Gooooal<\/a>s\u201d and chants at FancyFree, a sports bar in Fort Greene, on Wednesday it was just Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar and Sza playing over the speakers, with Wimbledon tennis on mute across the venue\u2019s seven television screens and its projector.<\/p>\nWith just a few people sitting at the bar and only one table, the stillness stood out to Ben Callan, a bartender who traveled from Ireland about two months ago to work at the bar during the World Cup. During Saturday\u2019s games, Mr. Callan logged nearly 19,000 steps, according to an app on his phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came over here for the madness,\u201d Mr. Callan, 23, said, adding he had been working six days a week. <\/p>\n
At the other end of the bar, Dejae Doakes, another employee, said she had been trying to \u201clean into the calm\u201d of Wednesday\u2019s reprieve, particularly after the frenetic transition from the Knicks\u2019 run to the World Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt like working with the \u2018check engine\u2019 light on,\u201d Ms. Doakes, 30, said.<\/p>\n
Ben Fi\u00e9vet, a waiter at FancyFree and soccer fan, said while days have been exhilarating, Wednesday was a \u201cbig sigh of relief.\u201d The England-Mexico game on Sunday night resulted in about 500 orders, about double the amount of a typical night, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt hits us at the end of the night, like \u2018Oh my god, that was a tough day after another tough day,\u2019\u201d said Mr. Fi\u00e9vet, 33. <\/p>\n
The beers have kept flowing at The Commissioner in Park Slope, where the World Cup has made a Tuesday look like a Friday, according to Brendan Byrnes, one of the owners. Sales at both the bar\u2019s Park Slope and Manhattan locations were up by about 30 percent compared with June 2025, Mr. Byrnes said.<\/p>\n
But it has taken its toll. The World Cup schedule meant earlier opening hours, leaving less time for a staff that was already stretched thin to rest or to handle administrative work.<\/p>\n
The bar has also faced maintenance issues, with refrigerators malfunctioning, beer pouring foamy after a condenser failed and even the bell they ring for goals falling flat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bar felt the weight, too, and was breaking down in the same way the staff was breaking down and exhausted,\u201d Mr. Byrnes, 42, said.<\/p>\n
Wednesday finally offered some breathing room, and the bar opened for its normal hours and even hosted its regular weekly trivia night, which had been canceled several times over the last few weeks, Mr. Byrnes said.<\/p>\n
At Brooklyn Public House, Nick Killian, a bartender, said it\u2019s mostly been business as usual with their regular customers. But the World Cup has offered a higher predictability for when to expect crowds.<\/p>\n
Mr. Killian, who plays soccer in leagues around the city, said he was slightly relieved for the pause on Wednesday but also sad because of how much fun the World Cup has been.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been electric,\u201d Mr. Killian, 28, said.<\/p>\n
Brian Wagner, 40, a bartender at Threes Brewing in Gowanus said the past few weeks had been like living in a never-ending festival season.<\/p>\n
With the longer days, he said, he\u2019s made sure to pregame the right way: getting plenty of sleep, and staying hydrated and nourished. <\/p>\n
But, he added, the last few weeks had been a singular experience. \u201cThis will never happen again,\u201d he said \u201cThe hometown will never break a 50-plus year drought, while a few weeks later that same city hosts multiple World Cup matches.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Signs of the World Cup were everywhere at Habana Outpost in Brooklyn on Wednesday: the country flags cross-crossing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[83767,66882,18041,111182,9,56,63,65,64,1302,821,400,109416,111181,89465],"class_list":["post-290994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-bars-and-nightclubs","tag-bartenders","tag-brooklyn-nyc","tag-habana-outpost-brooklyn","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-restaurant","tag-restaurants","tag-soccer","tag-threes-brewing","tag-waiters-and-waitresses","tag-world-cup-2026-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}