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.

The two guys to the left were getting smashed with some drunk guy wearing this crazy-ass fake leather skeleton jacket. All the guy in the jacket kept saying was that he didn’t speak English. Didn’t stop him from pounding shots nor did it stop one of the guys from turning to me and complaining about “having to speak Spanish in this country.” What was weird was that the guy was probably in his mid-20s and, judging by the way he was dressed — stripey button-down shirt and khakis — seemingly doing okay for himself. Not the kind of guy you’d think would be aggravated about immigration. Yet he was.

As the Spanish-speaking guy passed out at the bar and had to be helped out after a solid 20 minutes or so of lying in his drool, the young Lou Dobbs clone continued his rant.

 
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.

I’ve always believed the real way to distinguish a true dive from wanna-be dives is the bathroom. The bathroom in a dive should be in an absolute state of disrepair. Graffiti, broken toilets, leaking sinks, and a stench that causes one to question whether the bathroom is actually an open sewer are good signs that you’re boozing it up at a dive. Even better if dudes piss in a trough and chicks, well, don’t use the bathroom because it’s too disgusting.

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.

Bitter unemployed key grip walks out. The rest of us, Whitesnake and girlfriend of said key grip included, sit there laughing at the turn of events. Girlfriend apologizes to Whitesnake and says boyfriends “being an ass.” About seven or eight minutes pass and said key grip is still outside. He walks back in and informs the entire bar that “he’s outside.”

Amazon bartender: “We know you were outside.”

The Bar at Three Jolly Pigeons
GGW’s heckler and the Yeovil Town fan are to your immediate left
I don’t know why it is but in non-hipster and yuppie Brooklyn weekend karaoke is one of the main attractions at countless watering holes. On my way to the debacle at The Leif on Friday night, I […]

Popped in last night around 10:30 and felt like I had stumbled into a really, really bad frat party. The meathead quotient was off the charts, as buzz cuts and Abercrombie and Fitch gear seemed to be The Leif’s official uniform with Coors or Bud Light cans the official drink. It wouldn’t have surprised me if most of the dudes drinking there last night had come straight from seeing the new Rambo flick. Making things worse was the fact the Golf Channel was on the most of the tv’s, which is always a bad sign. A good dive, or bar for that matter, should, under no circumstances, show the Golf Channel.