Fractured and Flawed :: Sidebar

SideBar has a personality problem. The Top 40 blares at top volume here, and the bar itself is as reluctant to commit to an identity as its MacBook-playin’ DJ is to spinning an actual vinyl record. SideBar is painfully unsure: afraid to decide if the gray and glass space should be a sports bar for dead-eyed frat boys drinking away their Lehman Brothers past, or a pseudo night club for new students yet to learn that the Meatpacking District is on the other side of Union Square. What a choice. After spending an evening in SideBar trying to watch playoff baseball, I’d wager that anyone who frequents this mainstream, personality-less bar might know more about masochism than even a Mets fan could.

SideBar is the unfortunate offspring of Mike Sinensky and Sean McGarr, the same team behind the infinitely more enjoyable Village Pourhouse, located just a short trek to the south and east. There are worse things than walking another five blocks for a beer.

With its shoddy blend of Circuit City electronic displays and cheap Ikea bookcases, SideBar’s design evokes a lazy bachelor’s first attempt at nesting. There are the standard beers on tap, including Guinness ($7) and Bud Light ($5). The more impressive liquor selections are housed in cubbies out of the bartender’s reach. Don’t be surprised to find you can’t have a Four Roses on the rocks, simply because the lady manning the bar just happens to fall under 5’7” and, for all her bar training, hasn’t yet learned to climb a ladder.

SideBar is not entirely without merits, though. The impressive menu would make the place a destination for its bites regardless of the brews — if only a waitress would show up. Assuming an order can actually be placed, the sliders are truly memorable — try the lamb with mint (2 for $10 or 4 for $16) and forget, for a minute, the horrific space you’re in. Salmon nachos are another standout (seriously) and the French fries are graced with a delicious drizzle of aioli.

Late on a Friday night, once you’re well liquored up from a place that actually knows how to serve a drink, SideBar could provide a tolerable-enough end to the night. The music is made for dancing, even if the crowd is not. And who knows — maybe if the Red Sox lose (they’re still alive, as of this writing), SideBar’s standard-issue Yankee fans might even bust a victory move or two.

SIDEBAR :: 120 East 15th St. at Irving Pl.

Your Temporary Home Base :: The Duck Pond

The rougey seductive glow of a dimly lit bar. The delightful chatter of the friendly patrons, lubricated by whatever will loosen the joints. New research into beat science, ninja classes, and a daytime slip n’ slide to name a few other bonus features. At the Duck Pond, good friends are made and even better friendships are nourished with whatever is on tap, brought over, or perhaps some lovingly provided Glenlivet if you’re lucky and you know someone that resides there. The service or offerings don't really matter here, this place where sparkling mermaids and angels, pleather and lace, wings, fishnets, and finger puppets/Fun Dip are the tray passed hand-outs. It feels more like an ether where shamanic glowing moonstones are rustled out of backpacks and find their way into your hand, and headlamps and alkaline dust are donned into the wee hours. Please, feel free to splay yourself on a couch or dance ‘til it hurts, it makes no difference here. And be sure to depart at some indefinite time to find yourself more of the same or different. Repeat. Repeat until your dancing exhaustion, comedown, a warm body, or the sun puts you to sleep.

The Duck Pond :: 9:00 and Edsel, open only during the last week of August.

The Caipirinha

We’re getting excited here in the middle of the country - football is here, tomatoes are backyard-garden fresh and a couple times a day you catch that breeze that just starts to smell like fall.

But I’m still holding on to my summer cocktail: The Caipirinha.

It’s not a summer-only drink, though I had many of them on a crowded, all-inclusive beach in Mexico this year. It was felt like a true drink then, after too many Rum Runners and "Coco Locos." Like anything with lots of citrus, sugar and ice, the Caipirinha calls sun and heat to mind. But don’t lump this cocktail in with the standard summery counterparts, your margaritas, your mojitos.

While those drinks are best known for their prominent liquors and shiny garnishes, the Caipirinha is made with a strong muddle, out of which comes the strangely familiar, not too sweet, a little bit earthy taste of a sugar cane alcohol, cachaça.

Both the drink and its star liquor are Brazilian. The Caipirinha is Brazil’s national cocktail, but cachaça was created by Portuguese settlers in the 16th century, reserved as a liquor for the slaves and lower classes.

The name itself is a diminutive version of the word “Caipira,” a Portuguese term for someone from the countryside -– almost the exact equivalent, says Wikipedia, of the American “hillbilly.”

Now, of course, it’s Brazil’s trendy new export, with good cachaça brands making their way into American bars. The Brazilian government’s even tried to capitalize on the rise of the former peasant drink, writing presidential decrees and fighting with the WTO to trademark cachaça and distinguish it from rum.

The last Caipirinha I had was far after vacation, in a bar just blocks away from my downtown Cincinnati apartment and made by a bartender/law student named Brad. He made the first one well, with an entire lime crushed into the small glass and the sugar mostly, but not entirely, dissolved in the bottom.

Brad also tried to serve us the “Brad Caipirinha” which he promised free if we didn’t like it. His version substituted raspberry vodka for the cachaça, which–sorry, Brad—confused the blend with its call for fruity attention.

But the failed cocktail highlighted what makes a good Caipirinha for me: A new liquor and dependable garnishes muddled to the point of delicious ambiguity, simple ingredients creating a drink just beyond the familiar.

THE CAIPIRINHA

1 2/3 oz. cachaça
1/2 fresh lime cut into 4 wedges
2 tsp. white cane sugar

place lime and sugar in an old fashioned glass and muddle
fill glass with crushed ice and add the cachaça
garnish with lime

When Jury Duty Drives You to Drink :: Whiskey Tavern

Whiskey Tavern, in the bowels of side-street Chinatown and steps away from the courthouses, is slick on the outside but thoughtfully and thoroughly weathered at its core. Its snappy black-and-gold façade masks the army of battered bar stools, distressed wooden booths and sleepy colored-glass lamps inside, where the lack of pretension is comforting yet vaguely spooky, suggesting the eerie shadow of taverns past.



Although Whiskey Tavern, mere weeks old, is just a spring chicken in this neighborhood of ancient justice and timeless Chinese eateries, the Tavern’s address has been home to bars since the second World War. Not long ago, the spot was known as the Baxter Pub—a straightforward semi-dive with the primary perk of being across the street from a cluster of bail bond businesses. Location, location, location.



Whiskey Tavern—79 Baxter Street in its current incarnation—is strong proof that brothers George and Justin Ruotolo aren’t new to this business. The two also own Whiskey Town, off the Bowery at East Third Street, and they—along with Tavern’s third owner, Rob Magill—are clearly familiar with the essentials of a successful neighborhood bar: beer, nice bartenders and a laid-back vibe.



Whiskey Tavern repeats the formula but adds an outdoor garden (open until 11 p.m. on weekdays and midnight on weekends), suds-soaking food (see below) and an extensive list of, yes, whiskeys, including Black Maple Hill ($10), Pappy Van Winkel ($15) and The Famous Grouse ($9), as well as bourbons and whiskey-based cocktails like the Manhattan-esque Traveling Secretary ($10 for a very generous pour). If, by chance, the hard stuff doesn’t appeal, there’s a decent variety of draft (Guinness is $6) and bottled beer (but please don’t get an Amstel, $6). While the wines are listed by color only, one can still celebrate a "not guilty" verdict with a bottle of Moet White Star ($125). Hooray! That’s less than the bail bonds across the street.



You can eat at Whiskey Tavern, too. Their burger ($8) is a thick oval of meat slapped onto a crusty hunk of French bread and served with pleasantly crispy fries; a nominally daintier option is the blue cheese, bacon and avocado-laden Cobb Salad ($12). Slightly out of keeping with the bar’s boozehound appeal, Whiskey Tavern also offers a two-egg sandwich for $5 (as if beer were not the breakfast of champions!), dressed with roasted garlic mayo on a club roll. 



Whiskey Tavern opens at 11 a.m. daily, and, if you feel like surviving five hours of firewater, you can catch happy hour (4–7 p.m.), when Miller Lite drafts and Miller High Life bottles are $3, Buds and Bud Lites are $4, well drinks are $6, and (why not?) cosmos and apple martinis are $6, too.



Digs: Snazzy on the outside, worn on the inside, with a loved and lived-in feel. From the old wooden barstools to the tiny amber votives, it’s good-looking but not uptight, comfy but not sloppy. 


Vibe: A neighborhood bar that aimed for the local drunks but got the local drinkers. Smart, friendly, outgoing and, above all, unpretentious.



Music: A great mix of Motown classics segues into punk and rock at night. The piano player is a highlight on Tuesdays and Wednesdays (from 6–9 p.m.); with a mix of ‘70s rock and pop, it’s an update on old-timey that fits the bar well.



Bottom line: For patrons transient and not, Whiskey Tavern feels like some kind of home—or at least one that’s saturated with alcohol and goodwill. In other words, what you need on your one-hour jury duty lunch break.

WHISKEY TAVERN:: 79 Baxter St. between Bayard and Walker Sts. 
212-374-9119 



The Pisco Sour

The weather in San Francisco can be appallingly inappropriate, most especially noted in the summer time. Like in late August, for example – it is not unheard of for it to be cold and foggy in the middle of the night… or day… or afternoon. Not that it keeps us from darting around trying to imbibe cocktails that hearken back to warmer, more seasonally appropriate weather and cocktails. In the case of my latest episode, the pisco sour was my ticket to said times, and apparently, those Peruvian and/or Chilean good times that I've only ever vicariously experienced with the help of this fair city.

The pisco sour is a refreshing, if not bizarre, by American standards, concoction/frappe of pisco (a Peruvian grape brandy), lemon juice, egg white, sugar and bitters. Not requisitely consumed by the Rocky-emulating set of hipsters and yuppies, but more so by those looking for a wonderfully refreshing cocktail drinking experience in the sea of stateside classics and novelty. The debate between whether the Peru or Chile was originator of the drink is, to this day, still going strong, but the methodology of both versions is the same.

By the vigorous shaking of any given beloved bartender that is so inclined to serve said cocktail, a good pisco sour, when poured into a delicate glass untouched by any rim accoutrement, will be virtuously topped with what almost resembles the fluffy, alcoholic, unsweetened beginnings of a meringue. A dash of (regional Amargo) bitters, whether or not expertly toothpick-carved into a "heartbeat," tops this lovely thing off and officially makes your cocktail the envy of all others that are within range.

"Don't knock it 'til you try it" has always been a mantra that everyone seems to understand; it is a successful and diplomatic alternative to "leave me the hell alone and let me do what I want" when embarking upon any potentially questionable meal, drink, date, flirtation, or life decision. I suggest you do the same and find a pisco sour immediately.

And if you're in San Francisco, having your own National Pisco Sour Day might just be a welcome aide in helping you forget about that third layer you're going to have to put on when you step back into the outside world.

The Pisco Sour

3 oz pisco
1 oz fresh lemon juice
2 tsp sugar
1 egg white
1 dash bitters

Shake the first four ingredients in an iced cocktail shaker… shake, dammit… and strain into 1 or 2 glasses. Top froth with bitters. Salud.

Speak Easy ... with a Twist

Cocktails prove the idiom that the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts. Well, this blog is drunk on axioms as is, so let's put some posting where our typepad is. 

From here on out, Speak Easy will have multiple authors -- and will showcase the best cocktails and drinking parlors in not just New York, but also San Francisco and Cincinnati. It's the East, West and Nearly Center of drinking in America, and we're delighted to seek out the best cocktail lounges, wine bars, beer gardens, and studio apartment mini-fridges throughout the country. 

So welcome, all those who drink and tell. Sidle up to the bar, order a drink, and share your city's haunts with us. Cheers! 

After all, it's five o'clock somewhere.

In a Jiffy :: Franklin Park

The jiffy lube embodies so very many things: a sex act at breakneck speed, a twelve-dollar cocktail with peanut butter and Red Bull, an awkwardly open vat of lotion on the bedside table… At Franklin Park, though, the jiffy lube here is an upscale bar, prepping Clinton Hill for the slick and speedy caress of snowballing gentrification.

Situated in a former garage shop on the still-multicultural St. Johns Place, Franklin Park is the Genesis of Clinton Hill gentrification, and the guiding light is Southpaw co-owner and Galapagos / Natural Selection-transformer Matt Roff. From its country estate entrance (with the gold door plaque and high walls, no less), the space calls out to the neighborhood (or to those who can afford to listen, anyway), “Let there be a garden bar! And let it be good.”

And so it is. In fact, Franklin Park is even worth a commute from our city’s more up-market neighborhoods. But part of the Franklin Park allure is its existence as an oasis in deserted lands. The trip itself is a bit of an adventure, taking aspiring drinkers past government housing projects, actual garage shops, and an array of street entertainment and/or social woes, depending on the hour. Once inside, a patio garden of picnic benches, beautiful trees, and dappled sunlight awaits – the ideal outdoor bar for a Coney Island lager ($5/pint) on a summer’s afternoon.

Past the reflective raised garage door, the space transforms again into a Grease Lighting graphic creation – half music video bar, half 1950s repair shop. Crisp subway titles spell out FRANKLIN PARK along the bar, grayscale sports-centered blowups adorn the black and white cinderblock walls, and a long leather banquette is punctuated by eight demure, dark wood cocktail tables. Perhaps it’s more Grease Lightening by way of the super-vintage Soda Fountain Shop – but again, though studied and deliberate, the bar succeeds, beautiful on the inside and out, and, come cooler weather and weekend nights, packed with patrons through and through.

While there’s no kitchen at Franklin Park, the bar policy is warmly Bring Your Own Food and is embraced by the laidback mix of young nearly-locals that fill the space with engaging conversation and palpable gratitude at having a space like this so close to home.

And what of the drinks? In terms of options, Franklin Park delivers. With twelve beers on tap and nearly as many in bottles, the bar offers everything from Framboise Lambic ($9/bottle) to Avery ESB ($6/pint) to Pork Slap ($4/can). Wines are sold by the glass ($6-9) and the bottle (all under $32). Cocktails, though, are the serious business of the bar. Wonder what Franklin Park really tastes like? Well, order the drink ($10), a conversation-provoking blend of bourbon, prosecco and St. Germain served straight up in a martini glass. Be warned, though – this is not the land of speakeasies or bartending flair. More often than not, the bartenders here were almost comically flummoxed. So flummoxed it’s tempting to offer up the age old pick-up line, “So, you come here often?”

And that, you know, is a whole other jiffy lube of conversation.

FRANKLIN PARK :: 618 St. Johns Place at Franklin Ave., Brooklyn, New York

The Frozen Margarita

The day began with three plastic bags lobbed onto a desk.

"I'm so sorry, Cait." My beautiful new co-worker L had just arrived at the office, lugging an array of shopping bags. 

"Mr. Insight asked me to give these to you." 

She dropped the plastic bags on my desk with a sigh. She was still friends with Mr. Insight, but nonetheless was not exactly enjoying her role as ping-pong ball in our table-tennis play-offs.

I poked at the nearest shopping bag. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU, all three were emblazoned. They were packed tight, and the final O on the bag nearest my hand spread wide, its double-width berth rippling into the remaining space like a fat man on the subway.

"Ah yes," I thought. "Thank you."

My belongings. Everything I had left at Mr. Insight's place back when we were dating. I had chosen each item so strategically at the time, selecting each piece to leave behind as a sign of our permanence, as insurance against abandonment.

I stuffed the three bags under my desk. Out of sight, out of mind.

"Any plans tonight?" I asked L.

"Well," she kept typing, "we have guests in town, so something."

My foot brushed the taut plastic lurking underneath me.

"But I'm not sure what yet," she continued.

The bags swayed towards my ankles.

"Maybe something in the village..." Her voice trailed off, as she considered her options.

I crossed my legs. The bags toppled onto my toes.

"Margaritas!" I shouted.

Surprised at my vigor, L looked over. I was standing, my legs kicking the dark space underneath my desk. I looked like a maniac. Perhaps I was one.

"Yes." She clipped her sentence as the word blossomed into knowing laughter. 

"Just please don't bring the bags."

"Margarita" is the Latin word for "pearl," the Spanish word for "daisy," and the American word for "fuck this shit and these damn plastic bags." More than a few stories exist about how the drink was first created, and while the place of origin shifts from Jaurez to Tijuana, from Galveston to El Paso, the inspiration remains the same: a beautiful girl who has a taste for something new.

Damn all these beautiful girls, they only wanna do you dirt.

Both Peggy Lee and Rita Heyworth are cited as the Margarita's muse, though neither were quite cold enough to inspire the frozen version. For that, we owe a chemist in Dallas, John Hogan, and his infatuation with the sweetest temptress of all: cane sugar. 

As far as making a margarita for your own sweetheart, keep it cheap. The salted rim is an old trick to hide the taste of low-quality liquor, so save your money and take your drink with a grain of salt. You know, much like the way you'll take home those damn plastic bags, when you finally suck it up, stop kicking the darkness, and walk out into the light of a stunning new day.

THE FROZEN MARGARITA

3 oz. white tequila

1 oz. triple sec

2 oz. fresh lime juice

1 cup crushed ice

blend all ingredients until smooth

garnish with a slice of lime and a salted rim

serve in a margarita glass

The Cuba Libre Light

The first drink I ever ordered was a Cuba Libre. I was seventeen, in Barcelona for the first time, and completely innocent to the allure of alcohol. Ah, youth; how you melt like Spanish ice cubes in my first-time highball glass.

One thing about those Spanish ice cubes :: when you are seventeen, in Barcelona for the first time and completely innocent to the allure of alcohol, and you've been told by your awesome Grand Tour Coach Captain that you cannot (under any circumstances) drink the water in Spain, well, you down that sweet, syrupy cocktail in three big gulps. Before the ice cubes even sweat, let alone melt, you've got a whole lot of Libre in your mouth. Let alone on Las Ramblas...

The Cuba Libre was originally invented in 1900 in Havana by the Spanish. In the time of the Spanish-American war, the Spaniards raised their glass (and lowered their inhibitions) to celebrate Cuba's freedom. Eventually the drink became a favorite of American ex-pats fleeing the prohibition and uptight Progressive values of their motherland, looking to find a new identity in an island fresh-cut from colonial ties.

Oh, Libre's just another word for nothing left to lose.

Which brings me to why I'm back on the blog. I'm single again. Footloose and fancy-free, and I suddenly find I have a fair amount of time to wax poetic on the well-mixed drink. And while I have walked into my share of speakeasies during the past three months, I've spent the past eight days (ah, the abacus of brand-new singledom) laying a little lower than usual. Sometimes you need a vacation... and sometimes that vacation is a post-breakup Cuba Libre Light in my tiny studio apartment.

Was it as good as the very first sip? Of course not. But did I take the time to savor it slowly, letting the ice melt and the growing cold compliment the sweetness? You betcha.

Older. Wiser. Libre. Welcome to another summer in New York, a girl like you in a place like this.

THE CUBA LIBRE LIGHT

1 1/2 oz. light rum

juice of 1/2 a lime

6 oz. diet coke

stir well and garnish with a slice of lime

serve in a highball glass filled with ice

Sweet Home Greenwich Village :: Thunder Jackson's

You rarely see hot girls in TV ads for forty-ounce bottles of malt liquor. In fact, you rarely see TV ads for forties at all. This is because your average forty-drinker knows that even a crap TV set is worth quite a few non-ironic forties.                    

Why, then, are forties poised to become the newest eau-de-vie of the Sullivan-Bleecker set? Especially when Thunder Jackson’s, the bar selling the bottles for $12 (roughly four non-ironic forties worth), also has some of the best specialty cocktails in town? Yes, as a self-confessed “urban road-house,” Thunder Jackson’s hems and haws, offering both forties and cocktails, of which the cocktails are, shocking as this is, a whole lot better tasting.

Yet, for all its up-market, down-home references, Thunder Jackson’s isn’t nearly as offensive as one might expect. In fact, after watching Michelle the bartender make impeccable Palmyras (a $12 mojito-martini hybrid) while simultaneously giving the crowd a lesson in chemistry, you realize you’ve rediscovered East Side Company Bar by way of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. This isn’t quite Faulkner’s Ole Miss — Mark Twain would storm out without a single Mint Julep — but, in the here and now, NYU locals should kiss Thunder Jackson’s sawdust-free ground (or at least feel quietly thankful). Sure, Thunder’s authenticity is reconstituted and occasionally ridiculous, but its cocktails are as well-crafted as any in bars with ten times more pretension and a hundred times less spirit.

Unlike NYC’s trendy, tight-lipped speakeasies, Thunder’s allows you to order a beer without inciting a mixologist’s ire; if you don’t have the palate for the homemade grenadine or the smoothest New Old Fashioned you’ll ever drink (shame on you!), Thunder’s has $6 pints of imported drafts like Bass and Blue Moon and $5 domestics, including Blue Point.

By the time Michelle mounts the bar to light a shot of liquor on fire (and, naturally, spit the trail of flaming liquid across the room — seriously), you may feel it’s time to try the bar food. Chef Ian Russo earned early buzz for Thunder’s ribs, steak and burger (served with truffle mayo). For the omnivore, try the phyllo-strewn Big Crispy Shrimp ($3 each) and the Apple Tart ($8).

This bar food will cost you a bit more at Thunder’s than at your ‘Bama dive, but then again, so will the forty. This way, though, you won’t have to pass out on the street to call it a night. But even if you do end up blacked out on Bleecker, Michelle will watch over you as you sleep, spitting a wreath of Southern Comfort flames to protect you. Well, not really. But it’s not impossible.

THUNDER JACKSON'S :: 169 Bleecker St. at Sullivan St., New York, New York

When Grandma Hits the Bottle :: Arlo & Esme

Arlo & Esme, filled with white porcelain teacups and window seats with porch-side roses, is the grandmother’s cottage you’d always hoped you’d inherit.

But if you’re going to dream up a cottage for bequeathing, why stop there? Give Grannie a little credit. How about a catacomb of nighttime revelry? Two bars? A pool table? A disco ball? A DJ booth? A make-out nook? Arlo & Esme, then, is the cocktail-slugging, disco-dancing, pool-sharking, bust-a-moving, suck-facing Grandma’s cottage you’ve never had. And, damn, it’s good to be home.

This bi-level café-by-day, dance-cavern-by-night provides sanctuary to a whole heap of downtown paradoxes. The ground floor, beautifully crisp in blacks, whites and aubergine, opens at 8am on weekdays and 10am on weekends with Hoboken-based Kobricks coffee, handmade espresso drinks and Blue Sky bakery’s delicious organic pastries. The morning/noontime crowd is mainly students, and you’ll leave smarter by association after just one glass of wine. You’ll also leave drunker by juxtaposition, too, as the NYU kiddies brush up their Shakespeare the whole time you’re tipping back your merlot.

Feeling peckish? Owners Gage Pray and Harry Joannides (owners of Bar Six, too) have big plans for small-plate tapas. For now, though, Katz’s and Prune deliver some of the best food downtown has to offer — not exactly slim pickings.

Weeknights are low-key at Arlo & Esme, and this is not the place to go for your beer pong rally. Bring a book, a close friend or just those good manners your mama gave you, and you’ll have yourself a wonderful night. 

Weekend evenings, though, the downstairs reveals A & E’s underbelly of revelry. The 4,000-square foot basement, decked out in dark colors and Venetian themes, is packed. In addition to the wine and liquor upstairs, the downstairs bar serves a bevy of beer on tap, including Six Point Sweet Action, along with $7 well cocktails. Don’t be surprised to see a bucket of bottled beer for sale.

Which brings us to the weekend crowd… Arlo & Esme attracts an odd mix, equal parts too-cool pseudo-scenesters and primp-a-licious Sex and the City knock-offs. Here, the East Village meets the Lower East Side, the Six-Dollar PBR meets the Twelve-Dollar Mojito, the UES’s Great Fraternity Migration meets the Olsens’ High Fashion Faux-Slumming.

Oh well. Just shrug it off, hug the drag queen, and come back Sunday for the window-seat, roses and wine. Grandma would be proud.

ARLO & ESME :: 42 E. 1st St. between First Ave. and Second Ave., New York, New York

Body Shots with Whitman :: The Bowery Electric

Walt Whitman once asked if a body can exist apart from its soul. Yes, he concluded, predating decades of Cancun co-ed revelry. Who cares about the essential spirit when all the pieces work? 

To that, I sing (write silently) of the Bowery eclectic: home to substance abuse clinics, Whole Foods and velvet-roped bars. If you like your mojito with a chaser of community amnesia, the half-mile ‘round Houston is the drinking trough for you. But if your Stella needs a backer of soul? Then, and you saw this coming, I sing of the Bowery Electric.

Any bar that’s named for Whitman, a CBGB festival and the neighborhood’s long-lost Electrical Supply Company has a definite sense of history. Add in Mike Stuto (of Hi-Fi), Jesse Malin and Johnny T (both of Niagra and Black & White) as bar owners, and you’ve got highlights from the East Village scene backed by the birth of modern poetry, the pinnacle of punk rock and some basic knowledge of dimmer switches. 

Last December, mostly skeevy Peeping Tom-playground Remote Lounge closed and Bowery Electric nuzzled in. And, like Remote before it, Bowery Electric goes without windows. The bar starts as a long, dark hallway draped in grays, blues and black, all velvet and felt, then leads into a back room full of antique trunks and tucked-away banquettes. Over the stellar sound system, Modest Mouse is likely to segue into Sam Cook, then the Ramones.

There’s a romance to this lush darkness that grows exponentially with alcohol; like its siblings Hi-Fi and Niagra, Bowery Electric offers a bevy of scotches, bourbons, tequilas and beer — the tap list includes Sapporo, Stella, Hoegaarden, Magic Hat #9, Brooklyn Lager, Bass and Victory Prima. But, keeping with its theme, Bowery Electric ups the ante with a sophisticated twist on East Village expectations; the bar has a sommelier-approved wine list and a custom-made cocktail menu, including the Bowery Electric ($7), a tart and refreshing concoction of vodka, Midori and lemon juice.

It’s no bar for semi-sober springtime sunset watching, though — it’s a late-night nook that mirrors the Bowery in its unique mix of all-dolled-up (sparkling hanging lamps, wenge bar, mohair couches) and come-as-you-are (film-noir lighting, the neighborhood feel, a bouncer with a heart of gold). If he were an alcoholic instead of an advocate for prohibition, Whitman would probably have approved — a bar with both body and soul.

BOWERY ELECTRIC :: 327 Bowery between E. 2nd St. and E. 3rd St., New York, New York

The Suffering Bastard

The relationship is over. Over over over. Raise a glass, then, and drink up. Sweet at first, of course, but you'll soon see that each sip is harder and harder to swallow.

I am not drinking tonight, since that's the last thing I need. But, just for the fun of it, were I to pour myself a long, tall glass of fire water, here's what I'd pick, as I feel I know it well, both in myself and the company I kept ::

THE SUFFERING BASTARD

1 oz. bourbon
1 oz. gin
1 oz. fresh-squeezed lime juice
4 oz. ginger ale
a dash of angostura bitters

mix all the ingredients in a shaker,
pour into double old fashioned glass filled with ice,
garnish with mint sprig, orange wheel and maraschino cherry

Just don't be surprised if the whole thing makes you sick.

The Roy Rogers

A deliciously consequence-free concoction of sweet sparkling cola and grenadine syrup, the Roy Rogers will never lead you down dark alleys in your bloomers screaming, "I'm too beautiful to not be naked!" at the top of your lungs like some other drinks will. Believe me; I know. Now if only I could find those bloomers.

Because sometimes you have to give bad habits the boot...

The Roy Rogers' worst offense may be a cavity of two, but, h-e-double-hockey-stick, you won't even be too drunk to brush your teeth when you get home from that saloon, so even dental hygiene is well-served by this mocktail. Everyone's happy. Well, everyone except the potato-shaped halitosis man eying you in the corner. No, he's hoping you'll start downing both the gin and your inhibitions mighty quick. But no worry. Roy's here. There'll be none of that under his watch. So happy trails to you. And bottoms up!

THE ROY ROGERS

6 oz. of cola
1/4 oz. of grenadine

stir well and garnish with a maraschino cherry,
serve in a collins glass filled with ice

The Blushing Greyhound

The Blushing Greyhound, despite its benign components and demure shade, can be even more dangerous than a midnight bus to Chinatown. Buckle up, pup; this summer-licious spritzer can bring on one hell of a bumpy ride.

For me, the Blushing Greyhound will henceforth be known the drink that made a hole in my wall. It's such a mild concoction, refreshing and tart. Add salt on the rim, and it becomes a Salty Dog. Add two jiggers of Jamison, two shots of Eagle Rare, a muddled strawberry vodka mojito, a ginger-beer cocktail, and two glasses of wine, well, then it just becomes a bitch.

THE BLUSHING GREYHOUND

2 oz. Grey Goose vodka
5 oz. fresh-squeezed pink grapefruit juice

served in a highball glass over ice

The Bee's Knees

A touch of tart swaddled in velvety sweetness, Bee's Knees, could you possibly be called anything else? What's in a name? Who cares. What's in a Bee's Knees? Now you're talkin'.

I have a special kinship with the honeybee. In part, my bond is based on being a Leo. Since my star is the sun (top that, eh?), and the honeybee loves himself some sunshine, it's a natural alliance. I love their furry little coats and the fact that they are quite officious workers, yet still vindictive little fucks. Couple that with my recent discovery that the honeybee is basically "a flying penis" (thanks, ol' Mr Insight, for that pointed tidbit), and perhaps you understand my affection for the little bug. Also, as previously noted and often revisited, my favorite spirit of all is gin.

The Bee's Knees is what I wish cough-syrup tasted like :: sweet, but not too sweet, refreshingly citrus, soothing with its kiss of honey and purifying with its cool gin chill. Then again, if cough syrup tasted like this, I'd be licking subway poles around the city just to catch the constant cold. Perhaps things happen for a reason.

THE BEE'S KNEES

2 oz. of Plymouth gin
1/2 oz. of honey syrup *
1/2 oz. of fresh-squeezed lemon juice

*honey syrup :: mix equal parts honey and boiling water,
stir until honey is completely dissolved, then refrigerate until cold

garnish with a lemon twist and serve cold,
on the rocks in a double tumbler glass



* * *

And, an old timey comic for kicks, found in the Fort Wayne Sentinel circa May 5th, 1914::

It's too small to really see, but basically the skinny man asks the fat man for Bee's Knees for dinner. The fat man tried to procure them, and in the end, after chasing that buzz, they both flee the scene, defeated and stung.

Sounds a hell of a lot like my Monday night... Maybe someone should check the bathroom door.

The What Already Was

She agreed to meet him for non-descript after-work outing, i.e. post-breakup peace talks subtitled Fool Me Twice. That's right, against all odds and even more good council, she was considering reunification.

"After all," she reasoned as she waited for the buzzer to ring, "he loves me more than anyone ever has -- and actually wants to take care of me."

Every day for the past week, she'd become more and more into the idea of a reunion. She'd been through a slightly traumatic time just days ago involving accidental painkillers, a dark and handsome Mercedes S Class, and a man old enough to be her father. She was looking for someone to step in and take control. And ol' Mr Insight, for better or for worse, had always been right by her side.

The buzzer rang.

He was dressed in a vintage blazer, a green sweater, and a green tee-shirt. And excess of verdancy. Spring. Rebirth. Hope.

St. Patrick's Day.

She could tell he wasn't sure if he could hug her hello, so she stepped up and was suddenly in his arms. She had loved those arms.

"Couldn't it happen again?" she wondered, grabbing her coat as they headed downstairs.

They ended up at Revival, a small, dank little duplex of a bar just east of Union Square. They sat out in the back, a sort of plywood garden. He drink Jameson on the rocks and she, white wine.

She never knew what kind of white, but neither did the bartender.

"I'm just so glad to sit next to you," he told her, hovering his body near hers, terrified to risk a touch.

"It's nice," she exhaled. "I missed you." The words slipped out of her mouth, and she wasn't even sure she meant them.

"God, if you even know how much I've missed you," he said, reaching to hold her hand. She let him and, without thought, her thumb gently brushed back and forth across his palm.

After a drink, the sun began setting, and the garden sprouted green with the Celtic-philia of a St. Paddy's Parade let loose.

"New venue!" She let him pay, for once, and they headed out in the twilight.

The bar's light caught her attention from across the street. Shoolbred's. They were pulled in by a fireplace glowing on the back wall. Two whiskeys later, they had scooted their big leather armchairs as close as they could. A makeshift loveseat. Peace talks.

"I think we can make this work." Again the words came from a place in her she couldn't quite map. "There was too much good," the same small voice continued. Cait decided to call it Eagle Rare, after the bourbon she sipped between these odd declarations of hope. "Too much good to walk away."

Cait once dated a man who told her, "after the third glass, the wine drinks the man."

She leaned in and the ol' Mr Insight kissed her hard on the mouth.

Who was drinking whom here?

He had ordered a greyhound, made with Grey Goose and fresh-squeezed pink grapefruits. He had specifically requested the grapefruits be pink.

"New venue!"

They walked a mile downtown to East Side Company Bar and ducked into a booth in the back.

"You need to stop playing around and get a real job," she told him. Eagle Rare with a whip.

"I know. I will."

"And not some stupid pipedream pothead job like glass blowing, for God's sake."

"I know. I was thinking -- maybe talk therapy?"

"Jesus Christ."

"I could be a guidance counselor."

She ordered a Bee's Knees.

"Cause that's what she is," he slipped in after her order.

She ordered a Gordon's Cup.

"I could sell my art and gingerbread."

She was definitely drinking too much.

He was keeping pace.

"I will always love you, Cait."

She ordered a big glass of water.

"New venue!"

Home.

He followed her upstairs and she fell into an incredibly deep sleep. The next morning, she awoke to an enormous pair of eyes staring into her own.

"I'm so sorry," were the first words she heard that day.

"What for?" she asked, her breath stale and entirely unbecoming.

"You don't remember?" He was completely taken aback, and for a moment thought this was a dark-humored joke of hers. But her face was entirely curious, entirely free of resentment.

"I punched a hole in your bathroom door."

She checked the door, and sure enough there was a hole as large as a cantaloupe. Suddenly Cait remembered a few lines from one of the first poems she had ever written.

Or how a heart can explode
like a watermelon
run over by a freight truck.

"This is not a good thing." She looked at the crumpled wood, a tossed away lunch bag of a door. "This is not a good thing for us."

"You just," he started arguing, "you just don't communicate to me! I asked you last night what you meant, what you meant when you said we have fifteen layers between us. When you said you didn't feel anything. I asked you what you meant and you just rolled over and fell asleep. You needed to communicate with me!"

"So you punched the door?"

"You wouldn't talk to me!"

She wasn't even mad, just defeated. And annoyed she'd have to go to her own personal hell, Home Depot, to buy a new door in the name of botched communication.

"This is just so sad." Her tone was quiet, even. "Because now there is physical proof of what I should have known all along. We will never be good for each other. This will never work. We will never get back together."

"I will always love you."

"Never..." Her voice trailed off.

He stood up and walked to the dining table, put on his pants, his green t-shirt, his green sweater, his blazer. Verdant again, he walked to the door.

"I guess I should leave."

She didn't look at his face, just at the door and the imploding crater it held.

"Goodbye."

The Gin Gimlet

The Gin Gimlet is like a child -- not all that complex to conceive, but stunningly easy to screw up along the way.


The Gin Gimlet can be served straight up (in a martini glass) or on the rocks (in a tumbler). Either way, it should be very, very cold and have a sort of granular quality -- a pixelated texture owing to the drink being just this side of liquid, a single warm breath past frozen. You can make a good gimlet from Plymouth's, from Gordon's, or even from Bombay, though, for me, Tangueray is always the best -- the complex mix of citrus undertones against the juniper base adds a rounder depth when paired with the fresh squeezed lime juice in the drink. And if you are willing to slum with Rose's lime juice, well, you may as well use house gin and sleep on the barroom floor.

THE GIN GIMLET

2 oz. of Tanqueray gin
1/2 oz. of fresh-squeezed lime juice

garnish with a lime wedge and serve incredibly cold,
either in a tumbler on ice or straight up in a martini glass

Chill and Serve :: the East Side Company Bar

Dating at the East Side Company Bar :: love may indeed be all you need, but strong cocktails, warm lighting, and the conspiratorial aphrodisiac of drinking in a secret nook never hurt, either.


A hole in the wall that transforms into a glittering art-deco jewel of semi-speakeasy calm, the East Side Company Bar is what you wish Employees Only, Death & Co, Milk and Honey and all the other liquored-up lemmings of Prohibition-envy could be :: a decidedly chill nook with obvious yet incredibly drinks, bar keeps with the skill to earn those old barber shop arm bands, and a gimlet like a lime night sky poured into a glass.

As far as a venue for first dates, the East Side Company Bar is a singularly stellar choice. Discreet to the point of vague modesty, the bar folds out from its plywood doors into a tin-tiled box of red, silver and candle-light. The only downside to dating at the ESCB :: you're practically contracting yourself to a goodnight kiss. Wait, did I say downside?


EAST SIDE COMPANY BAR :: 49 Essex Street at Grand Street, New York, New York

The What Could Have Been

"Alright," she thought as she headed out for her first blind date since her horrifically emotionally saturated break-up two weeks prior. She brushed herself off, more metaphorical that literal, but a definitive gesture all the same. 

"Here I go again on my own."

He nipped the endless choruses of Whitesnake in the bud with his kiss on the cheek.

"Hey Cait," he said, red hair a-fluttering in the late winter wind. "It's great to meet you."

"It's great to find this place," she joked, referencing the fact the New York cocktail lounges, if anywhere you'd ever want to find yourself, where rarely in locations you could ever honestly find by yourself. This one, in particular, was relatively easy. Four plywood doors on a deserted street in the last bastion of uncool Lower East Side, marked only by a gold shrunken name-tag. "East Side Company Bar," it whispered.

She felt lucky she had even arrived at all.

"Funny thing you chose here," he said, pulling back from the slightly pre-emptive hug he'd given her. "This is the one place I can get us in."

Apparently he had thought her profession as a publicist enabled her city-wide access. She thought this over, quietly. Maybe he was right. She planned to storm Milk & Honey should there be a date two. All the cards on the table, she thought, feeling slightly empty-handed.

They went inside.

She ordered a gin gimlet; he ordered something far too feminine with enough rum to bring back her PTSD of tiki cocktails. She told him the story of Waikiki Wally's, and immediatly wished she hadn't. She was now that drunk girl with publicity access, she reasoned. All her secrets were out and none of them were even all that true. "It's a bitch when your subtext is all lies," she thought.

They both ordered round two. The same. He ordered for her. "Hot," she thought. "Damn hot."

He put his hand on her leg. She laughed at his jokes. They talked about Los Angeles, why she hated it, why he loved it. He owned a Vespa. She loved Vespas. He aspired to cars. She hated cars. Hot / cold / hot / cold.

Third round.

They talked about jobs, Manhattan. He lived in a duplex in Soho. "A duplex in Soho," she thought, "is probably worth more than my honor."

She was drunk enough to think she had honor, and in a solely monetary sense, no less.

They left the bar to get arepas.

"I was raised Mormon," he confessed.

"Are the magic dundies on then?" she asked, three gimlets to the wind, sheets far from mind.

"Of course not. I'm lasped. I have a very estranged relationship with my family."

"Oh. Well, mine is full of heretics. So you'd all get along just fine."

He smiled, apparently finding her future fire and brimstone beguiling.

"Would you like dessert?" the waitress offered after three rounds of arepas and wine. It was late, and half the tables had cleared. She was praying for a "no thanks just the check."

"Yes!" he said, ordering the chocolate pudding.

He fed Cait with his spoon.

"I would like to see you again," she said, between him feeding her those dainty mouthfuls. She felt like a bride on the sly, but couldn't resist the automatic intimacy implied in such a simple gesture.

"Yes," he said, his fingers smoothing over her right knee.

He walked her home, kissed her with intentions as dark as the chocolate, and she responded just as deep, but braced with a bitterness, too.

This wasn't a connection, but a glimpse into something dangled. The carrot the rabbit will never bite. The rabbit the greyhound will never capture. Something in the chase of things, the pudding one arm's length away. The open mouth, the dish-washed spoon.

A possibility un-pursued.

He will call four days later. She won't pick up. She won't know why, but even know, fumbling with keys outside her front gate, she has a strange, specific sense of what will happen. She also knows what won't.

And somehow she find solace in this ::

Here I go again on my own
goin' down the only road I've ever known.
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone.
An' I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time,
but here I go again, here I go again,
here I go again, here I go,
here I go again

Come Here Often?

Another day, another blog -- but this time let's not just talk of first dates, of compromising networking and of adventures in random promiscuity (though, honestly, wasn't that kind of fun, even if only in a peeping-tom sense?).

This time, let's go beyond all that frippery; let's also talk about the bars :: the bars behind the first dates, the compromising networking, and, of course, the random promiscuity.

Any good story blooms both setting and character study. Here goes, then, in the name of the story -- of any good story.

This round's on me.