to convince her to drink. According to Callanan, the conversation immediately became inappropriate, and she was “comically aghast that it moved directly to him talking about how he was against the #MeToo movement.”

McKiernan allegedly questioned why Callanan did not emphasize that she was 18 years old on her résumé, as if being three months out of high school was an asset to her application. She said he complained that many of the employees were approaching 21, an age at which he said it was time to “put [them] out to pasture.”

Callanan’s interview went on for three hours; she claims 70 percent of it was McKiernan’s sex stories. After being offered the bartending position, Callanan worked at 1020 for two years and says that she suffered constant harassment from McKiernan.

Former 1020 bartender Sarah said that her interview was not much more than McKiernan looking at her and asking, “When was the time you realized you were pretty?” Sarah added that McKiernan made it clear that he did not hire college students “because he wants [them] to work,” but rather because “he’s sexually attracted to [them].”


Almost all the former bartenders interviewed by Spectator discussed having similar experiences. Many alleged that McKiernan emphasized that he hired young Columbia students in an attempt to bring more underage women through the door. They also described being shown McKiernan’s bedroom, where he kept over a dozen cameras across from his bed displaying footage of the bar downstairs.

Former employees claim that he would watch the cameras for hours during their shifts, waiting for any excuse to call the phone behind the bar. No matter how superfluous the comment, they said, McKiernan would call at least 10 times a night. They allege that he would make substanceless accusations of them not doing their jobs properly and scold them for not following rules that he would make up on the spot.

“He liked correcting me a lot, bossing me around, telling me I’m doing something wrong when I’m obviously not,” Bess, another former bartender, said.

The calls reportedly became more condescending and more frequent for bartenders who would address McKiernan’s sexualizing comments. “He made it clear that you were no longer in his good graces, and then he would call down and give you flak for different things,” Stephanie, a former 1020 bartender, added.

Every former employee that spoke with Spectator alleged that McKiernan demanded that female bartenders wear revealing clothing. If bartenders put a sweater or a jacket on, they said, McKiernan would call and demand that they take it off. If he was in the bar and told them in person, they alleged that he would leer at them as they took off the extra layer. They added how McKiernan asked them to “dress sexier,” recommending they wear shirts that reveal more cleavage and bicycle shorts. In addition, former bartenders alleged he would consistently show them pictures of lingerie, saying he wanted to make the revealing outfits the 1020 uniform because he would “love” to see them in those pieces.

“You’re always in fear of him because you know he’s always watching you in a very creepy way,” Stephanie said. She said that during her shift one Halloween night, McKiernan asked her which street corner she could be found after clocking out.

Taylor, a former bartender at 1020, claimed that the culture created by McKiernan’s scrutiny was one that equated exposing oneself with earning more tips at the bar. Bartenders were taught that their value stemmed from the number of tips they brought in and that the only way to generate more tips was to sexualize themselves.

This mentality also manifested itself in McKiernan’s other rules. Every bartender interviewed added that they were aware that McKiernan did not want them to have boyfriends; many were told they would be fired if they entered a relationship because he saw “all of the girls that work there as his girlfriend.” Callanan said that McKiernan would call her every night following her 1020 bartender interview to confirm that she had broken up with her high school boyfriend and tell her how “sexy” she looked in the Facebook photos he had found of her high school prom.

McKiernan allegedly relished in referring to former bartenders who had gotten boyfriends as “sluts” and speaking about how he had fired them. In addition, former bartenders assert that McKiernan would call down to the bar if he felt they were spending too much time with a male customer.


Sarah was sent a long slew of angry messages from McKiernan about why a man had left a present for her at the bar. To retrieve the present—a Secret Santa gift from someone in the lab she worked in—Sarah said she was told that she would have to go up to McKiernan’s apartment.

Even then, harassment was not evenly dealt out. McKiernan would allegedly prey on bartenders who needed the money more, threatening to give them less profitable shifts even though shift schedules were ostensibly based on seniority.

Callanan claimed that the only direct question McKiernan asked her during her interview was whether she needed the income from the job to continue her studies at Barnard; she did.

“I was willing to tell him that because of how he introduced it. He was like, ‘Do you need money? Because I’m tired of hiring sorority girls that just want the job so they can buy clothes. Those people never show up to work,’” Callanan said.

McKiernan allegedly went on to leverage Callanan’s financial need over her head: “I needed the money. He made it very clear that he liked that,” she said.

Bess said that she was on the receiving end of far more misconduct from McKiernan at the start of her time at 1020. “The sexual things happened a lot more at the beginning because at that point he didn’t know that I wasn’t going to respond like other people were,” she said. She alleges the harassment slowed when McKiernan realized she was not willing to put up with it to pick up extra shifts. “I didn’t need X amount more, I was fine with the amount that was given,” she noted.

Former staffers alleged that they were, on multiple occasions, lured into McKiernan’s apartment under false pretenses. They found that they faced harsh repercussions if they did not comply with McKiernan’s desires.

Callanan described how McKiernan told her 1020 would host a fundraiser for a Columbia club she was a member of, on the condition she eat dinner with him in his apartment. Following dinner, Callanan tried to leave McKiernan’s apartment, but she alleges he said that the fundraiser would not be allowed to happen unless she “stayed all night.” After she left, he refused to give her permission to host the fundraiser at the bar.

Callanan also claimed that McKiernan once asked her to come up to his apartment to grab ingredients for a drink the bar was making. When she got to the door, he greeted her in only his underwear.


Additionally, after other bartenders canceled on their shifts, Callanan said she was required to cover for them with little notice. Sarah seconded this claim, alleging that McKiernan would threaten to withhold shifts from bartenders for the next week if they did not agree to rearrange their schedules. Often these requests occurred just hours before the shifts were scheduled to begin.

While Steinhart was originally responsible for managing the shift schedule, Madison Andrus, CC ’22, said that when Steinhart stepped back and passed those responsibilities to McKiernan, he “used his newfound responsibility over scheduling as a way to get attention from people, especially [girls]. You basically had to be here to suck up to him … not just [to] get a good shift, but to work at all.”

Pushing back against McKiernan’s demands meant losing income, since without a shift bartenders received no money for the week. Almost all of the bartenders Spectator spoke with said that losing shifts and having to “try to please [McKiernan] and play nice” contributed to why they left 1020.

“If you fell out of his good graces, you were making $200 less that week,” Stephanie said. “It affected your livelihood. And there were some weeks where you just wouldn’t get a shift. Like, I remember weeks where I thought I was going to be working two nights and then all of a sudden I’m working no nights. And that’s my income for that week.”

Bartenders were not merely incentivized to accept McKiernan’s harassment; to maintain their livelihood, they were required to. Andrus received a text from McKiernan asking her to tell him about his “orgasmic future” with her. After confronting McKiernan about the way he spoke to and about her, Andrus began to lose shifts to a bartender McKiernan referred to as his “lover,” despite the fact that Andrus spent months being “the only person working there during COVID.”

One former bartender alleged that McKiernan had called numerous employees to ask whether they shaved their pubic hair. Multiple former bartenders mentioned that one employee was demoted to barbacking—a position that made far fewer tips—and eventually fired because she refused to comply with McKiernan’s demands that she wear tight clothing.

Taylor believes that McKiernan’s harassment was harder to avoid because he knew she needed the money. She often felt forced to “play along,” which included allowing him to put his hand on the small of her back during her training process.

“If I don’t make him happy, and I don’t make him keep wanting me around, he’s going to take that [income] away from me. And he made that very clear. And he made it clear to everybody,” she said.

Bartenders were expected to look at photos of sugar babies and sex workers McKiernan had a relationship with when he presented them at the bar. These photos often portrayed these women in bondage gear, naked, or performing sexual acts on themselves. When bartenders confronted Steinhart about how they were uncomfortable with McKiernan showing them these photos, Steinhart simply said that there was nothing he could do to make McKiernan stop.


McKiernan would call multiple bartenders at 1020 daily, especially those who he knew needed the money more. If some employees did not pick up the phone, they said McKiernan would spam their phones with angry messages until they responded. The employees who picked up the phone and listened were rewarded with better shifts and the ability to work the front bar.

Callanan said she was forced to stay on the phone with McKiernan until the early hours of the morning after her shift ended. She said the conversations were never about work. Rather, she said, McKiernan would “ramble” and delve into racist or sexually explicit tirades.

Andrus worked at 1020 from summer 2018 to June 2021. While she said that the experience working at the bar was never ideal, she found it difficult to walk away from the money. However, when she lost the best shift of the week, Andrus was no longer willing to accept McKiernan’s constant misconduct.

Like Andrus, many bartenders were forced to leave the financial stability of their job at 1020 because there were no systems in place to protect them from McKiernan’s misconduct. According to Kelley, a former bartender, McKiernan’s mentality was “You don’t like it? Get the fuck out.”

Every former staff member interviewed claimed Steinhart was aware of what was going on in the bar and actively ignored the reports brought to him. After McKiernan reportedly told a bartender, “You got a really nice ass,” Kelley complained to Steinhart, who allegedly said that there was nothing that he could do about the situation.

“It feels almost like it’s a running joke: ‘There goes Michael being Michael again, hitting on an 18-year-old girl and making her feel sexually uncomfortable,’” Stephanie said regarding Steinhart’s lack of response to McKiernan’s behavior.

After quitting 1020, Callanan reached out directly to Steinhart to say that McKiernan’s harassment was the reason she was leaving. Steinhart responded that he was aware of his business partner’s behavior but that she should simply accept it because of his certainty that she would face similar treatment throughout her life.

In a recording provided by Andrus, Steinhart admitted to knowing that misconduct has occurred at 1020 for decades, stating that he has witnessed McKiernan’s misconduct, that McKiernan was “incapable of changing” his behavior, and that there was nothing Steinhart was able to do about it. “The most anxiety-producing part of my last 25 years with this fucker [McKiernan] is dealing with his inappropriate behavior. It’s been since day one,” he said in the recording.

Still, McKiernan and Steinhart would allegedly team up for a “good cop-bad cop routine” and “gaslight” bartenders into believing that they had done something wrong whenever their safety and comfort inside the bar was compromised.


Bess described that she was confronted by a customer who, after tipping her $100 earlier that night, attempted to grab her from across the bar and verbally accosted her. When she asked the bouncer for the night to remove the man when he would not stop lunging for her, the bouncer refused.

“I’ve seen people being taken out of the bar before for wearing a hat, … but [the bouncer] would not take the man out of the bar, the person who was endangering my physical safety,” Bess said, adding that she asked her male friend to come to the bar and grab the unruly patron whenever he attempted to touch her. Bess alleged the bouncer tried to kick her friend out of the bar for attempting to restrain the man harassing her.

When Bess and Callanan complained to Steinhart and McKiernan about their circumstances and that Bess’ safety had been compromised by the bouncer, Bess claimed that the two blamed her for instigating the customer’s aggression. Bess alleged they told her she “should have known better” than to keep the customer’s tip, implying that she, as an 18-year-old, should have been aware that the customer was attempting to buy more than just drinks. According to Bess, Steinhart and McKiernan argued that the customer only became more aggressive because she had called a man for safety.

“The bar is supposed to be your physical safety boundary, and when that gets crossed, there's supposed to be a repercussion for that. And there wasn't, which was a terrifying precedent,” Taylor said.

Bess added that Steinhart and McKiernan believed the story the bouncer had told them. Taylor noted that, in general, male staffers were often believed over female staffers—a trend she chalked up to male employees not having to deal with misconduct from McKiernan.

“If there is a situation where you need to negotiate,” Taylor said, “[the men who work at the bar] got the leg up already because they don’t have this weird, sexual undertone power dynamic that you do.”

Many former staffers alleged that they were harassed by regulars of the bar but were aware of an expectation that they were not supposed to kick them out. The former staffers alleged these customers would regularly comment on their appearance. In extreme cases, “[the male bartenders and bouncers] would help you if you had a good relationship with them, but it was also a thing that was frowned upon,” Andrus said.

Bartenders experienced no reprieve from McKiernan’s aggression when the coronavirus pandemic hit. In fact, working conditions only worsened when the bar reopened, as Andrus alleged McKiernan became more openly racist and sexually explicit.

“The bar was just getting run into the ground. [McKiernan] became a lot more overt with his racism during COVID, basically saying that he didn't want Black people playing at the pool table when he was opening it for other people. He didn't want Black people hanging around and drinking outside and [in] the outdoor dining area,” Andrus said.


According to numerous former bartenders, McKiernan attempted to make 1020 inhospitable to potential Black patrons based on racialized stereotypes of what he assumed they wanted. According to Kelley, the reason 1020 will not play basketball games is that McKiernan does not want Black people at the bar.

When questioned about McKiernan’s rules, Kelley said, “We had to make some excuse, or we just said nothing.”

Kelley added that if Black men came in and were talking to women that McKiernan thought were attractive, he asked them to kick the men out of the bar. Wearing backward hats was also known to result in people being removed from the bar.

When a customer came in and asked for Hennesey, Andrus asked McKiernan when 1020 would be getting it back in stock. She claims his response was, “We don’t serve Hennessy. We don’t want it to attract those kinds of people.”

McKiernan also allegedly subscribed to harmful Asian stereotypes. Sarah recalled being approached by McKiernan, who asked her whether he should hire an Asian bartender because 1020 had “every other fetish, but [it didn’t] have an Asian one yet.”

Multiple bartenders alleged that McKiernan’s racist remarks did not end there, as he has also said that Chinese people were “ruining the neighborhood.”

When the pandemic began, these bartenders allege that McKiernan became more open with his anti-Asian sentiments, going as far as to host a COVID-19 themed trivia night in which he played East Asian music.

“When COVID happened, [McKiernan’s racism] turned to Chinese people. He also always thought the Chinese were coming to destroy the country, and Columbia was letting in too many Chinese people,” Callanan said.

In the almost three decades that McKiernan and Steinhart have run 1020, there have been virtually no repercussions for the ways that employees are treated. For most Columbia students, 1020 is the final stop on their Saturday night bar crawl and an easy place to grab a drink close to campus. For those who worked there, however, the misconduct experienced by former employees lingers beyond their nights behind the bar.


Callanan’s time working at 1020 has made her want to protect bartenders from experiencing similar treatment. “1020 is a great place, but it’s run off of the abuse of college girls,” she said.

For many, the treatment continues past their final shift.

Almost all of the former employees interviewed presented messages McKiernan sent to them months after they left 1020. The messages often commented on their appearance. Taylor mentioned that McKiernan sent her a picture of a sugar baby because he thought she looked like Taylor.

Bess usually wears sunglasses and a mask when passing 1020 to avoid McKiernan. Taylor still feels anxiety on her commute past 1020—and McKiernan—every day. She said she was surprised that he can still invoke fear in her. “I never thought that I gave him enough relevance in my mind to have any emotional reaction,” she said.

“[McKiernan] has been allowed to get away with pretty much zero consequences for nearly 30 years,” Andrus said. “​​At some point, they need to realize that there are consequences to doing things like this and to running a business this way, sexually harassing all of your employees, and making it such a toxic place to work that people start losing it when they get there.”

Neither McKiernan nor Steinhart responded to requests for comment.

Editor's note: Following the publication of this article, over 20 additional former employees at 1020 reached out to Spectator about similar abuse they allegedly experienced under McKiernan and Steinhart. McKiernan resigned as manager in the days following publication — he and Steinhart remain the owners of 1020.

Managing Editor Elizabeth Karpen can be contacted at elizabeth.karpen@columbiaspectator.com. Follow her on Twitter @LizzieKarpen.

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