JUDAS:
Sometime after September 11, 2001, I was laid off from a decent paying gig with British Airways. With New York City’s economy and psyche in tatters, I sought refuge and solace in the form of watering holes slinging booze cheap enough that my weekly unemployment check of $405 would buy a few daily drink and leave me with enough cash to pay the bills and rent. Living in Sunset Park with, well, almost literally nothing to do since nobody was hiring and I wasn’t anxious to put my nose back on the grindstone, find those places I did.
Whereas my New York City life once consisted of Friday nights drinking until the wee hours at yuppie hellholes like Puck Fair and soulless sports bars like Scruffy Duffy’s, my new life in Brooklyn consisted of reading The Times over a Jameson rocks at The Green Isle Inn in Sunset Park or hunkering down at Timbo’s in Park Slope’s ragged southern edge and watching Jeopardy. There weren’t a lot of chicks and my fellow patrons were, ummm, an interesting lot but I was happy to spend the time and drink away the boredom and frustration.
Fast forward to 2008. Gainfully employed by the City of New York itself, I live in a metropolis where the moneyed have made Manhattan and several Brooklyn nabes their personal playground of overpriced, overstylized bars while I’m getting by on a City employee’s bi-weekly ration of cooking oil, rice, and beans. Finding places to get loaded without blowing my entire wad on $8 Buds occupies as important a place in my life as it did six-plus years ago when I was jobless. Only know, it’s a bit harder since us college educated white folks continue to push into to every corner of the city bringing with us our insatiable need for coffee shops, bars with a zillion micros on tap and Joy Division on the jukebox, and organic vegan eateries.
Finding a place to get wasted without dropping mucho dinero and being surrounded by douchebags who went to Bard seems tougher than ever. This blog is about finding those places and letting you know if you can hang their without getting pummeled. Won’t you join us for this journey?
WHITESNAKE:
I love dive bars. I just have to say it. There’s no pretense, no guest list, and if you haven’t taken the time to shower, they make you look all the cleaner. Plus, with the measly money impoverished city workers like me make, they’re a necessity.
When I moved to New York City 3 years ago from Philly, I was broke and living in Manhattan’s East Village working as a freelance writer (lay about). Suffice to say, dive bars became my most frequent haunts. I even got to know some of the bartenders at my favorite places, which kept my buybacks rolling in and kept me coming back. I started DJing at some of these places too, mostly for the free drinks and legitimate air that only a dive bar DJ can possess. Let me tell you, I saw a lot of hook-ups, throw-downs, and lock-ins.
Most of the time, I had no money, zero. (I’m not gonna lie here—I’m the guy who’s stolen tips from the bar to get one more Pabst.) But I always found a deal where I could drink. I even got a taste for Rheingold! After a job change and a move to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, I finally have the time to convey my thoughts about NYC’s sprawling dive bar scene which has fostered me so well.
And one last note to bar owners/employees: Let me apologize in advance for what I say about your bar that you will probably object to and want to wring my neck over. Not all my reviews are going to be bad. I’m just going to tell the unbridled, unabashed truth and you’re going to have to learn to like it.
