New York City's Best Dive Bars. Ben Westhoff
he ended up undercharging us. We found this to be fair enough, however, as the prices here are a tad on the high side.
The good news is that the energy level is similarly elevated. The plastic-paneled jukebox belts out disco songs like Jeff Redd’s “Keep Dancing,” which you might want to look up. People keep score during their dart games by writing directly on the aqua-colored walls in chalk. The clientele runs from servicemen to softball players to mailmen. The postal servant sitting next to me, armed with a shot, mixed drink and beer, told me that I couldn’t leave until the bottles behind the bar were empty. While it may sound like a silly thing to say, it’s actually a drunkard’s platonic ideal: Imagine a bender so epic it leaves the bar utterly extinguished, every drink drunk dry.
Dive Bar Rating
OTHERWORLDLY FEEL
Puerto Rico USA Bar
Mars Bar
Nancy Whiskey Pub Irene’s Pub
Beer Goggles
Port 41
Desmond’s Tavern
Mr. McGoo’s
Blarney Cove
510 E 14th Street (Avenue A & Avenue B) Transit: L to 1st Ave
(212) 473-9284
Moments after I took that picture of the Blarney Cove, a woman came running out of the place.
“Why are you taking pictures of my bar?” she asked, half-crazed. She was middle-aged and had lipstick all over her teeth. I explained that I was writing a book. She demanded my name and phone number, in case she had any “questions” for me. Kind of scared, I wrote both down. She asked when she could call, and I said, um, any time so long as it was during normal hours. She asked what I meant by “normal.” Then she gestured at the slice of pizza I was holding. “Give me some,” she demanded. She ate nearly half of what was left before telling me it wasn’t very good, and that I should have gone to Artichoke instead. She said her name was Margie. I then went to meet up with some friends at Otto’s Shrunken Head. Later on, we went back to Blarney Cove and sat down at the bar. However, Margie didn’t notice me come in, as she was too busy drinking and head-banging to the Beastie Boys, offering up her own altered lyrics: You’ve gotta fight/ For your right/ For beer!
Blarney Cove is the real deal, a long sliver with one wood-paneled wall and one faux-bricked wall. It’s the kind of place where a guy wearing a straw fedora will smoke a cigarette while playing video poker and then mash the butt on the floor with his shoe once he’s done. The type of spot with a pay phone where people regularly receive calls and a gumball machine that dispenses pistachios.
Eventually, Margie recognized me, coming over, grabbing my hand tightly and pulling me to the other side of the bar. She introduced me to a guy with a thin mustache, a photographer, and a beefy guy called “Popeye.” According to commenters on Yelp, Popeye is former NYPD and kind of an asshole.
“Next time you must ask Popeye before you take pictures. He’s in charge.”
“I thought it was your bar?”
“Popeye’s in charge.”
In truth, nobody’s in charge at Blarney Cove. It has its own forward momentum, slowly spiraling out of control.
Dive Bar Rating
Blue & Gold Tavern
79 E. 7th Street (1st Ave and 2nd Ave) Transit: 6 to Astor Place; L to 1st Ave; F to 2nd Ave
(212) 473-8918
Mike, the bartender at the Blue & Gold Tavern, keeps the top couple of buttons on his shirt undone, which shows off his thick chest hair. He also keeps his shirtsleeves rolled up and drinks thirstily from a gallon jug of Poland Spring water. Mike does all of this even when it’s cold outside because he’s always warm, keeping himself busy lining up glassware on the shelves behind the bar and dishing out the tavern’s history.
The place was opened on March 19, 1958 by his grandfather, also named Mike. “He was named after me,” Mike jokes, adding that he prefers not to give out their last name. Granddad came to the U.S. after World War II, from the Ukraine. (Blue & Gold’s name is assumedly a reference to the colors of that country’s flag.)
Mike doesn’t mind if you call his family’s establishment a dive, and takes particular pride in its low prices. Vazac’s Horseshoe Bar is not a real dive, he contends, because it’s too expensive. Indeed, booze is absurdly cheap here; $3 for drinks made with (or shots of) Jim Beam, $3.50 for Jack Daniels, and $4 for Macallan, or “The Macallan,” as the single malt scotch calls itself. The atmosphere is cozy, with Christmas wreaths still hanging long after the holiday has ended. Most tables double as chess, backgammon or Scrabble boards, although the Scrabble table is too mucked up to permit a full game. The music is kept low, which is nice if your tastes don’t jibe with that of those who dominate the place, mainly kids who are closer to twenty than thirty.
In any case, here’s to the Blue & Gold. May its metaphorical flag continue to fly, may its drink prices stay the same.
Dive Bar Rating
The Blue Donkey Bar
489 Amsterdam Aven (83rd and 84th Streets) 212-496-0777 Transit: 1 to 86th St; B, C to 81st St
Opening a bar next door to your greasy spoon is an idea so brilliant it’s a wonder more people don’t do it. Connecting the two establishments at the back and filling them with arcade games? That’s downright inspired.
The Blue Donkey Bar and its adjacent sister restaurant Homer’s Blue Donkey Grill combine to form something of a pleasure factory for kids and adults. Both places sell drinks and feature games; the Grill has Ms. Pac Man and one of those Japanese “Drift” style racers, the Bar has Big Buck Safari, pool and foosball. The Grill will make you sliders, curly fries and milk shakes until late most nights, while the Bar features keeps in barely-there mini-dresses.
The Blue Donkey Bar is perhaps the quintessential Upper West Side dive, possessing a retro-futuristic, space-age interior with a glowing orb and illuminated blue panel above the bar. The inhabiting cast of characters are a bit otherworldly, too: graying, well-composed whisky imbibers, prostitutes flirting with hairy Hawaiian guys and lazy entrepreneurs drinking Bud at the bar while hawking pirated DVDs. Also present are slightly-too-ironic-for-the-neighborhood twenty and thirtysomethings who come for the cheap quart bottles of Sol and the twenty-four ounce cans of Natty Light and Colt 45. Those who are slightly more discriminating can get a bottle of Jimmy Buffet’s Corona-like Land Shark beer, or at the very least knock around some of that brand’s promotional beach balls hanging from the ceiling. The best thing to do, however, is to act like you’re at a Chuck E. Cheese. Blitz yourself on sugar, fat and alcohol and spend your quarters recklessly. A night at the Blue Donkey necessitates sacrificing your body to many forms of indulgence.
Dive Bar Rating