The Sting: Evenings at a New Britain Nightclub
By Justin Kloczko | Correspondent at December 21, 2023 | 8:00 pm | Print
(Part four of a four part series)
As far as the history of modern New Britain goes, the 1990s was rock bottom for the city, says Daniel Salerno, a sociology professor at University of Hartford who has seen how things have changed.
In the late 1980s a Hispanic kid was stabbed near the high school in an apparent gang-related incident. Drugs and crime soon became normal, a blip in the news.
By the time Cheri Newman was murdered in the mid-90s, people weren’t talking about it very long.
“It kind of disappeared,” Salerno said.
“I think the overall drug scene in New Britain was like anywhere else at that point. It was pretty wide open,” Salerno said.
Between 1996 and 1998, the violence kept coming, with murders literally occurring within a few blocks of each other. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, along with the Police Department, began funding overtime for the short staff of officers it had. Salerno wrote the grants for just over a $1, and soon that brought crime down.
But despite some of the negative perceptions about the Sting, it was ultimately a good thing for the city that should have stayed around, Salerno says.
Salerno suggested moving the Sting so it would create more synergy with businesses downtown, bringing in students who attend Central Connecticut State University, and more foot traffic. A place like Trinity on Main is a great place to put on a live show, but it doesn’t seek to bring in more modern, state-wide advertised shows like the Sting did.
“Economically, it was great to be off the highway. We had that,” Salerno said. “Had it been downtown it would have had the same entrance and exit possibilities,” he said.
Jimmy Newman, now 75, is a tall Irish man with glasses. One early fall day in September he is sitting down with a cup of coffee inside a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts. He’s enthusiastic and intensely nostalgic when he speaks of his brother Ronnie, who was just a few years younger than him.
“He would take a full keg of beer and lift it over his head,” Newman said of Ronnie Newman. “He was the toughest guy,” he said.
But Newman died unexpectedly at the age of 50. By most accounts, he burnt the candle at both ends. After his daughter Cheri Newman was murdered, he found himself running the club along with the other handful of properties.
“All of a sudden one day he is dead,” Newman said. Ronnie Newman was driving home from Vermont when he started not to feel so good, pulled over, and suffered a heart attack, Jimmy Newman said.
The brothers, who came from a military background, were barely adults when they went into business together. Their first bar was on Spring Street in New Britain called French Quarters, which opened in 1969. Soon after came Tyburski’s on Broad Street.
By the 70s, there were lots of bars in the city. “The legend was (New Britain) had more bars per capita than any other city in the country,” Salerno said. “I could tell you of 15 bars that no longer exist around here,” he said.
There were four or five bars on North Street alone, and many bars on Arch and Broad Streets as well.
“Nobody overruled our bars,” Newman said, who grew up in Mount Pleasant and Pinnacle Heights.
“Ronnie always carried a gun,” one former employee of his said.
Then came go-go bars on the Berlin Turnpike, places in Southington, Derby, Wolcott, and in West Haven. The Newman’s also sold arcade games like Pac Man and Space Invaders.
“It was very profitable at the time. There were no computers,” he said.
Eventually, the brothers owned eleven bars and businesses together, and the good times started to roll.
“George Carlin would come into the go-go bar and then come over and put his act on,” Newman said. Another time Jerry Lee Lewis didn’t get on the stage until after midnight, and played into the early morning hours, costing Newman money.
The Newman’s bought the former New Britain Bowl building, which was converted into the Sting, for $1 million. At one point, the Sting was awarded the number 6th biggest nightclub in the country.
“We got the same acts as Toad’s. We worked together,” Newman said.
But if you ask Newman, financial problems were not the reason the Sting closed.
“(Newspapers) wrote articles that it was financially struggling. It was all bull,” Newman said. “The reason I closed it was because Wal-Mart was going to move in there,” Newman said. So Newman said he took a handsome deposit, and closed down the club after eight years.
Smaller clubs like Toad’s and the Sting soon faced competition to larger, commercially-sponsored venues like the Comcast Theatre and XL Center in Hartford.
But the club owed over $100,000 in back taxes and rent at one point, and in September 1998 a padlock was put on the door on behalf of a debt collector. The Sting-era was officially over in New Britain.
But whatever the reason for shutting its doors, the Sting was a fitting place for the city of New Britain.
“A lot of tragedy in the family,” Michael Tierney, who used to work for the Newman’s, said. When it comes to talking about the Sting with people, it can get difficult. “People are either forgetful, don’t wanna talk, or they died,” Tierney said.
