The week when Dave Waterman, 26, was scheduled to open Top of the Hill Bar and Grill in the town of Johnstown, was the same week in 2020 when bars and restaurants in New York state were forced to shut down because of the pandemic. Still, the young owner said he wasn’t deterred. He waited a full year, finally opening Top of the Hill in the spring of 2021.
And things were going well. In June, Waterman, who also owns his own construction business, renovated the exterior of the building, which had once been the Rockwood Tavern. And last week the bar, which has more than 2,000 likes on Facebook, hosted one of its biggest events yet: a Halloween party with about 50 or 60 people — not an insignificant turnout for a hometown bar in upstate New York.
“It was crazy. We had a lot of people,” said Top of the Hill’s only bartender, Katelyn Kwiatkowski. The 22-year-old is also Waterman’s girlfriend. She said people danced and…
