Our Story
West 19th Street and Seventh Avenue looks like any other corner in NYC, except the bar on that corner, Peter McManus Cafe, has been in the McManus family since 1936. It stood through Prohibition’s hangover, the war, and the blackouts, stayed open through September 11th, and by candlelight after Hurricane Sandy. A bar with that rich history stops being just a business and starts being an institution.
A family business doesn’t stay open for ninety years by accident. It’s a hospitality ethos Michael McManus grew up in: bussing tables, bar-backing, sitting in the basement office learning payroll and scheduling. When his shift ended he’d commute back to Long Island and think about how what he was learning would carry into his first love: music and entertainment.
Drumming in elementary school, touring at fifteen, producing hip hop in college. His 20s yielded records with Das Racist’s Heems, shows next to GZA, a placement on Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, and his band, Gamblers. He ran their marketing because nobody else would, and it paid off: album releases, record and sync deals, and a single with Chicago rapper Mick Jenkins that went properly viral.
Cut to March of 2020. The tours were cancelled, the bar was doing takeout through a window, and for the first time in a decade Michael had nowhere to be. A friend surfaced with a finished record and a roll-out that had evaporated. Michael made some calls.
Fifteen years in music fills a phone with the people who turn the industry’s invisible machinery. The campaign worked. Somebody else asked for help too, then another. He incorporated, named the company after the corner, and called in the people already in his orbit.
Paul Motisi graduated from the School of Visual Arts with an Adobe award and freelanced for brands and artists he’d met in the local community, including Gamblers. He’s Chief Creative Officer now. Ryan Mastrelli ran his own booking outfit and secured shows for Gamblers; his organizational prowess made him the perfect Senior Project Director. Will Forthman distributed his own music compilations and ran promo for many years in the local scene. He’s now Director of Client Services.
Keith Shapiro arrived shortly after. His wife, Lenore, knew Michael’s mother from high school and suggested they meet. He brought forty years of experience: staff jobs at HBO and Showtime, Academy Award-winning and Sundance-premiered work, Broadway, Emmy-winning television, national campaigns for Johnson & Johnson and PepsiCo.
The music industry taught Michael how to build something. The bar taught him how to treat people.
19th & 7th’s client list grew the way the bar’s crowd had: one referral at a time. Artists, then their managers, then their labels. A band needing a music video became a brand needing a marketing campaign. The same agency now handles everything from producing documentaries and running social media for food creators to managing ongoing work for clients ranging from New York’s largest health system to the Metropolitan Opera.
Michael’s uncle “Jamo” ran the bar until he died in June of 2026. He’d been called the friendliest man in New York often enough that it stopped being hyperbole. He had a line that outlasted him: bravery and honesty cannot be conquered. Not a slogan, exactly. Just something that the team at 19th & 7th quietly lives by.