BOSTON — File this one under “Boston bar fight.” But it’s not your typical brawl over a jealous boyfriend or a spilled beer. This dust-up is about décor, and at the center of the trouble are some of Boston’s most notorious mobsters: James “Whitey” Bulger, now deceased, and his partner in crime, Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, now serving life behind bars.
The place is the Savin Bar + Kitchen, in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, where immediately inside the front door, patrons are greeted by a larger-than-life framed mugshot of Bulger — the mob-boss, murderer, bank robber, drug dealer and extortionist — peering cooly out from under his fedora.
“Funny enough, a lot of people have said, 'Oh, he’s very good looking,” says Savin co-owner Kenneth Osherow.
But that’s exactly what’s making many locals upset. They see the décor as glamorizing and glorifying Bulger and the other gangsters. The restaurant, they say, should not be serving up such an unsavory slice of the city’s past.
“Why would you promote the people who are thugs and murderers and everything else,” muses Teddy Ryan, an older man sipping wine at the bar.
It’s especially appalling at this place, Ryan says, that used to be a bar owned by Eddie Connors, who was one of Bulger’s and Flemmi’s victims. Connors was shot to death in a phone booth down the road.
“I was very close to Eddie,” Ryan says. “And these [photos] are guys who killed him, so yeah, it offends me. Of course it does.”
Connors’ family feels the same way.
“Take that f****** thing down,” says his son, Timmy Connors, who was a baby when his father was murdered by the guy whose image hangs in a gold frame on the wall. “We all know what [Bulger] did, he killed women, innocent people. He was a rat. Who would want someone like Whitey hanging in their place?”
The pictures went up in the bar last spring with little objection, but complaints rapidly escalated in recent weeks. What started with conversation at a community meeting intensified online and in real life. Osherow says he and the staff have endured threatening emails and scary, in-your-face confrontations.
Server Josh Garner says he was accosted last week by an angry man.
“He definitely came in hot, swearing and stuff, and saying his friends were murdered by [those gangsters],” Garner recalls. He says the man finally left after warning him '[the pictures] better be down by Tuesday. We’re coming back.’ “
But so far, Savin’s owners have refused to take down the mobster photos, insisting they’re not glorifying gangsters, they’re only reflecting Boston’s gritty, gory and well-known past.
”People are definitely overreacting,“ Osherow says.
He says he and the staff feel misunderstood and unfairly targeted, in no small part, they say, because they actually had nothing to do with choosing or installing the mob-themed décor.
Instead, it was all the doing of the restaurant makeover show Secret Service starring celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, who surprised Savin with the makeover last April.
”Savin Bar + Kitchen desperately needed a new and coherent identity, so our renovation team have gone in to give them one,“ Ramsey intones in the episode that aired in August. After the transformation’s big reveal, Ramsey admires the bar’s new decor.
”It’s got that old 1970 mobster feel,“ he says. ”Finally, [Savin] has an identity. There’s nothing like this in this neighborhood, so this should stand out for all the right reasons.“
Or course, it didn’t quite turn out that way.
Some have likened the controversy surrounding Savin’s display of old-time mobsters to the debate swirling around old statues of Confederate generals. But Osherow insists it’s not at all analogous.
”If you put up a statue in a park, let’s say, you do that because it’s a famous person that you want to glorify. It’s a given. You’re trying to say that’s a good person,“ he says. ”Our pictures were not put up to say that these people were good people or that they were heroes. It’s very obvious that they were bad people and criminals. They’re mug shots!“
To underscore the point, Osherow wrote up a page-long explanation and taped it right onto Bulger’s picture shortly after it was hung last spring. ”This isn’t an homage,“ the note reads. ”We display this photo not to celebrate [these mobsters] but to acknowledge a chapter in the complex, gritty history of our neighborhood [and the bar that] was a front-row seat to a notorious era in Boston’s underworld […] By recognizing this past we remember where we’ve been and how far we’ve come.“ The note also includes links to more history.
Savin’s general manager, Angelique Johnson, agrees that it would be wrong to simply erase or ignore history, whether it’s about the Boston mob or, she says, the many streets and schools in Boston named for slaveowners.
”We can’t change that because that’s history,“ she says. ”It’s all very painful, but that is how we learn. That’s how we make sure it doesn’t get repeated. I don’t want to erase history at all. Kids in this generation need to know what happened.“
In any case, Savin is certainly not alone in leaning into the city’s sordid past.
Along with the countless books and movies, there is plenty of mobster merch on the market – from T-shirts to trading cards, as well as popular mobster tours. One in Boston is called ”Lobsters and Mobsters,“ another has been dubbed ”Mobsters Mayhem and Murder,“ and yet another promises tourists will visit ”the exact spot where men and women were shot down, butchered, and buried in cold blood.“
It’s a continuous source of fascination in Boston and beyond. And even at Savin bar, there are plenty of fans of the mobster photos.
”What’s wrong with them? I think it looks nice,“ says Sheree Hagler, sharing oysters at the bar with a friend.
”It to me is décor. This is just a vibe, and it is what it is,“ she says. ”I don’t think it’s even that serious. I mean everyone in this world today is just too sensitive.“
But Savin’s owners are growing weary of the fight and are now considering a change.
One idea is to simply replace the mobster photos with pictures of some locals-done-good. The running list includes everyone from actor Mark Wahlberg to the founder of the nation’s first animal rescue league.
Gordon Ramsay’s show did not respond to requests for comment, but Savin’s owners say Ramsay’s team is also now eager to put an end to the controversy — they’re offering to come swap out the photos, no charge.
Copyright 2025 NPR
