Going to be in Buffalo anytime soon?
If so, check out Lost Taverns on the Forgotten Buffalo website. It’s a veritable treasure trove of classic neighborhood bars in Buffalo, most of which, for some reason, I’ve never been to. I plan on changing that next time I got home by starting with Forgotten Buffalo’s […]

About 15 Chinese men chattering away sat surrounded by dozens of empty Heineken bottles and tumblers of beer. Heineken being swilled aside, I’m guessing this is what an opium den might’ve looked like. Or an illicit card game in Beijing, perhaps.

Getting over our surprise, we wandered over and perched at the bar. The friendly bartender, an obviously Irishmen in his early 60s, poured Eric and I couple of perfect pints of Guinness, as we began to drink in the unusual ambiance at Soccer Tavern. As the patrons wandered over to the cooler to grab frosty mugs or to the make your own sandwich station set up against one of the back walls, Soccer Tavern felt like the most chilled out basement I’ve ever drank beers in. Throw in the the Paddy’s Day corned beef slowly simmering on the stove in the kitchen and this is the kind of bar I wish was across the street from my apartment.

 
Rudy’s Red SignPiggythe view from Rudy’s
 
Another Friday night of probing the underbelly of NYC drinking establishments resulted in Judas losing his cell phone, a run in with a mysterious guy named Al (who Judas has described suitably in the previous post), and me blacking out.

I started out the night with $22, which lasted me […]

Words don’t exist to explain, a.) what happened next nor, b.) what boozing it up at Port 41 is like. Let’s deal with the latter first.

Between the game of Big Buck Hunter with middle-aged drunken derelict John to the dude who started doing push-ups on the peep show booth-sticky and filthy floor of Port 41 during some Metallica song, Port 41 defies any rationale explanation. The vaguely-tweaker bartenders are clad in bikinis but do little that could be termed titillating unless you happen to have a fetish form chicks stomping garbage with their kick. To the, surprisingly diverse crowd of drinkers credit, they seem to be there more for the cheapness of the booze and genuine oddness of Port 41 than they are there for the chicks in bikinis.

Holiday Cocktail Lounge

As I walked up to this legendary East Village dive, I saw what I thought was an elderly homeless man rooting through the garbage can out front. Then the guy followed me inside the bar and I realized that he was the bartender! It gets better. So the old guy gets behind the […]

For the same experience but with a more diverse and less well-heeled crowd, check out Hank’s during the day and early evening. That’s when the old-timey boozehounds and barflies do their drinking at Hank’s. I’ve been there a few times and always enjoyed listening to the regular day-shifters at Hank’s shoot the shit. The buyback policy is usually more generous at the time of the day too.