Meet the New Owner of Caroline Street's Oldest Bar

Forty years after bartender Jim Stanley purchased Tin & Lint, he's passing the torch to the next generation.

“I like that it’s kind of a lawless place,” Brianna Collins says of Tin & Lint. “You’re not going to get kicked out for saying something that might piss someone off—that’s just going to happen. There’s no dress code; anyone can come in. We see anyone from attorneys, politicians, blue-collar guys, Skidmore kids…It’s like a melting pot. Everyone knows their drink, so there’s no need for a cocktail list. People come here because they have an intention of having a specific drink, or they something they want to forget, or something they want to get off their chest. It’s very real. You see real people.”

In 1970, Caroline Street was home to exactly two bars: The Turf, located on the corner of Caroline and Putnam streets, and a watering hole at the top of the street who’s name you might recognize.

“It was hippies, and motorcycle gangs, and just stragglers,” says longtime owner Jim Stanley of Tin & Lint’s clientele back then. Jim worked as a doorman at T&L that first year it was in business, and eventually became a bartender and bar manager before purchasing the bar from owners Dave Meade and Tom Malone around 1985. He kept the business afloat long after The Turf became Gaffney’s, long after bars started taking over the businesses that used to occupy the sleepy street, and long after those bars became new bars. He ran Tin & Lint all the way up until the spring of 2025, when he sold it to one of his own young bartenders: Brianna Collins.

Jim Stanley with Brianna Collins, and in a photo hanging on the Tin & Lint wall from the bar's early days. Jim plans to continue working at T&L as a bartender, as do other longtime employees Carl, Lisa, and Dawn.

A Lake George native with a finance degree from University at Buffalo, Brianna has worked in Saratoga’s bar and restaurant scene, including at Solevo, 15 Church, and Siro’s, for years. She also owns a commercial lending brokerage on Henry Street (or, “around the corner from Trotter’s,” in bartender terms). About a year ago, she started picking up a couple of shifts per week—on Mondays and Tuesdays—at Tin & Lint.

“It wasn’t busy, and I didn’t make a ton of money, but I got to know the staff,” she says. “I got to see what was going on, and I got to know Jim Stanley, who’s owned the business for many, many years.” (Forty, to be exact.)

Legend has it that after performing at Caffé Lena in the summer of 1970, Don McLean wandered into Tin & Lint and wrote the song “American Pie” in the booth that’s now marked by this plaque. While that story has since been debunked, Jim set the record straight: “He was playing at Caffé Lena and he was in here scribbling notes,” he says. “He left his notes here. He didn’t write the song here—he started writing it here. That’s what happened, because we gave him his notes the next day when he came in.”

Brianna also got to know the history of the place—about how the space used to be almost twice the size it is today, with a whole other back bar behind the main bar, and how the employees used to play on a softball team and work out in a gym in the basement. “We didn’t win every year,” Jim says of the softball team, “but we were always close.”

When Brianna found old softball trophies in the basement, she started displaying them in the bar’s window.

Having always dreamed of owning her own bar and knowing Jim was nearing retirement, Brianna decided to make an offer on Tin & Lint with the help of investor Michael Dean, a close friend of Jim’s who has lots of experience in business development and hospitality. The sale recently went through, and Brianna is now the proud owner of Saratoga’s oldest bar. She has dreams of bringing back the Tin & Lint softball team, and adding a hot dog stand to give Saratoga’s bar crowd a late-night alternative to pizza.

A new face at Tin & Lint has, unsurprisingly, made some longtime customers question what the future holds for Caroline Street’s most iconic watering hole. But while Brianna did order handheld credit card devices (no more “cash only” policy), she assures locals that any changes made to the bar will be more “restorations” than “renovations.”

While she's redone the men's bathroom and has plans to renovate and expand the women's room, Brianna doesn't want to change the overall vibe of the bar.

“I want to make it look like it’s 1970 again,” she says. “The metal chairs that were brought in? I want to put wooden chairs back. I have pictures of what the bar used to look like. All the trim was red, so we’re going to switch it back to red. I just want to restore it so that when people walk in here they’re like, ‘Oh my god, it’s so nostalgic—not a thing has changed, but it still looks kept up and cleaned.’ That’s my biggest thing: keeping the legacy alive.”

—Natalie