ON a chilly Friday night, outlined against a blue-gray cloud of cigarette smoke in front of McSorley's Old Ale House, the Five Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore there are four of them, and they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. At McSorley's, the crusty, ancient East Village beer barn, they are K-dawg, Spreadsheet Sam, Bobby Boy, Jamal and Adam.
Most of those, too, are aliases, but that is part of the fun for the group, which was spending its 147th consecutive Friday night together, a streak that started only after dozens of Friday night gatherings of a bunch that first got together in late 2001.
Those statistics, and many more, exist because the Five Horsemen are no ordinary group of friends hanging out at their favorite bar. They are a group of friends hanging out at their favorite bar and documenting it all with meticulous Excel-generated attendance records, a Web site, a video clip and a yearly awards night.
It might sound like a lot of effort for men with jobs, families and hobbies, but it is worthwhile, said Kenny Funk, a regular. For one thing, he reasoned, people always know where to find you. "You never have to call, you never have to make plans," said Mr. Funk, 45, a graphic designer who, like most members of the group, lives on the Lower East Side. "You know we're here."
So when the group arrived at McSorley's a little before midnight, as Mr. Funk and friends made their way past the spots where Abraham Lincoln and Woody Guthrie once drank, they knew where they were headed: to a table in the back corner, under a picture, screwed to the wall, of the Horsemen. Their regular waiters politely helped a group that was already sitting there to move. Within minutes there were mugs of dark beer (the bar serves only two varieties, light and dark) and a plate of cold cuts with an aggressively spicy mustard.
"So what do you think?" said Bobby Weiss, one of the most enthusiastic Horsemen, as he pushed the mustard toward a wary visitor. "It goes right to your head, right?"
The surroundings were not always so familiar; the weekly gatherings first came to McSorley's by happenstance, as a way for a group of friends who had shared a vacation house on Fire Island to stay in touch. Then one get-together turned into two, and two into four, and somewhere along the way somebody came up with the Five Horsemen nickname and the attendance spreadsheet, and Mr. Funk founded the Web site, called www.12darks.com in a reference to the group's regular beer order.
Besides Mr. Weiss and Mr. Funk, who has curly hair and a smile like Kenny Bania from "Seinfeld," the members include Adam Strider, from TriBeCa, who wears his hair long, with glasses and a Motorhead T-shirt, and two other men, who are loath to be identified.
One, a childhood friend of Mr. Weiss's who is married to Mr. Funk's sister, is Spreadsheet Sam, 48, vice president of a marketing firm. He was happy to discuss the spreadsheets on this night, but he did not want his name in the newspaper, lest business associates learn too much about his Friday nights. "It's a little childish," he said, demurring.
The fifth member is a burly, dark-haired accountant who the others agreed was the driving force behind the gatherings. He was nicknamed Jamal for record-keeping purposes, but he would not provide personal details.
Mr. Weiss showed no such reluctance.
"If I'm in the city on a Friday night, I'm here," he proclaimed as a second round of beers arrived. Lifting a frothy mug, he continued: "I feel healthier than I've ever felt. It's got to be this stuff. God's gift to man right here."
For the rest of the night, on sawdust-covered floors in a corner of McSorley's near the bathroom that holds the bar's famed giant urinals, the Five Horsemen held court, reminiscing about Grateful Dead concerts at Madison Square Garden, or some of the members' days growing up on the Lower East Side, or the house on Fire Island that, as somebody put it, is responsible for 7 marriages and 12 kids.
Two men who once shared the beach house with the Horsemen were at McSorley's on the 147th straight Friday night: Dave Bloom, who created a Web site parodying the group, and Gregg Mond, a dentist from Long Island. He had not been to the gathering for as long as anyone could remember. Explaining his absence, Dr. Mond said with a shrug, "We're old married men."
Tommy Nolan, a stern, white-haired waiter with an Irish accent, nodded approvingly at the table, adding, "We have a good rapport, for years and years and years." Another waiter, a tall, ruddy man named Brendan Buggy, offered a toast to the group. Aside from all the hubbub, he muttered, with a barnyard epithet, "They're all very nice people."
A college-age man at the next table, noticing all the commotion, leaned over and asked, "Are you guys famous?"
