New York City's Best Dive Bars. Ben Westhoff
with a shark fin hairdo, who was staring at my wife Anna when we were there. Another of the bartenders, Amy, sells her own brand of trail mix on the premises. It’s called “Best Snack Ever,” and the original variation features candied pecans, pistachios, roasted and seasoned walnuts, dark chocolate covered raisins, and peanut butter chips. A cut above your average GORP, for sure.
Despite the ovarian vibe, the place is ballsy. They either don’t have air-conditioning or else opt not to run it, perhaps for the thrill of seeing people sweat. The music tends toward slowcore when it’s not punk, and their most popular drink special is a can of PBR and a shot of well whisky for $5. That’s the quintessential New York dive bar special, actually, and it says a lot about a place—namely that it’s not sponsored by any big liquor companies and its clientele is not snobbish about what it dumps down its gullet.
Unlike some dives, B Side is not crawling with grizzled, thickly-bearded, toothless men. There was only one person like that when we were there, and he was bragging about having scored a free pint from an anonymous stranger bragging that “he didn’t trust anyone who didn’t drink.”
A sweaty room full of mostly women drinking cheap booze and eating GORP, that’s pretty much B Side in a nutshell. There are worse places to spend your time.
Dive Bar Rating
Barrow’s Pub
463 Hudson Street (Barrow St and Morton St) Transit: 1 to Houston St; A, C, E, B, D, F, M to W 4th
(212) 741-9349
Is there anything more inspiring than a shrinking old man flirting his ass off? The resident google-genarian at Barrow’s Pub sports one of those caps that snap in the front—the kind Jeff Tweedy used to wear—and a shirt that says, “You Know You’re Getting Old When Happy Hour Is A Nap.” He drinks Bud from a brandy glass and plays that lottery game involving grids of numbers on the television. Both are mainly excuses to chat up the freckled, blonde bartender.
Still, Barrow’s is no old man bar. The music see-saws from Jamie Foxx to Fleetwood Mac to Modest Mouse, and the night I was there the place was full of late twenty-something and early thirty-something women in mini-dresses. They came in a rush with their gay male friends and a pizza. (Barrow’s sells pies itself, for six dollars, but no one seemed to care.) To the tune of Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer,” a light-skinned crew member gyrated, strip-tease style, for one of the guys. Quoth the codger: “The dancing girls are here!”
A pint of Grolsch is $6.50, and PBR is a little cheaper. (It’s the West Village—what can you do?) In any case, Barrow’s is surely the diviest spot in the neighborhood, much divier than Johnny’s Bar or Julius. It’s got quirks galore, like the secret wooden panels that reveal the air-conditioning controls and the sign that says “Finish your beer, there’s sober kids in India.” The TV showing the Yankees game is almost impossible to see because it’s blocked by the pool lights, and the words “We Now Carry Mich Ultra” take up the entire mirror behind the bar. Big news, indeed.
Dive Bar Rating
MOST TERRIFYING DIVES
Navy Yard Cocktail Lounge
Beer Goggles
Cordato’s Deli and Bar
Crehan’s Pub
Station Cafe
Holland Bar
Beer Goggles Bar & Grill
293 Van Duzer Street Transit: Stapleton [Staten Island Railway]
(718) 816-4537
Beer Goggles Bar & Grill allegedly hires unlicensed bouncers, its owner has been charged with operating as a bookie, and the place has been raided by police who took sledgehammers to illegal gambling machines. (Perhaps unaware they were being caught on video, the cops proceeded to stuff the cash into their pockets.) But the bar is perhaps best known for a 2008 incident in which a pair of policemen caught the bartenders serving minors. The uniformed officers proceeded to hand out summonses and order the place shut down. The pub’s denizens didn’t take this lying down, however, as s pair of drunk barflies attacked the cops, sending one of them to the hospital. It turned out that the assailants were off-duty firemen, which stoked a new wave of animosity between the NYPD and the FDNY. (Resentment still lingers between the groups, dating back to 9/11 when Giuliani scaled back the Fire Department’s recovery role and a bunch of firefighters went bananas, knocking over barricades and throwing blows at police.) The aftermath of Staten Island’s “Battle of the Badges”? The policeman had emergency surgery on his hand and the firefighters were suspended without pay for a month. Beer Goggles, however, was back open within a week.
With its perfect combination of seediness, depravity and creature comforts, it’s not hard to see why people would risk their lives for the place. First of all, it’s well-named. The “the more I drink, the better you look” theme is highlighted by a psychedelic, black-lit mural that features the bar’s bespectacled Clark Kent-esque mascot holding up a frothy mug and noting its ability to “Turn BOW into WOW!” In that same room is the best air hockey machine I’ve ever played on, a neon green unit that makes a cool metallic sound whenever the puck hits the side bumpers. There’s also a vending machine selling cigarettes and a “male enhancement” pill called VIM-25. (Read: a Viagra-substitute composed of Chinese herbs.) The drinks are cheap, too. At least I think they are. After my buddy Brandon and I ordered a couple of beers the bartender—a fairly slow, rather slovenly, guy—told us they would be ten dollars. We gave him a twenty and he handed Beer Goggles Bar & Grill back our change, which came to exactly fifteen dollars.
Brandon, a touring musician who recently moved onto the island, insists that the right-leaning, architecturally-challenged borough has its own culture, one as far removed from Manhattan as it is from Cleveland. To him, this isn’t a good thing. But hell, he lives cheaply, has ample parking for his van and, if nothing else, goes to sleep knowing his firemen will fight to keep the local dive bars open.
Dive Bar Rating
Billymark’s West
332 9th Avenue, (29th Street & 30th Street) Transit: A,C,E to 34th St, 1,2,3 to 34th St
(212) 629-0118
Shortly after my friend Jeff and I arrived at Billymark’s West, co-owner and bartender Billy Penza cranked up The Weather Girls, singing along to “It’s Raining Men.” Dressed in a short-sleeved shirt the color of Fruit Stripe gum and wearing thick black glasses, he proceeded to guzzle a glass of ale and light up a cigarette before scurrying outside. When he returned a little while later, he told us about the framed platinum albums behind the bar, which belong to his brother Mark, who is the establishment’s other owner (Billy—Mark, get it?) and a former session drummer for Blondie.
Later on in the evening, Billy offered up a very honest assessment of the beverages available at the bar. Blue Moon is “delicious,” while a grenade-shaped energy drink called Bomba is, “terrible. Do not try it.” All along, he wasn’t writing down what we had been ordering, instead tallying