Here Comes a Regular

OK, how about this?

2012-01-03T16:29:00.006-05:00

Well, I may have figured out how to type with a cast on, but I certainly didn't learn how to type well or quickly. So, no, I didn't get back to blogging in October. Or November. Or December ...

But it's 2012 now, we are living in science fiction numbers. Death and rebirth and endings and beginnings and shit knows what else have transpired since last I typed upon this blog. I'm not sure what shape the future holds ...there are a few other Barographies I'd like to write, and Lord knows I've got plenty of free beer coupons left. That Mono-Lagering lost some of its urgency after some time. It was a clear measure taken to get over someone, and by that I obviously mean get over myself.

Once that cleared my system, it didn't seem so important to drag my ass to the far ends of Brooklyn to pontificate on whatever life threw at me at some random bar. This is not to say I gave up the sauce, as this photo of my writing desk taken after the comma in this sentence no doubt shows.

But the warmth of summer has faded and the chill of autumn has turned into Bobby Drake doing something nasty all over my face (sorry for the image, nerds).

So I'm back to writing. Other than this little note, the next piece (series of pieces, really) I'm working on is for my old blog Comics Should Be Good. Today or tomorrow I'm hoping to get up a post there about a sort of comic book drinking club I put together with some of my friends. Could I be more indulgent? Well, if you've been reading this blog at all, you know, of course I can (and have been).

So, cheers, friends. Here's to a future so uncertain that it's beautiful.

Cough cough.

2011-10-04T11:38:00.002-04:00

So I fell off the planet for a bit there. Weddings, vacations, school restarting, and a broken wrist all came together to make it pretty difficult to post regularly. I've got some stuff to write up though, so now that I've gotten used to typing with this cast, I hope to get back on track.

I missed you. I had an amazing summer and feel great. Dear readers, let us enjoy this brisk entry of autumn with crunchy leaves, gourds galore, and strange times.

Barography: 9C

2011-08-18T16:38:00.005-04:00

So we were talking about bluegrass. Last week I couldn't make a post, I was visiting the family back in the Bluegrass State, Kentucky. The closest I was to a bar there was an Outback where I had one Corona. My mother and grandmother tried and liked the taste of it with a lime. It was quite a moment. But last time I posted I told you about the Bell House and the amazing bluegrass show I saw there. Since then I've been to the Newport Folk festival and saw Thile and Daves again, and they still slayed. (Saw a lot of stuff, actually, but that's for another time.)

I remember around 1995 or so, my friend Brigid (an amazing musician in her own right), told me about a bar in Alphabet City that had a bluegrass night. Well, this was obviously something I had to see. The bar was called 9C, and those of you with a passing familiarity of Manhattan can guess the cross-streets. Every Sunday night, it was Bloody Mary Bluegrass time. From the first time I went, I was in love.

I was skeptical of the sort of bluegrass musician one might find living up here in New York. I should not have been. Whether transplants from other areas or born-and-bred yanks, these folks could play. Every week there'd be a different group of folks, but some would always be there. The two I remember most strongly are the Sheriff and Joel. Obviously you remember dudes that go by "the Sheriff," that is just a scientific fact. But Joel was a special case.

Joel was a middle aged man from deep in Queens, and he had the accent to prove it. But that fella could pick a banjo. It just so happened that I was about to shoot my thesis film and I needed a banjo player. Joel agreed. He played the father of a friend (the family was clearly based on the Pences mentioned last time I wrote) the main character interacts with. The friend was actually played by a pre-Always Sunny Charlie Day. My brush with fame. Anyway, Joel did his best and they played "Blue Moon of Kentucky" and I later realized I couldn't afford the rights so that film died. (It should have died. It was awful, they were the best part.)

Click to see full picture, by Meredith Riley Worden, which for some reason isn't showing up right here.

That's not the point. I would occasionally go back from time to time, but the rest of the next two years were about graduating college. And that senior year was about a girl. So, of course, upon graduation, the First Dark Times started.

My first love was a fucked up thing. It was with a friend who had a boyfriend. Your first love should not be a cheating affair, but I've never been one for doing things wisely. Obviously, this ended horribly. I recall looking down at the street from my dorm as she drove away, hitting the radiator with a chair, screaming "NOT EVEN A GOODBYE?!?!?" Yeah, that kind of end. The kind of end that leads to the Big Dark, that depression that sets in and becomes a part of everything you think, do, or see.

After graduation, my buddy Josh from my hometown moved up to New York and we moved in with my college friend Anna in Jersey City. (My address had the word "Jersey" in it three times. Dark Times indeed.) I commenced trying to cope with both real life and crippling depression. I fared poorly at best. Screaming fights with poor Anna, who had stresses of her own. Josh was working crazy schedules for radio news. Both of us were usually out of our minds.

We had one true respite. Every Sunday, we had bluegrass night at 9C. No weird Path train smells could stop us from our holy day. The owner/bartender, Roger, was my first Favorite Bartender. The one novel I've written so far* is dedicated to him. Those big pint bloody maries were like communion wine for these two protestants from Appalachia. We'd sit and tap our feet and nod our heads and hoop and holler and generally forget the girls and the jobs and the grime and the murk and the confusion that was the rest of our lives. We'd go home happy, drunk, and foolish, but at least we had that happiness. Sad and lonesome as the songs are, it is still impossible to be unhappy listening to bluegrass.

I just recently climbed out of the most recent Dark Times (on a chemical ladder) and so it is with a strange nostalgia that I think back on my experiences back then at my one happy place. The private New Years party Roger invited us to, whereupon we discovered normally the place was a punk rock bar--the weekday regulars bonded with us on Johnny Cash, of course; the time the one new bartender I ever saw Roger try out thought "a glass of Makers" meant a pint of Makers (amazed I remember that one); the Japanese harmonica man that just fucking KILLED it, damn he was good; the general peace I felt getting away from my own head for a few hours every week; all these times, and thoughts are still dear to me.

The bar itself closed long ago. In its place rose Banjo Jim's, a fine bar in its own right. I am sometimes strangely sad, though, when I'm there. It's just not quite the same. Nothing could be. The current owner was apparently another fan/regular of 9C. We waxed on memories one night over whiskey.

I suppose the point is, Dark Times will come for us all, but there will always be a way out. Good friends and good music will almost always be the first step. Booze and the right drugs aren't too shabby either. But when you get out of those Dark Times, hell, at least you'll have some damn good stories.

*-Said novel was a sort of exorcism of Another Dark Time, whereupon I foisted all that was bad or negative or weak about myself onto the main character and made him suffer. This Dark Time was also caused by a girl.

Mono-Lagering: The Bell House

2011-07-26T15:02:00.006-04:00

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to a very special Mono-Lagering. Don't worry, it's not the "very special" sort of thing that means one of the less popular comedy characters gets molested or something and then we all feel weird for the rest of the half-hour. This is just one that I've been looking forward to for quite some time. The Bell House is a bar I've visited many times, and never had anything but a great time. It's actually half-bar and half-venue, and whereas that usually means more "shitty bar and shitty venue" it's actually really great at both.

In the past I've been to Biblioball prom-like events there, seen hip-hop, seen trapeze (in case you were wondering, it still makes me feel funny like when I was 8 when girls do trapeze), and New Orleans-style jazz, which, while not really my thing, was certainly fun that night. But last week was something on a whole other level. Good friends to the blog Nicole and E Rike and I got tickets to see Chris Thile and Michael Daves play bluegrass.

We got to the venue a little early. I was already jazzed after having a bucket or so of Budweiser at Jackie's Fifth, one of my top-five favorite dives anywhere in the world. Park Slope and Gowanus is such an odd area, where it's so gentrified and nice in most of it, but the hold-outs are amazing. Anyway, if you've never been to the Bell House it's basically divided into two rooms. There's the front area which is a classic bar with nice couches, seating, and an area for small acts or DJs to perform.

We got beers . . .honestly I couldn't tell you what we got. Maybe a Victory Pilsner? It was good, whatever it was. We sat around, chatted a bit, ran into our friend John, and eventually went on in to the second room, a large performance area with a mini-bar and a full bar on opposite ends. The place was fairly packed, which is great to see for a bluegrass show. I crushed my beer and got a giant can of Tecate. That much I definitely remember.

And then the boys took the stage. No openers, no need. Just two goddam virtuosos with their mandolin and guitar.

Bluegrass and I go a long ways back. I have a pretty rough relationship with where I grew up. I do love my friends and family, and I appreciate that it made me who I am today, for better or worse. But I don't fucking like it. I never liked it. I got out as soon as I could and I have not for a second looked back. There is little and less that I do like about Appalachia or Kentucky. Obviously I love bourbon. But, boy oh boy, do I love that high and lonesome sound, those string bands, that bluegrass.

Bluegrass, to give the most ridiculously abbreviated history possible, is what happened when poor Appalachian whites heard/hung out with old time black string bands. African-descended instruments like the banjo paired up with fiddles and guitars and all the sudden someone said, "Yup." Traditionally, it's only string instruments, though harmonicas are welcome. Modern bluegrass often frees itself from such strict fetters with drums, some amps, and God knows what else. It works sometimes. But that's never what I think of. As a Wise Master Mason once told me, "If it isn't one mic with a bunch of guys standing around it waiting for their solos, it isn't bluegrass."

I always liked it, but what really awakened my love for it was the Pence family. They were my first "second family," a habit I've noticed I pick up on occasion. These days I don't see them much, so my God daughters and their family, the Perezes, pick up the slack. (Before them I guess it was my ex-wife's family, the Paeks. What is it with me and the letter P? Heh, I said "pee.") There were three kids near my age, Billy, Kevin, and Molly. All three were smart, funny, creative, and spontaneous. They were exactly the sort of friends you needed in a town with so little to do. Their parents kind, loving, and also hilarious. Mr. Pence played the banjo and his boys played guitar. I went camping on a family reunion of sorts with them once--amazing weekend--and the bluegrass jams just couldn't have been better for me.

Well they all grew up super smart, super good-looking, and doing great things. But they're far away from Brooklyn, so I had to get my bluegrass fix elsewhere. Enter 9C, the subject of my next Barography. I'll talk about it more next time, but suffice to say every Sunday they had a pickup bluegrass jam that was never short of spectacular. During a rough time of transition after college, those Sundays were almost my church and center.

So anyway, wherever I've been bluegrass has not just been beautiful, entertaining music; it's been warmth and friendship and love. A year or so ago my great buddy Ben from back home came up so we could see Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys together. Ralph is one of the surviving founding fathers of bluegrass and it was an honor just to be in the same room with him. The venue was kind of uptight . . .the rest of the patrons seemed more "wealthy upper west siders listening to jazz" than anyone at a proper hootenanny. Well we hooted and hollered enough for the rest.

But last week, with Thile and Daves? They're no founding fathers, they're both younger than me. But these are two of the best damn musicians I have ever seen; rather, I should say, "Goddam, 'em boys could pick it!" The harmonies were perfect, the solos both beautiful and blindingly fast, and the stage presence genial, funny, and easy. I believe my female friends may have had more to say about said presence, but that's not for me to say.

Twice during the night they called out for requests, with one caveat: fiddle tunes only. That's right, a mandolin and a guitar doing fiddle solos. That's how amazing these guys are. They even improved a medley of two or three requests on the spot. There comes a time when you just say, "JESUS! WHOA NOW! THAT IS JUST TOO DAMN GOOD!"

But we drank it in like we drank the Woodford during intermission. By show's end, we were out of our mind, having water fights on the street, and stumbling towards the nearest pool table we could find.

This weekend we, and some other friends, go to the Newport Folk Festival. Among other acts, Thile and Daves will be there. But so will Earl Scruggs, my friends. That is bluegrass royalty right there. Now if I could just hear the Dillards play "Dooley" just once live . . .

The best things for this Kentucky boy, be they bourbon, bluegrass, or friends, are the things that warm you immediately, spreading through your mind and body like molten happiness. They are the things that even a self-loathing, depressed maniac cannot help but revel in, and would never think not to thank.

Thank you Mr. Monroe, Mr. Stanley, Mr. Scruggs, Mr. Flatt and company for making this great music. Thank you Mr. Thile and Mr. Daves and all your contemporaries for keeping it going. Thank you Pences great and small for giving me an extended family with dynamics I would treasure forever. Thank you Roger for opening one of the best goddam bars I've ever had the privilege to know. Thank you Ben and John and Nicole and E Rike and Eric and Conor and Tom and Anca and all friends for good times and good music. Thank you, the Bell House, good shows.

And thank you, Jesus, for bourbon.

Photos and non-youtube video by Nicole Marie Ball. She's a bluegrass newbie, forgive her for cutting off the solos. Just this once.

Five Blended Scotches You Shouldn't Pass Up

2011-07-20T19:11:00.009-04:00

For many, the single malt scotch is king. They think there's no comparison to be made between a good single malt and the clearly inferior, obviously untrustworthy blends. Those people are liars. Probably thieves, too. For the rest of us, there's no reason to look down on blended scotch. Why would we? There's a number of excellent blends on the market, crafted by masters that meticulously marry different whiskies into new, exciting combinations and concoctions. There's far too many to go into all of them, but I've selected five to discuss here. My criteria are pretty simple. Did I enjoy the scotch? Should someone be able to find it in a liquor store? Is it affordable? And most importantly, is it worth trying? These five blends answer all of those questions with a resounding YES.

Compass Box Peat Monster

The heavy, peaty smoke of an Islay malt isn't for everybody. I'd hesitate to call it an acquired taste, it seems that you were either born with it, or you just won't ever have it. But for those of us that love the smoke, and for those of us that could do without it, the artisan blenders at Compass Box have met in the middle with The Peat Monster. It's an odd blend of Speyside and Islay single malts, reducing the heavy smoke to the finish, and adding in the smoothness and sweetness of the milder Highland expressions. It may still be too peaty for some (it's still called "The Peat Monster", after all), but for many this balanced blend proves a nice compromise. Bottled at 46% ABV (92 Proof) and non chill-filtered, this is a bit stronger than most blends, more befitting its Islay heritage. No caramel coloring is added, and the whisky itself is an attractive pale wheat shade. Like all Compass Box blends, the packaging is artistic and understated, with a handsome, simple bottle featuring a well designed illustrated label and branded stopper.

Price - $45-$60 for a 750ml bottle

Availability - Moderate. Better liquor stores in your area should carry one or two Compass Box expressions, and Peat Monster is one of their most popular.

Website - www.compassboxwhisky.com

Sheep Dip

First things first, Sheep Dip probably won't blow you away. That's okay, it isn't really trying to. The name of the game with this intriguing blend is smoothness. A blend of 16 Highland single malts, there's nothing here that's going to rock the boat or make you sit up and take notice immediately. By the same token, there's also nothing here that's likely to rub a scotch drinker the wrong way. Sheep Dip is a relaxing, sweet blend, with heavy vanilla and fruit overto

nes and the slightest whiff of smoke on the finish. It's not adventurous, but rather calm and smooth, soothing and refreshing. Add a splash of water, and those sweeter notes really open up, creating a great sipper, especially during warmer weather. Sheep Dip is bottled at a standard 40% (80 proof), so it's on par as a bottling with many other blends. This blend comes packaged in an informative (if a bit self-congratulatory) box with an interesting, eye-catching modern label design. If you can ge

t past the somewhat gimmicky name, this is a very solid whisky for a very fair asking price.

Price - $30-$40 for a 750ml bottle

Availability - Moderate. Check the better stocked or more specialized liquor stores in your area. Larger wholesale-type stores are also a good place to check.

Website - www.spencerfieldspirit.com

The Famous Grouse/The Black Grouse

A bit of a cheat here, but I'd rather not leave either of these well known, but still quite good blends out of the loop. Chances are, you've had one of these. Maybe both. They're big names, big brands, and they've got big backers. But that doesn't mean they're poor whisky, far from it. Famous Grouse, built on the backbone of the Macallan single malt, is an exemplary Speyside blend. Smooth

and clean, with those hints of vanilla and dried fruit that characterize the region, it's a tasty blend that's a step up from some of its competitors, without being a drastic increase in price. On the other hand, its rougher little brother, Black Grouse, is characterized by the smokier, heavier Highland Park. Rougher around the edges than its counterpart, Black Grouse has a nice kick to it, and opens up quite well with a splash of water, leaving you with fruit and nut overtones followed by a spicy, smoky finish that likes to linger a bit. Both Famous Grouse and Black Grouse are bottled at 40% in simple mass-market packaging with screw tops. Both are quality blends, and at the lower price point, you can use them as mixers with less guilt.

Price - $20-$25 for a 750ml bottle

Availability - Widely available.

Website - www.thefamousgrouse.com

Dewar's 12yr

Everybody knows Dewar's. Everybody's had Dewar's. You're probably having some right now. It's okay, I'll wait. Doot de doo. Finished with your Dewar's? Okay, good. I'll continue. Dewar's White Label is one of the ubiquitous mainstays as far as blends go. It's not great, it's not bad, it's just sort of there. Chances are if you order a scotch and water at a decent bar, it'll be Dewar's White Label in the glass. Nothing wrong with it, but it's not exactly a can't miss.

Due to that, many will overlook the surprisingly good 12 year expression of the brand. Like Sheep Dip, I wouldn't say Dewar's 12 is gonna knock your socks off and leave you breathless, but it is going to give you a very good quality dram at a very reasonable price. It's a sweet, smooth blend that I think benefits quite a bit from adding just a bit of water (not too much, though, you want to open it up, not dilute it completely). Distinct citrus notes, a bit of vanilla and an oakiness, and a clean, crisp finish overall. It's well worth overcoming some prejudices to try this higher quality version of a staid label (there are even higher expressions, for those willing to pay more). The packaging is what you'd expect from the brand, mass marketed bottles with a bit of class. I'm unsure as to whether all the bottles are screw tops, or if some have stoppers. If you can find it, there's a nice gift set available with two very handsome branded glasses at very little of a mark-up.

(Note : Initially I had this under the heading of Dewar's 12yr Special Reserve. That was incorrect. The Special Reserve is a separate label. This review pertains to the normal bottling of the 12yr blend.)

Price - ~$35 for a 750ml bottle

Availability - Widely available.

Website - www.dewars.com

Compass Box Oak Cross

I wanted to stick with just one of the Compass Box line, but it's so good I can't help myself. In contrast to the more rough hewed Peat Monster comes this gentler, more sophisticated blend. The "Oak Cross" of the name comes from the combination of spirits matured in both French oak and American oak casks. Whether that's pure marketing or not, it's hard to deny that they've blended an exceptionally smooth, flavorful whisky with the Oak Cross blend. The liquor itself is a light amber, with no added coloring to trick the eye, and bottled at 43%. It's got less of an up front kick that something like Peat Monster will give you, but this is by far the best sipping scotch of the five labels I've listed here. Strong notes of sawdust and dried fruit on the nose give way to a sweet vanilla opening that finishes off with a dry, lingering spiciness. I'd say the Oak Cross is best enjoyed neat, but a splash of water to open it up a bit certainly couldn't hurt. This is just an excellent whisky all around, and possibly the best of the Compass Box range. Buy this for yourself, and share it with your friends that may not like whisky all that much. This one might change their minds a bit.

Price - ~$50-60 for a 750ml bottle

Availability - Moderate. Again, check stores that you know stock more scotches. Possibly a bit more difficult to find than Peat Monster and Asyla, but not too much more of a challenge.

Website - www.compassboxwhisky.com

Mono-Lagering: Black Swan

2011-07-18T14:05:00.005-04:00

It felt good to get back to Mono-Lagering. With the freedom a teacher enjoys in the summer, I can visit bars more difficult to get to than the usual Park Slope or Williamsburg affairs. So last week I decided to start exploring Bed-Stuy. The first bar I chose was Black Swan, right near the G train.

I had a theme in mind. I had a bag full of nerdery (comics and a brand-spanking new copy of Dance with Dragons), and I spotted some Dr. Who villains lurking on the molding opposite the bar. This was going to be the post where I talk about being a nerd, and everything that means.

It isn't. It might actually be far nerdier than that, as this is the Mono-Lagering where I get serious.

For non New York readers, some background is in order. Bed-Stuy is, like my neighborhood of Bushwick, a part of Brooklyn for decades known as a rather crime-ridden slum. Whereas my Bushwick is largely a Latino stronghold, Bed-Stuy has been home to blacks, be they southern transplants, Jamaicans, or old school Brookynites. Both neighborhoods have of late begun a gentrification process, a process I have watched since its infancy in Bushwick.

In Bed-Stuy, for whatever reason, it seems to be moving more quickly. Cafes, galleries, micropubs, high-end restaurants and lots of new young professionals have gathered in just a few short years.

In New York we don't like to talk about race. Americans in general shy from the topic, but here up north we're used to just assuming that's a problem for those rednecks down south. We weren't the slave-based economy, after all. But that does not change that race is still a Huge and Horrible problem here. New York is one of the most segregated cities I've ever seen. Here in Bushwick I can point you to which streets are Mexican and which are Puerto Rican. The school where I teach has around an eighty percent Latin population, whereas a friend's school a few blocks away has an eighty percent black population.

Now, it makes sense for immigrants to prefer living around people from their country of origin. However, the way New York real estate works, it's difficult for recent immigrants to ever earn enough to either own their own place or move somewhere with more economic mobility. Hence why Bushwick and Bed-Stuy became what they became.

But now it's gentrifying time and here come all these young white kids (to be fair, some Asians as well) with their dreams of becoming New Yorkers. They find a neighborhood cheap enough for them and invade. Next thing you know, landlords start driving up prices. Soon these young whites are all that can afford to live there anymore; the suburbs of America are colonizing our inner cities, and they're winning.

Now, not even I am self-loathing enough to think this is Simply A Terrible Thing. I've been around Bushwick long enough to know some residents are thrilled at the changes. Crime is on the decrease, the streets are safer for their kids, and, frankly, some of the new business are great, welcome additions. As a former secretary at work once said to me when I first moved to Bushwick some ten years ago, "I like it when you whites move in. You pick up your dog's shit!"

BUT, where are the people that used to live here going? I live alone in an apartment; every other unit houses a family of at least three or four. Where did the family in my apartment go? There are nights I spend more on booze than one of my neighbors might spend on food for a week.

Gentrification is inevitable in this American society. And it will always have positive and negative repercussions. Which direction it leans in is for smarter people than me to say. I simply know it makes me extremely uncomfortable when young gringos open up a Mexican restaurant across the street from a tortillaria that's been there for generations, but it makes me really happy to see young tattooed artists helping neighborhood kids plant a garden or paint a mural.

America's strength has always come from the variety of people that call it home, New York more so, and Brooklyn EVEN MORE SO. But it works best when these different folks do things together; not ignoring the differences, not erasing identities, but combining. In a Bushwick Bahn Mi, I want to taste the jalapeño and the foie gras and the cilantro.

So I walked to Black Swan apprehensive. Here was a high-end-ish pub with fancy food and a huge beer list right in the middle of an area warned against just a few years ago. I walked in and it's a beautiful place; stark black and white walls, good wood. Nice long bar with a copper top; books and accoutrements tastefully appointed. I ordered a Reissdorf Kolsch, and it was perfect for that hot, humid day: crisp with just a hint of creamy sweetness.

Their bourbon selection was impressive, and their cocktail list drew me in. I had a "Hensley," which is bacon-infused bourbon with maple syrup, orange bitters, and a flamed orange peel. Good Lord it was delicious. I sat and I drank and I noticed the Daleks and I thought about this nerdy post I was going to write. A girl sat near me marking up a book with a highlighter while wearing some of the shortest shorts I've seen yet this year (thank you, summer). They even had the captions on the ESPN talking-heads programming (I've long been irritated by bars that put on talking head shows and neither turn it up nor offer captions; I do not want to simply look at Woody Paige's face). It was nerd time.

But then I noticed something else. This was the most racially diverse group of patrons I had ever seen in a bar. The food offered something for everyone; Jamaican jerk chicken alongside a tuna nicoise salad wonderfully prepared. This was a local bar where both new and old locals sat together. A dozen different accents talked about sports, work travails, and sex.

I won't say we were no longer whites and blacks and Asians and young and old and immigrant and native; of course we were still all these things. But we were also all Brooklynites, we were all at the Black Swan, and we were all drinkers, drinking together.

The Black Swan is doing it right, and I'll be back as soon as I can.

Barography: The Reservoir

2011-07-06T02:33:00.005-04:00

You've got to be kidding me! Sorry, that has no context for you, reader. I just finished writing out a few paragraphs of introduction explaining the lack of posts on this blog for the past month. And right when I was about to wrap it up, I somehow unplugged my computer and lost the entire thing. I could not make up how, when I finally got to explain the frustrations that kept me from writing so long, A VERY FRUSTRATING THING HAPPENED TO KEEP ME FROM WRITING.

So, you know what, this blog isn't about my ailments or breakdowns (well, not directly), so maybe that was a sign to just get on with a new Barography.

When last we left, I had found my first New York bar, Shades of Green. While I still will go there from time to time even today, the second half of my college years found me having a new semi-permanent haunt, The Reservoir. The Reservoir was quite a bit more convenient for me, only about four blocks away on the same street as the dorm I lived in all four years of college. (Those of you who did not go to school in NYC, getting an apartment as a college student is an insanely expensive/difficult procedure. Those of you who went to NYU, yes, I stayed in Weinstein all four years, but guess who never got his ass booted out to Broome St or some other semi-official wayward home. I got my own room, yeah.)

The Reservoir was and is a local, sporty bar. Wood walls all around, plenty of TVs with various games/commentary on, a pool table, a juke. They serve food late, and their burger still is one of my top ten favorites. The staff has always been friendly; in fact, this was the first place where I truly made a friend with someone on staff. My dear Anna-Lisa was/is an NYU classmate, the introducer of Old Whiskey River, partner in crime, Jets and Mets co-fan, wedding date, and all-around great person.

Anyway, at Reservoir was when I really came into myself as a drinker. No more ciders, no more whiskey sours, no more starter-set bullshit. This was a place for bourbon and beer. It's always had a decent selection of both, and plenty of good specials throughout the week. I was there fairly recently where every pint was three dollars. You can bet I enjoyed that special, yes I did.

So Reservoir is where I went from "a guy who drinks" to "a drinker," if you can parse that distinction. I found my habits, my tastes, and my path. It was a home to parties for years. It remained my regular after college . . .it's not like I was going to pick a joint in Jersey City. Not until I moved to Brooklyn did I begin to switch over. So, while the Calamity Cafe is where myths were born in my drinking life, Reservoir is where stories started.

One of the great pleasures of drinking, whether with old friends or someone just-met, is the sharing of stories. We all have our canon, don't we, along with our apocrypha? We have our epics and our picaresques, all our life-bits with ample amusement or portent. Reservoir might be the home of my short stories. I've got several all set there, some only a line long. For instance, it's still the first and only bar where, while sitting at a table talking to friends, a waitress approached, asked if I was in fact, me, and then told me there was a phone call waiting for me at the bar. That was a nice feeling.

Reservoir was my bar when I first fell in actual adult love. It, of course, was a terrible, terrible idea; this helps explain some of my more erratic behaviors there over the years. One night, while seeing a friend walk in and sit at another table. Well, I thought of the funniest joke ever and knew that was the time for it. I stood up at the couch where I was, next to a wooden column. I then screamed, "DAVE MORREALE! THIS IS YOUR FUCKING HEAD!" upon which I stuck my Spyder Knife* into the column as hard as I could, stared him down, then laughed and sat down. Dave got it, but my companions at the time and many patrons were much less comfortable.

I also recall, one odd night, burning holes in my t-shirt and then ripping it Hulk Hogan style. (This girl really did a number on me.) My dear Captain, Kirk Diaz gave me a shirt to cover up with. I was lightly hit by a Taxi upon walking out of the bar that night. We were caught nearly breaking into the NYU library. "You're a very good guard," I recall saying.

That's not the only time I lost my shirt there. I remember a girl coming up and asking to buy my shirt emblazoned with the symbol of Cobra (GI Joe's terrorist nemesis) for her brother. I haggled her to 20 bucks and stripped right there. I think Kirk came to my rescue again that night. (Perhaps he was just saving himself from looking at my hirsuitery.) We all thought that was pretty cool. Of course, it wasn't until a day or two later that I thought, "Hey, maybe I should have talked with her for a while. She might have been flirting." Again, this girl had really done a number on me.

The last great Reservoir story, at least so far, was when I first started the Teaching Fellows program. Here I was, surrounded by girls near my age, smart, young, dedicated. We'd spent our first week in courses, started to get to know each other. I invited my table to a bar for lunch after class on Friday. Out of the six, two agreed. As we ride the train there, one says, "So this is a bar? I don't really go to bars. I don't drink much. I mean, occasionally I'll have a glass of wine while reading Shakespeare."

The other girl agrees**. Well, you can imagine the panic I was feeling. A) This sounded like an awful time and B) I was worried this might be the norm in this program (it most definitely wasn't). So in my desperation I start playing along. "Yeah, I don't really go much either. I don't drink much. Yeah, uh, this was just a restaurant near my college . . .I think they're a bar, too."

I should have known it would not be that easy. We walked in to find three people: a bartender, a patron, and a waitress. The bartender immediately says, "Hey, Joe!"

The patron turns. "Joe Rice! Good to see you!"

And the waitress was the aforementioned Anna-Lisa. She hugged me. "Joe! What are you doing this weekend??" I stammered and answer as she brought us to a table. She asked for their drink orders (water) and didn't ask me. She came back with a bourbon neat and a beer.

"Why do you have two drinks?" the Little Miss on the Prairie asked.

The jig was up, so I dove in. "Because that's how I like it." I downed the bourbon and chased it with beer. I knew then it had been wrong of me to hide. I am a drinker, unashamed and unrepentant.

There were lots of little times at the Reservoir. Snowy birthday cab rides with roommates; a free round in tribute to the just-died King of Pop; after-hours Yahtzee; the time Kirk tried to light Dubin on fire.

The Reservoir may not be home to epics, other than The Worst Idea for Love Ever, but I love all these small stories. Perhaps the Reservoir is the best Anthology of Short Stories my drinking life has had.

*-So, in preparing for this post, I looked up those Spyder Knives. I lost mine years ago (to the thanks of many), but thought I might get another now. It was an impromptu Christmas present from a buddy's dad. He gave us both one. I remember his solemn advice. "I know you two are assholes. If you find yourselves in a fight, I want you to take this knife and throw it as far away from you as possible. I don't want your asses beat AND cut." Anyway, DEAR GOD they are pricey, never mind.

**-I thankfully later found out this second girl, Juli, was just as horrified as I was. We've had many a beer since.

I know, I know

2011-06-27T19:54:00.000-04:00

It's been FAR too long since I've updated. Let me finish school tomorrow and we'll be back in the swing of things. Traveling Mono-Lagerings, and some really important (to me) Barographies on their way.

I love you.

I'm on the wagon.

It sucks.

I'll be off in two days.

Yay!

Drinking Through The Ages: Age 30

2011-06-08T11:23:00.000-04:00

Click to enlarge and read the finale of this series!!

Mono-Lagering: The Gibson

2011-06-02T16:39:00.005-04:00

Given a gift of free beer coupons from 30 different bars from Brokelyn.com, Mr. Rice has decided to visit each one, and record his thoughts.

The school year is wrapping up, which is great, but which is also quite difficult. By this point in the year I'm pretty tired of my students, and they're definitely tired of me. Slight annoyances repeated for ten months seem like personal vendettas. WHY CAN'T JOSE REMEMBER WE DON'T ASK TO GO TO THE BATHROOM WHILE SITTING IN THE MEETING AREA?!?!? Seriously, Jose. Knock that shit off.

So this time of year is kind of a stress enhancer: you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but everything is falling apart anyway. I don't know who is more ready to get the fuck out, the teachers or the kids. So, to make things easier, these next few weeks I'm keeping it local. This summer I will Mono-Lager all over Brooklyn, visiting Red Hook, Bed Stuy, you name it.

But this time I went to the Gibson in Williamsburg. I have apparently been there twice; the more recent I definitely remember, as it was a post-concert little trip with my dear friend the Highlander and her handsome husband (GUESS WHO TAUGHT AN ALLITERATION LESSON THIS WEEK). She claims I was also there the night I was the stripper/guest at a bachelorette party, and she may well be right. I certainly don't recall it.

On one of the first really beautiful days in New York this year they had all their windows thrown open, creating a nice open air feeling in the main bar, and the backyard was open. I sauntered in, mood as warm as the weather. It's not a particularly remarkable space physically, but there's certainly nothing wrong with it. Foosball table in the corner, giant TV for games or events, decent sized bar, and various seating arrangements. I ordered an Old Chub that was 8% APV. The beer was sweet and definitely strong, and would have been perfect on a cooler day.

I began to notice an odd abundance of real bar amateurs, or at least super weirdoes. One girl came in and asked how much "wine" was. It took the poor bartender a while to get her to figure out what she was actually asking for. The next guy asked for a "Yagermeister" (short a sound) straight. A whole fucking glass of the shit. The tender poured heavy and charged him ten bucks, to which he said "Well, if I knew it was going to be that much, I'd have gotten something else . . ." HEY ASSHOLE YOU SHOULD COMPLETELY HAVE GOTTEN SOMETHING ELSE. FUCKING GROSS.

Just a bit of eavesdropping explained that there was a book club meeting there. You could completely tell if someone was going to that when they entered the door. They were not bar types. Nobody had a damn clue what to do.

Anyway, everything was so "Summer is coming," in a reverse House Stark kind of way that I switched to the Anchor Summer beer, which was smooth, crisp, and just what the doctor ordered. I reread some more Game of Thrones and waited for my friends to arrive, happy as a clam.

I didn't always look to summer with such gleeful anticipation. As a kid, I really didn't care for it that much. Summer, to me, was a sweaty time where I didn't see my friends as much and had to do things I found less pleasant than homework. I was a nerd; I really enjoyed going to school. An only child, I didn't get to see nearly as many people when we weren't all mandated to be in the same place for eight hours every day.

My mother, a music teacher, LIVED for summer vacation. Every year we'd go to a beach, usually Myrtle Beach (hillbilly mecca). Going to the beach and laying out was and is one of her favorite activities in the world. She never understood quite why I disagreed. I was what you might call an "indoor kid." I wanted to play with my toys, read books, maybe watch TV. Hell, it wasn't that I minded being outside. I just hated, just utterly loathed laying out and tanning. Dad would take me into the ocean and jump waves and swim with me. That was great. But every day had to have periods of tanning.

It was hot, it was boring, and it was humiliating. I know mom wanted me to fit in with the cool kids at school; but I basically already did, I just didn't look like them. I never got the appeal of burning your skin to a crisp. I can only imagine some of those girls I went to high school with now look like an old purse. And, God, when I was on my back, I couldn't even read, because the book would "block the sun from my face." YES, EXACTLY.

So I never could quite get up the same sort of pseudo-mythologized love of summer that basically everyone else in America has. Years later, when summer was simply a time that I could basically do anything anytime, well, then I got the point. Summer, now, is endless possibility. Want to stay out all night on a Tuesday? YES. How about road trips to stupid places? YUP. Road trips to delicious places? EVEN MORE YUP.

This is how the lobster roll became my quintessential summer food. I had always loved the sweet meat of crustaceans (seafood restaurants were a giant highlight in those early forced beach days). But there's something especially magical about mayo, lobster, butter, and a hot dog bun. Rich without weighing you down, and ridiculously flavorful. One summer, my ex-wife and I took a trip up the coast of Maine, hitting every lobster roll joint we could find.

That was a good goddam summer.

So, as luck would have it, the Gibson was premiering a new thing where every Wednesday they serve lobster rolls in the backyard for just sixteen bucks (if you don't eat them often, that is actually a good price for them in this city). Unfortunately, my stomach was on the fritz and I had already eaten, so I didn't get to sample one, but several of my friends enjoyed them with sometimes frightening intensity (Vacuum Nicole, I'm looking at you).

So friends old and new dropped by for a drink or eight, some lobster, and mostly just laughter. Summer is no longer that time I don't see my friends much and I have to do things I hate. It's done a complete one-eighty turn. Summer is freedom. Summer is deliciousness. Summer is dicking around 24/7. Summer is girls in dresses. Summer is linen shirts and light suits. Summer is friends.

Summer is fucking awesome.

Drinking Through the Ages: Age 25

2011-06-01T11:09:00.002-04:00

Drinking Through the Ages: Age 25

2011-05-25T13:29:00.000-04:00

Drinking Through the Ages: Age 16

2011-05-18T11:39:00.000-04:00

Barography: Shades of Green

2011-05-17T18:23:00.005-04:00

Last time I told you about the first bar I chose to go to, back in Appalachia. Today I'd like to talk about my first New York bar, Shades of Green. My pal Alex has already talked about it at World of Awesome, but I think I might have a thing or two to say about it myself. For me, Shades is particularly relevant to me as it is the first bar I ever drank at.

I've talked before about how I didn't drink as a teenager. I saw little reason to; I didn't particularly care for those yokels who talked about nothing else, and my buddies and I were having fun in our own weird, incredibly nerdy ways. When I first entered college and heard the term "straight edge" I thought, well, hey, that's me.

That's right, I once thought I was straight edge. After puberty's wildest throes had hit and I remained the same insecure, dateless nerd as before, I settled in a sort of "well if I'm going to be like this, I might as well be this way on purpose." So I didn't drink, I didn't smoke, and I didn't allow girls to touch my dick. (Dry humping was extremely OK.)

But this isn't here to be an examination of my weird sexual hang-ups as a young adult. You have to pay therapists lots of cash money in order for them to pretend to be interested in such; I can't imagine casual readers of this blog, looking for some laughs, some recommendations, and the occasional sexy picture of yours truly, could be paid enough money to read about it. No, this blog is about drinking, and this entry is about how I started drinking.

It started, like so many life-altering decisions throughout my life, with a crush on a girl. Margo was my first college crush. She was fun and funny and seemed to think I was, too. I started hanging out with her and her friends my freshman year, hoping to win her over, and, I'll be damned, it started to work. But, oh, how I remember that fateful day.

"Hey, this weekend we're going to Shades of Green. It's a bar nearby, you should come." I was almost ashamed to admit that my alcohol consumption to date had been a few sips of Natural Light given to me by my father as a sort of reverse psychology maneuver when I was six and a Budweiser a buddy smuggled in for me at Academic Appalachian Camp at Transylvania University (those are all real things) that I drank out of obligation.

I realized the reasons I hadn't drank in high school were pretty much not applicable anymore. It seemed quite unlikely that some dumbass redneck I could barely tolerate sober would swing by a bar in the Village just when I was finally drunk. So I nervously agreed to go along and the rest is history.

God, I remember those early days, those "trying to figure out how to do this" days. I hadn't acquired the taste for beer yet, nor, really, for anything else. I believe my first regular drink was a whiskey sour. A goddam rail whiskey sour! Lord, the thought of it gives me the sweaty mouth something awful. I recall experimenting with white Russians--another punch to the old digestive system, there. For a while I settled upon bourbon and the occasional cider.

But that's not altogether interesting, is it? The more I look back at the time and all that it led to, I find that the pertinent question is not "Where did I start drinking?" nor "How did I start drinking?" but "Why did I start drinking?" and even more "Why do I drink?"

"Why I Drink." Sounds like the worst essay ever. But this isn't so much a list of grievances (though Lord knows my students give me new and weirder reasons every day) or heartbreaks (I try to contain that in my songwriting, for your sake, dear reader) or occasions (End of the World Day!) or what have you, it's more a "why did I take to this activity I never thought I would like?" situation.

The answer requires a bit of backstory that I never quite understood until, well, until I saw a therapist. Near the end of my marriage I sought out therapy in order to learn how to argue with my ex--arguing and fighting seemed like an anathema to me, and it was driving her crazy. Well, one week in, we split, so for the next year I basically met once a week to figure out what the fuck was wrong with me. And, as far as we could tell, it all pretty much boiled down to one thing.

I wasn't screwed over by my parents or some touchy relative or high school melodrama. I was simply aware of too much, too early. This may come as a shock to those of you who know me now, but I used to be a weirdly smart kid. Standardized tests were my bitches, gifted classes, academic team, the whole shebang. And that did very well for me in a lot of ways. God knows I wouldn't be where I am if I didn't used to be really smart.

The problem was how early I was so smart. When other kids my age would be at the pediatric dentist's office, they'd run straight for the play area where there were blocks and such. I can distinctly recall being four or five and sitting next to my mom in the waiting room. I knew about the play area; I wanted to go there desperately. But to ask seemed crass; I would not go unless the subject came up from an adult.

I was a hopeless social neurotic since before I could multiply. Every single thing that would happen my mind would race the way only a precocious only child's could. I was used to living in my head, and this brain of mine used to work quite quickly. Every second of social interaction would include my brain coming up with a dozen ways this could be embarrassing if I do it wrong. I've tried to explain exactly how this works in my own stream-of-conscious internal narration, but I can't possibly layer all of it.

Take a simple thing like an attractive girl saying "Hello." My brain would immediately come up with at least ten reasons she said hello, each with its own backstory and connotation and reason. I would ten proceed to think of a dozen or so responses TO EACH OF THOSE REASONS and play them out in my head for possible missteps. At the very same time, I'm also thinking at least five or six things about myself, what I look like, how I'm holding myself, how I think that looks vs. how it looks to her, what other people looking in on this interaction might see, etc. Also simultaneously I would think of a slew of other times attractive girls greeted me and how they went wrong or right. All of this happens in the space of a second.

And it never stops. This is what it's like to live in my head, twenty-four hours a day. It takes me at least an hour to get to sleep as I replay everything in my head like an obsessive quarterback, imagine alternate ways things could have happened, and hate myself for how they did happen.

I spent eighteen or so years feeling this constantly. The first time I ever got it to calm down was that first night at Shades when I got drunk for the first time. They say alcohol dulls your brain, but for me, at least, that can be a good thing. Intoxicants are a much-welcome vacation from my own thought processes. Of late I've somewhat quantified what happens: with good booze or smoke, my head feelings lay low while my physical sensations seem intensified. I react with surety, whether wrongly or rightly, and, in fact act on my own accord as to what feels right. There is no microscopic examination of every possible meaning of every word or thought; there is sheer blissful existence.

I know that cannot be a permanent condition. Hell, I wouldn't be half the man I am today without my weird brain circumstances. Rare is the situation where I can't make a friend or get along well with folks, and I don't doubt the computations and permutations have helped greatly with this. It's helped as a teacher, too. I can smell a neurotic kid a mile away. I've taken some aside, "You're thinking this, right?" and their eyes widen in recognition.

Why do I drink? Oh, there's more reasons than I have time to tell you, from the exuberant to the melancholic; a night out cracking jokes with friends, a series of whiskeys to put a bad day away, to loosen up those dancing shoes, to give thanks for what I've had, to mourn the things I've lost. But the overall "Why does this guy like drinking so much?", the big reason? Sometimes it's nice to just enjoy myself and shut down the crazy parts of my brainstuff.

Anyway, Shades is a fine place with great Smithwicks and hordes of fond memories. I remember chasing tail with college buddies (to absolutely no avail). I remember taking my visiting parents there for lunch when the waitress said in her thick Irish accent, "Joe Rice, what are you doing here this time of day?"I remember having my fedora stolen, saving me from being a guy that wore a fedora. When I think of early good college times, I usually think of Shades, and it's not lost its charm yet. And they let you play Settlers of Catan in the back!

Author's note: I went through all my college photos and couldn't find a single one taken at Shades. I think that might actually speak to how much fun was had there. I did, however, find lots of embarrassing stuff to put on the facebook.

Age 12

2011-05-11T11:44:00.000-04:00

Double click to ENLARGE

'Tis Summer, and PEOPLE Are Gay

2011-05-07T11:17:00.004-04:00

Those are definitely the lyrics, not revised, nope, don't look it up.

Just taking a time in my grooming for this austere occasion to wish all you readers a very enjoyable Derby Day. Here is a very serviceable recipe for a tasty mint julep. I love a good julep, but cannot really do more than one or two before I switch back to straight bourbon.

Anyway, today is the day to dress extravagantly while drinking excessively; the most exciting two minutes in sports (very similar to the name some have given me in the boudoir), the Derby is rich with tradition in a state all-too devoid of culture. So tune your fiddles; break out your best hats, ladies; prepare the linen and the seersucker; and most of all get ready to dive in to one hell of a day.

I'll be at Harefield, yelling like a damn fool.

P.S. Insider tip: if the rain really comes, Shackleford is a known slogger.

Mono-Lagering: Union Hall

2011-05-05T16:40:00.007-04:00

Given a gift of free beer coupons from 30 different bars from Brokelyn.com, Mr. Rice has decided to visit each one, and record his thoughts.

Back on the road for another Mono-Lagering--well, back on the subway, at least. My ignorance of Park Slope geography showed up again as I found out Union Hall was also ridiculously close to my friends' apartment. So this past Tuesday, I decided to drop by for a couple of drinks to relax after a stressful day of watching my students try to puzzle out the labyrinthine tricks of standardized testing. My first hint of what was to come was outside, where a placard advertized burlesque (more on that in a second) and "Adult Education: Social Anxiety."

My expectations sank deeper than the Marianas. Was that an actual class? On social anxiety? At a bar? I could imagine few worse ideas. On the other hand, maybe it was just a band with a very terrible name, designed to make sure no one but total freakshows ever showed up for a gig. Either way, I sort of steeled myself, took a breath, and walked in.

I stopped dead in my tracks. The place is fucking huge. This was seriously one of the biggest non-beergarden bars I have ever been in at any point in my life. There's a long bar along the right that had to be fifty or sixty feet long. (Maybe more: my concepts of space and time are horribly lacking.) But that's not all; to the left there was a large library/lounge. I immediately loved that little bit. It felt like an old Gentleman's Club (not the sort where Russian women testily ask if you want a dance every ten seconds), the sort of place Victorian adventurers would gather to swap stories of tigers, intrigue, and turning invisible or something.

And still this bar went on. Behind the lounge were two bocce ball courts, side-by-side. Behind that was a raised section, marked "Reserved for Bruklyn Knights." I didn't even go downstairs, where there is apparently a performance space. This is a bar so big it has a split personality (another point I'll touch on again in a bit).

But the overall vibe I got on that pleasant afternoon was that of Men. From the library/lounge to the competitive sport indoors to the private club planning to meet in the back, everything felt like that mostly-illusive idea of a Club of Men, which has long fascinated me. My grandfather was a fairly high-ranking Mason. My Dad was a member of the local Elk's Club. Both interest me for differing reasons.

My first real experience with the Elks, outside of a conversational reference point, was when my first band played their first show. We were dopey assholes that barely knew their instruments and had songs about hillbillies and making fun of Pearl Jam. We opened up for a punk band called the Connie Dungs. Though half the crowd came for us (we had sold so many t-shirts that we actually had to perform), the other half was decidedly not amused. If I recall correctly, a Taco Bell "burrito" was thrown at us at one point.

But that wasn't the Lodge my father belonged to. Dad's Elks' Lodge was something of a speakeasy. In the middle of a dry area of town, it's a full bar and gambling emporium. I actually got to visit it a couple Christmases ago. Dad and I escaped a boring party thrown by my maternal Aunt (sweet lady, but that party was a snoozer). On the way we had one of those great father-son talks. He was also an early divorcée and, as he put it, the Elks was his Harefield; that is, the bar where he found a second home after a marriage failed.

That made it even more of a significant event, visiting that place. Boy, was it a sight. It was mostly old men grumbling at each other, just talking shit the way they have for fiftysome years. Card games going on at one table with rules Dad did his best to explain to me. Dad bought me a Bud and we chatted and I was introduced to his old bar buddies. It was fucking great. I bought the next round, and put in a shot of Maker's for myself because, why not? When I realized the two beers and a shot cost me around six dollars I never wanted to leave.

Speaking of buying booze, back in the present, I sat down at the top of the bar and selected Left Hand Stout from their twelve, wonderfully-varied taps. It was creamy, thick, and delicious, while not being overwhelming or heavy. The friendly bartender chatted me up a bit and it's apparently very light in both alcohol and caloric content. A sort of micro-brewed American Guinness I guess. I munched on a long pretzel and realized I miss the prevalence of bar snacks.

I've long been fascinated with the Masons. First off, I adore my late grandfather. GK Harmon was one hell of a man, the kind that sends us into tizzies trying to outworship his generation. But also, the Masonic story is fascinating, and the conspiracy theories even more. Directly post-college I tried to drum up interest in joining the Masons with my pals. That landed with a horrible thud. Even if the worst theories are true, damn, man, I want IN on that!

There's just something about a Men's Club that feels . . .intriguing? I'm not sure. I hesitate to dwell on it too much, as I don't especially like the gender politics of exclusion. However, I cannot deny that it's damn fine to just sit around and spend time with other dudes every now and then. I've always been friends with a lot of girls, and sometimes even catch hell about it. But I love a night of Men and I'm not sure if I could ever place why. I don't tend to buy into theories that men and women are naturally so different; it doesn't sit right. Sure, there might be some intrinsic differences (psychologically/emotionally, not just, uh, genitalially), but cultural indoctrination seems more likely for "Men are like ______, but women are like ________!" CUE LAUGH TRACK.

Hell, sometimes hanging with the boys includes a girl or two. Just like I've crossed over into being "one of the girls" there's sometimes a girl who is freely accepted in dudery, from poker night to late-night drunken trips to horrible strip clubs.

Tangent time. What the fuck is up with burlesque? God, I hate it. It has all the weird social discomfort of real stripping except no one gets naked. They wear nerdy costumes, have stupid fake names, feel way too confident about the way they look unclad, and generally just annoy me. I feel this tangent drawing to a close because I just figured out what is up with burlesque. It's Nerd Stripping. Nerds ruin everything, including things that were already terrible.

I'm not sure what exactly makes an individual apt for boys/girls night crossover; could be the fact that this individual never has and never will do sex on any of the members of the opposite gender in question. I could also be gay.

Anyway, Union Hall didn't have many people there at four, but most all were men. There was the helpful bartender, an older man drinking mixed drinks, and two younger fellows playing bocce with some of the weirdest body language I've seen. The Stout had been tasty, but it was too much to have more than one in a row. For my free pint, I chose a Captain Lawrence Kolsch. Been drinking a lot of kolsches lately; the warmer weather is bringing out the crispness. The Lawrence one is particularly crisp with a nice sweetness, very refreshing. To make up for the low alcohol content of the Stout, I paired the Kolsch with an Old Whiskey River.

Musing over the snack menu I noticed they served beer cheese. I've tried to explain this stuff recently, and it isn't that easy. It's a spreadable cheese, kind of like pimento, I guess? Except it's spicy and has beer in it. It's popular back in Kentucky, and harder than hell to find up here. As the owners of Union Hall (and Floyd's and the Bell House) are from Kentucky, so they've started making their own. Dear God is it delicious! And amazingly terrible for you, but who gives a shit, right?

Beside the head of the bar is a giant bulletin board where all the upcoming events are advertised. Bands, karaoke, game nights, classes (?), interviews . . .it honestly felt a little disparate and desperate. It's like Union Hall has a multiple personality disorder. Is it a men's lounge? Is it a venue? Is it a bocce joint? I mean, it is big enough to host not only multitudes of people but ideas, so I guess it's all right.

There's something hard to define about Union Hall. I liked it quite a bit, but something makes me slightly uncomfortable if I try to think about it. I guess it's like a Men's Club or a boy's night that way. Yeah, it's great, but if I try to examine why I get squicked out and worry I'm going to ruin the enjoyment I get. It can't be that I am uncomfortable exploring my feelings both about myself and my fellow males, can it?

That's just a stereotype, and those are bullshit.

Drinking Through the Ages

2011-05-04T11:32:00.003-04:00

...My ages, that is. Hi it's Leah. Every Wednesday for the next six weeks I'll be posting an illustration based on a memory or an experience of mine whilst or having to do with drinking. Enjoy! We'll start young...

All content Copyright 2011 Leah Perrotta

The Home Stash

2011-04-29T09:28:00.005-04:00

One thing I appreciate about being a liquor aficionado is that getting there costs less than being a wine aficionado*. You’re not committed to an entire bottle; you can always try something by the glass; and you don’t need company if you want to try a bunch of different stuff. For most of us, our education comes from trying many different liquors at bars – the bar tender recommends something, a label or name catches the eye, a friend pushes something, or you just work your way through every liquor systematically. On the rare occasion, we may come from families with a great booze culture and exposure to all kinds of deliciousness. But the main thing is the experience comes from, well...experience. There’s really no way around it, you have to taste many different liquors before you find what you like; and then you keep tasting because you never know when you’re going to find something else you’re going to like. But once you’ve found your favourite drinks, you might notice that you have particular preferences for different occasions.

For example, I’m a big whisky drinker – it’s my drink of choice. My bartenders consider my essential trait as a customer to be, whisky, neat; water, back. But I’d be a pretty sad booze lover if that’s all I did. On a nice sunny day, I really enjoy a vodka and soda, with a splash of bitters. If I need to relax when I’ve been travelling, or I’ve had a tough day and I need to feel civilised, a Martini with a nice chunky olive is just the thing. Hot summer days yell out for a cold, cold beer, or a crisp Prosecco. If I’m lounging around or if I’m writing, tequila or mezcal is the way to go. Quiet nights at the bar or parties can call for cocktails. And any time is a good time for saké.

This is all very well if you’re surrounded by a variety of bars and you’ve got some spending money. But eventually there’s going to come a time when you don’t want to go to a bar (or you don’t have an easily accessible one – it happens when you don’t live in NYC), or you’re having folks over, or you just can’t afford to drink out all the time. So what do you do? You keep a stash at home, that’s what you do.

The way I started building my tiny little bar at home was by buying a nice bottle of a really good but not extravagant whisky when I had some money to spare, and slowly building on it. If you’re serious about building your home collection, make sure you get the good stuff – you never want to feel like there isn’t a haven of civilisation in your home. This way when you get home after work or you’re staying in of a weekend, you don’t feel like you’re missing out. I think there’s a sense of relaxation that comes with knowing you don’t actually have to be in a bar to get a top notch buzz going. And having a really good tipple at home also means if you ever have a friend or two over – even for pizza and movies – you always have something meaningful with which to cap the time spent together. And your friends will appreciate it. So when you get your next pay cheque, go buy a bottle of something you enjoy, but you don’t normally drink at the bar because you don’t want to pay too much money. Then, the next time you have some cash to spare, go buy a different liquor. If you already have whisky, go for vodka. If you already have vodka, go for tequila. Every couple of months, buy something new. Unless you’re drinking like a fiend at home, you’ll find that within half a year you have a pretty decent bar.

Once you have a nice little stash at home, think about having friends over. Give them a treat, share your good stuff with them. Learn one or two good cocktail recipes and show off. Let everyone know what you like to drink. This is another way to add to your collection: be vocal about your tastes. That way if you have good taste, your friends can learn something from you, and if you have bad taste your friends can set you straight. And if you have genuinely, implacably horrible taste, your friends never have to spend good money on the classy stuff that you’re never going to drink thereby saving everyone concerned a whole lot of pain.

Throw a party with food, and tell your friends to bring some booze. This may seem odd (Why am I asking other people to bring stuff?), extravagant (You mean I have to pay for food?), or inconvenient (All that cleaning afterward!) to you, but if your friends know you’re having a booze-happy party they’ll contribute. What you’ll probably get is a lot of beer and dubious wine, but there’s always going to be someone who brings a little something else like a bottle of whiskey or a bottle of vodka. It’s rare for whole bottles of liquor to get polished off in a single party. There’ll always be something left. This is good – now you’ve got some filler for the future.

The other thing to remember while building your collection at home is that, like in a bar, you’re allowed to have a top shelf and a bottom shelf selection. Not only is this economical, it’s also nice to have a sense of occasion. So, when you do break out the good shit, not only the others but also you can feel special about it. But don’t be an utterly cheap bastard just to economise. If you’ve really been spending your time thinking about booze and sampling stuff, you might notice that your taste and the bottle’s price point aren’t always in congruence. There are plenty of expensive liquors out there that I wouldn’t use to poison you while there are others that are overlooked because of cheapness**. For example, when it comes to cheap but acceptable bourbon, I’ll take Old Grandad over Jack Daniel’s any day, because I cannot conceive of drinking Jack as anything but a last resort. Another more upscale example is Johnnie Walker – the Blue Label retails from anywhere to $190 to $230 a bottle. But I think the Green Label is a comparable product and retails for only $49 to $58 a bottle. And when you contrast the difference in price, there’s a hugely greater value for money.

Letting people know what and how you drink is one of the better ways to collect gifts of alcohol. This may sound self serving, but come birthday and Christmas time, most folks don’t really have a lot of time or energy trying to figure out just what it is you want. If you’re a boozer, folks know what to get you and it only adds to your general awesomeness because, if you’re the kind of person who reads this blog, you’re only going to end up sharing.

Good Scotch, good bourbon (rye whiskey, if you like spicy), one good gin, a decent neutral alcohol, angostura bitters and a decent orange liqueur is all you’ll ever need for a respectable home bar. And unless you’re mixing flamboyant drinks that need a whole lot of colours and crazy flavours, you’ll be well covered for cocktails with these basic things. And unless you’re a complete idiot you’ll already have some other essentials in your home, like lemons and their peels; sugar; and eggs for the more adventurous cocktails. Now if you do want to go crazy all you’ll need are juices and fizzy drinks which are easily found in your bodega or can be brought to your party by your guests.

* Though the eventual costs are just as insane.

** Somebody remind me that I have to do an entire post about this sometime.

Photographs © A. Das

Barography: The Calamity Cafe

2011-04-27T17:42:00.005-04:00

So last week I sent a copy of the last Barography about Stones to my parents. My mother pointed out a very important factual error. I apologize to the readership; I did not start going there around five or six years old. I went there in a baby chair that would be put in the booth. I have officially been going to bars longer than I have known how to do such things as walk, communicate, or distinguish complex ideas. This is a fact about me that you should probably know.

So Stones may have been my first regular, but that was up to my folks, and my memories are obviously fuzzy at best. The first bar I recall ever really taking a shine to myself was also across the river, though not in dank, industrial Ironton, Ohio. Across the other bridge was Huntington, West Virginia (that's right: Kentucky, Ohio, AND West Virginia . . .three shitty states for the price of one). Huntington is the home of Marshall University, they of the McConaughey-driven sports-film. More importantly for my friends and I growing up, though, was that it was the only "college town" within easy driving distance.

So around the age of 16, as we started exploring around on our own, we found Huntington to be a respite from the bland suburbia or rural backwashes of our homes. Huntington was no longer just the home of Toys r Us (though I truly wish I could now enjoy anything half as much as I'd enjoy going through the GI Joe figures in hopes that a new wave had appeared), no, it was the home to cafes, non-chain bookstores, record stores with bands we'd only heard whispers of . . .this was our first prolonged exposure to the culture of the greater world around us.

And nothing felt moreso than the Calamity Cafe. The Calamity was a bar/restaurant with a southwesternish menu (their cheese soup is still the topic of internet discussion, apparently). Smoking was allowed indoors; in fact, they had an old cigarette vending machine in the dining room. And, best of all, they had music. We'd go up nearly every weekend by the time we were seniors in high school. It didn't matter what was playing in that, in-retrospect-small dining area. It was live, it was different, and we ate it up.

I remember one band, the Vodka Killers. I can't find a lick about them anywhere, and I don't think they lasted too long. Their drummer was a mainstay, though. But the Vodka Killers were, to my teenage eyes, all rock and roll swagger. Gyrations and vamping and bravado backed by loud guitars and hard drums.

They were fucking perfect.

I may have only seen them twice, who the hell knows, but they are mythic in my brain. That is what it should be. Likewise, one Mr. Willie Phoenix. Mr. Phoenix, be-dreaded, compact, blazer without a shirt, sweating sex like most men sweat stink, completely destroyed a set there. He was on the tables, wailing like all our lives depended on it. His website calls his music "psychedelic garage blues." All I knew is that it blew my goddam mind. That night Willie Phoenix entered the permanent pantheon, the archetypal figures that, no matter where I am or what I've done, they still occupy this mythic territory in my psyche.

The Calamity had no shortage of such gigantic characters. I remember the man we knew only as "The Ass-Beater." He'd stand against the wall during a show, pageboy cap loosely draped over his curly hair. His forearms were like tree-trunks, and were always folded. He'd nod appreciatively from time to time, but otherwise stoically allowed himself to be surrounded by the sounds, smells, and sights.

There was the Waitress. Pink hair and big eyes, always a joke on the ready, always the "Oh, I'll flirt but you know you have no chance, right," but not in a cruel way. She'd remember your regular orders and not make fun of you for not drinking that night. We started going there before we started drinking. I remember when we finally realized that we could, in fact, enjoy some beers there, this was like being let into the secret inner monastery of Shaolin. Lo, all the secrets of this world were at our feet.

I even remember my favorite dishes. There was the Route 66 Burger, all full of flavor and onions. The psychedelic nachos were basically heaven on a plate. I know others went for, to-me-then, wilder fair like jalepeno pesto angel hair shrimp pasta. I only wish that I could have tried everything out once my palate expanded beyond my meager roots.

Once we went off to college, spreading out across the land, the Calamity was our touchstone, our meet-up during every trip back to Ashland. The mythic status hadn't worn off; this was still The Bar, the Platonic Ideal of what such things should be. My friends Mark, Ben and I began a tradition of performing at open mic nights whilst visiting. As time went on, our performances got weirder and weirder. Rogers and Clark added "The Free Shit Monkey." The Free Shit Monkey was me in a luchador mask. I would dance the Free Shit Dance while handing out free shit during the Free Shit Song, then join them for the rest of the set.

Another time Ben and I introduced ourselves as Seth Hymes and Bryan Patrick, "The Virtuosos." We spent most of our time poorly warming up for an a capella rendition of "Sounds of Silence." We began, horribly off-key, looked at each other in panic, and ran out of the fire escape. Good times.

When it came time to throw Mark his bachelor party, as his best man, I could think of no better place. Unfortunately, we took too long to get there (we were all very busy eating Doritos and drinking whiskey in our underwear) and the kitchen was closed when we arrived. Once the three of us went to the open-mic stage, though, some guy I didn't recognize called out "All right! We're gonna hear some Weezer!" It was good to be recognized.

As our trips home became less frequent, we lost touch with the Calamity. When Huntington banned smoking in restaurants, they had a choice: lose the food or lose the smokes. They shut down the kitchen pretty much immediately. Though I applaud the ballsiness of such a move, it doesn't seem to have worked out in the long run, as the Calamity has been long gone for a while now. Last I heard, some hippie-dippy coffee joint had taken over the space.

What's funny, is if I think about it objectively, it was always hippie-dippy. It was the mid-to-late nineties; pink hair, goatees, facial piercings and other questionable choices were all over the place. After over a decade of living in Brooklyn, I have been to many, many objectively cooler places; I have had better food; I have seen better shows.

But the Calamity, like first love, left an imprint on me I'll never forget, nor do I want to. It is where myths were born, where stories first took shape. It might be long gone, and I might have found it painfully lame if I encountered it today, but it's still The Bar. It shaped my perception and desire for years to come, and its influence is still with me today.

Here's to you, Calamity Cafe. May you rest in peace but live forever in the psychogeography of my mind.

Mono-Lagering: dba

2011-04-21T14:02:00.006-04:00

Given a gift of free beer coupons from 30 different bars from Brokelyn.com, Mr. Rice has decided to visit each one, and record his thoughts.

Note: click play for the soundtrack to this post. Seriously.

Today I write in pain. I have committed war crimes against my own body. It is spring break for me, the traditional time of mindless indulgence and excess. Starting last Friday I have gone on one hell of a bender. Today I sit in my dark, cluttered office and write. I need the break. So let me tell you about last night.

I went to dba, no capital letters, in Williamsburg. I had been there once before for a cask beer tasting, and that was lovely. I had otherwise avoided it because the original dba in Manhattan is a fratty, douchey shithole. I was coerced into going to two birthdays there and never felt an ounce of non-misery.

I'm happy to report that the Brooklyn version far surpasses it. It's got a cozy orange-ish interior and a nice backyard and a beer menu that is absolutely preposterous. Thirteen or so casks and more bottles than is probably necessary. Seriously, one is faced with being totally overwhelmed if you start to really look at it.

I started with a Bier de Mars. a strong French-style ale. I'd had it before at my buddy Alex's local, Sheep Station, and I knew it was good. My body had already begun to object to my behavior yesterday, so I was trying to take it easy and slow. I also picked it because Mars is cool.

Alex came by and we shot the breeze as he waited for an OKcupid date to arrive. We mostly talked about the horrible hit-or-miss online dating can be. He seemed to come out OK last night (PUN NOT INTENDED, NOR CLEVER IN THE SLIGHTEST), but I deleted my accounts in disgust recently.

Mars is Ares, God of War, and he is a dick. Ugly, clever Hephaestus's wife, Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty totally cheats on him with Ares. We've known since ancient times that love is a battlefield (OH AY OH). That's really the part of dating I hate: the weird battles that are hidden therein. One must project a certain aspect of one's personality, and the appropriate aspect changes wildly from date to date; AND THERE IS NO WAY TO TELL IN WHAT WAY.

These aren't exactly innovative revelations. Look up in the sky and there are Mars and Venus. Vulcan doesn't even get a planet until Star Trek, but, to be fair, that's a pretty awesome, albeit fictional, planet.

Sometimes friends hear me talk like this, both single and attached, and say, "Well, true, but . . ." and then say something meant to convince me to take an interest in dating again. Why can't I just be a conscientious objector? I love war films (time to re-watch The Thin Red Line), but I don't have what it takes to be a soldier. Nobody questions that. So maybe I just don't like dating, and that's not anyone's fault.

I like spending time with people I like, be they male or female, single or not. I don't particularly enjoy spending my nights meeting people that maybe I'll like (and probably won't). It's not hard to tire of buying drinks for someone you have to trick yourself into finding interesting only to find out they didn't bother to trick themselves into finding you interesting.

The only problem is springtime, and the weird biological impetus it seems to steadfastly throw upon me. Ah, natural selection, how desperately you want me to find a receptacle for my genetic information! (I like how I try to sound like I hate getting laid here. Yeah, right, douchebag.)

So I sit here, stomach completely obliterated, a couple days lost at least, trying to finish a banana so something's in there, and I reflect. dba is a nice place, but nice places can be turned into warzones at the drop of a hat. Memories of exes and bad parties pop up without provocation, and sometimes your body finally screams "KNOCK IT OFF FOR A BIT, ASSHOLE!"

Every man fights his own war, but you're going to lose a few battles, and some aren't worth fighting.

2011-04-15T11:35:00.000-04:00

Stranger in a Strange Land

2011-04-15T11:30:00.000-04:00

For my inaugural post, I would like to write about two things *: 1) My favourite bar, and 2) About being a ruiner.That made up word means exactly what it sounds like – someone who ruins things. In preparation for this little coeur-à-coeur, it may not be the worst idea to hearken back to this piece of sageness about drinking in bars where you do not belong. And subsequently, should you choose to turn up at my favourite bar you will be well schooled in how not to be an asshole, saving me the trouble of having to be very rude to you.

I like to drink at Keen’s, an old-fashioned English chop house (they changed it to steak house some years ago because the Americans were confused) that’s been in existence since 1885. Their signature dish is the mutton chop and their bar has one of the finest single malt whiskey collections in town. Back in the day, Keen’s was a gentleman’s establishment in what was then the heart of the theatre district. And while women could be present they would not be served. Lillie Langtry sued the fuckers in 1905 for women to be served there and won. To show that there were no hard feelings, they named a room after her. The place is packed with all kinds of American history including the program president Lincoln was holding when he was shot, and paintings by Alexander Pope (no, the other one). Also taking pride of place are the clay churchwarden pipes left over from when it was a pipe club. You will find pipes signed by such diverse fellows as Buffalo Bill, Douglas MacArthur, Stanford White, Rube Goldberg, Teddy Roosevelt, Babe Ruth and Albert Einstein. Members had their own pipes and on furnishing their card, a nice young man would locate their pipe, clean and pack the bowl and hard working guys sit and have a pint and a smoke and eat charred cow.

This is a very masculine place. Just so you know how manly it is, the presiding feature of the bar is a painting of a naked woman recumbent on a sofa draped by a lion skin (after Goya) called Miss Keen’s. And though there are no urns, it is art. Generations of young males have been shaped into manhood under her impervious gaze as their fathers and bosses have glared at them for ordering mixed drinks in the middle of rush hour, or when bartenders have given them the stink eye for being so crass as to order an Irish Car Bomb. It’s a very Manly Bar. In fact, it’s such a sausage fest, that on occasion even guys feel their weens shrinking when they enter into the testosterone-polished warm glow of the sanctum that is Keens. And though they have many women working there and a tough as nails female general manager who can make grown men cry, the main bar is served only by bow tied, waist coated men. A fact that is somehow strangely re-assuring even to a feminist and super gay girl like me. So, it is definitely a guy’s bar. Not by any particular policy, but out of sheer habit (and also by sheer accident of being so close to Penn Station). The greatest downside to Keens is the after office and LIRR crowd that infests it between 1730 hours and 2030 hours. Also the MSG crowd who come for their damned games and Dave Matthews concerts. But don’t let that put you off the place. That would be like hating your dad for smelling of acrid smokes and Old Spice and being born in 1948.

When I first started going there in 2003, I was sometimes the only female patron, and often definitely in the minority. There was definitely a certain imposing quality to its history and its masculine air. No worries. I was there to drink my way through the entire Scotch list (over 200 single malts!) and people know not fuck with that kind of intensity. I was raised to adulthood there by the knowing and knowledgeable bartenders – steering me towards bottles I might have been a little reticent of and sneaking me a taste of the $100 a shot stuff that a student on a $300 a month budget could definitely not afford. And on occasion setting me right, on my private life, with no more than a look of pained disbelief. Keens is my favouritest bar in the whole world (you can tell I’m serious because I’ve allowed myself an ungrammatical turn of phrase). Except for the occasional sports fans and the passing corporate douchery, this has always been a great place to have a quiet drink, and talk whiskey, and in the more colourful moods have a classic cocktail mixed impeccably and served – without any phony waxed moustaches and poncy gartered sleeves involved. There have been only two places I have had a perfect Martini. One was at Keen’s and the other was at the Harbour Bar at the Taj Palace and Hotel, Bombay (more about this some other time).

Like all bars where the people working actually love their work and love their product and are not self-conscious about their image, the folks at Keen’s are perfectly willing to embrace any serious drinker regardless of age, sex, profession or vocation. This means that despite its guy-ness and its old money-ness Keen’s will love you even if you’re nominally an outsider. And if you’re a regular, bar tenders will know what your usual is and will set you up even while you’re still settling in.

In the last few years, though, Keeen's has suffered a few blows: voted best bar for adults by NY Mag – ironically the crowd that drew was a bunch of just out of college yuppie frats; spotlighted in Esquire magazine as part of their where celebrity chefs eat out feature; no more cigars if you win the trivia contest; and the lowest blow of all, showcased by Anthony Bourdain in Disappearing New York. All of which has meant that a regular at Keens now has to contend with all kinds of bozos wandering in and out of there.

I’m not begrudging Keens its extra success. The folks there work hard and do a great job, and whatever increases their pay is aces in my book. But I can’t help but grumble about the extra noise and stupidity generated by all the tourists and trendsters who come to gawk at what they feel is kitschy outmodedness. And who don’t know how to order a drink at a bar 30 feet long and three deep manned by two.

But the blow it has suffered that actually pains me the most is the increased presence of women.

Oh, dear. Wherever could I be going with this line of thought? Well, I’ll tell you: To the moon, Alice. To the moon! I am taking this moment to talk specifically about women in what is traditionally a masculine space, because at Keen’s I am one of few women in a masculine space. I don’t know if it’s because so many women are not enculturated in bar etiquette, or if it’s a class-specific cultural thing where girls are expected to drink only certain things and in certain ways. But I feel like my side (that would be the women) has been letting me down.

Listen, I get it. There’s a 20 foot painting of a naked lady on a lion skin. The bus boys wear leather aprons. Bar snacks include boiled eggs. Most of the customers are dudes in power suits and power ties standing around in exclusionary circles and wondering how to deal with the fact there is no Coors Light at this bar. There are too many guys. There’s too much corporate. It’s a sausage fest. The waiters address you as sir or miss or ma’am. All the Coke comes in bottles. There’s no Stoli Razberi. I get it. It’s a strange and alien environment. But it’s that way for a reason. This is an old school bar. This is where the movers and shakers of old New York used to come to sit in the proverbial smoke-filled back rooms and make deals. This is where the reporters and editors of The Herald used to knock back a few. This is where business men would ogle chorus girls and starlets away from the baleful gazes of their respectable wives. This is where companies would hold annual dinners to show their appreciation to their employees by treating them to Grade-A slabs of steak and a great pint. This is where D. W. Griffith secretly rehearsed the cast of his first Paramount Film in. And in more modern times, it’s where guys like Don Draper had a quiet whiskey to get away from work. You’re here on sufferance – just like I would be on sufferance at a Hell’s Kitchen leather daddy bar, or in a working man’s bar in Woodside. So respect the environment **. Don’t point and giggle and make a general fuss. Don’t flag the bartender if you don’t know what you’re drinking. And please for the love of god or whatever it is you believe in, don’t have your friends yell their orders across people’s heads when it’s as noisy as a marketplace, and then complain about getting Coke and Jack when your buddy wanted Diet Coke and Jack. Because the bartenders while efficient do not fucking have super hearing (also, in this situation, please think twice before ordering a Sex on the Beach or whatever heinous thing with “cute” names). Don’t ask what the eggs are for (they’re eggs, they’re for eating). Don’t lean against the bar and leave your coat all draped over the bar stools – some of us are here to drink and part of that involves actually looking the bartender in the eye as we sip our heaven’s brew of distilled sunshine and compare notes.

Oh sure, they’ll mix you anything you want, at any time– the best Sidecar, the best Martini, the best Manhattan. They’ll give you all the beer and Jack and Coke you want. They even have a pretty decent wine list. They’re a bar, that’s what they’re here for. But please pay attention to what’s happening around you first. It is a place of thinking and drinking. Neither of which can be truly enjoyed when you bring the atmosphere of a hen party or sports bar in there with you. I know it can be truly disconcerting to arrive at a place that seems a little out of time – after all, who’s expecting Victoriana in the cultural wilds surrounding Penn Station and Madison Square Garden – and so staunchly the opposite of who you are. But making a spectacle of yourself where you’re already an outsider will not exactly endear you.Keen’s is a great bar. The bar tenders are professionals who know what they’re serving and enjoy their work. It has history: earned history, not slotted in by a canny designer. It has class. Most of all it has style. The polished wood and the leather banquettes, the wooden refrigerator cabinets, the naked ladies – they’re not kitsch, they’re for real. You wouldn’t like a picnic atmosphere inside St. Patrick's Cathedral even if you were the most annoyingly screechy atheist in the world, because places like that matter in our lives. Places where people know your name and have your glass and place set for you by the time you’re done hanging your coat. Places where a broke-ass foreign student can sit down and learn about Scotches, Bourbons and life, and make friends with federal judges, experimental theatre artists and corporate lawyers alike. Places where the manager always finds a table for a regular despite the raggedy jeans. Old school places the folks serving you will actually take care of you. Not because you’re a flash tipper but because they appreciate your interest in their work. A place like this is a gem. And hard to come by.

So if all you’re seeing is a gentleman’s club (no coy euphemisms) where there’s a painting of a naked lady. For the love of what’s good, stay away. Go to Hooters, or the roof top bar at the Gansevoort or wherever. You’re better off there.

* Okay, maybe three things.

** You know, this advice goes for the guys, as well.

All images in this post © A. Das.

Barography: Stones

2011-04-15T11:22:00.000-04:00

In addition to Mono-Lagering, where I'm going to and talking about fairly random bars, I think I'd like to examine my past and talk about the various bars that have played important parts in my life, either as a drinker or just in general. I'm not sure what to call it . . ."Mono-Lagering" might be punny enough for an entire blog. Barography? Barstory? Let me know what you think.

Anyway, the first bar wherein I was ever a regular was a place called Stones. Now, I've done some research on the internets and have found no trace of the place. I know it closed down years ago, so I guess that's understandable. I really hoped to at least see some old pictures. My memories are somewhat vague, and, for once, not because of booze ingested in the bar. See, I was a regular at this joint from the age of three or so.

Stones was in Ironton, Ohio, which, in retrospect, is just an awful place in general. But in Boyd County, where we lived, it was a dry county. One bridge hop later and you were surrounded by bars and restaurants. Stones was my family's favorite place. I've heard both my mother and father wax nostalgic about their fried chicken. I don't think I ever had it myself; I was suspicious of any chicken fried by not-my-Gran.

I was a picky eater as a child. The usual white kid diet: hamburgers, hot dogs, spaghetti, steak. I remember liking their steak medium rare. The food I really remember is their popcorn shrimp. It was the first time I had it and I loved it. I can see that red plastic basket with the wax paper like it was an hour ago. My parents love to remind me how picky an eater I was as I get them to try new cuisines or talk about my cooking. I've paid them back for every "cultural experience" they put me through growing up.

There are a few other things about the place that I can distinctly remember. They had those jukebox access terminals at every booth. I played "Jump" by Van Halen every time, often followed by an Oak Ridge Boys song. Those things were great.

I remember reading comics there. It was down the street from my first comic shop, which had at least a dozen names while I went there. In particular I remember one unfortunate night when mom asked to see what I was reading. She couldn't have picked a worse time. In it a female character brutally attacked and raped a male character. No dirty bits shown, but it was clear what happened. Well, from then on, Mom had to pre-read every book I got.

My folks were very strict about what I saw or read as a kid. My friends have noticed there is a severe gap in my knowledge of 80s horror and comedy films. No R movies for little Joey. What's funny is what a change occurred when I graduated. These people that I was so used to censoring and denying became very open. I recall my mother saying that going to college I was going to want to "experiment," and that nothing was wrong with that in moderation. I protested and blushed. No way was I going to start drinking!

Yeah, that's right, I didn't drink yet. The parties where drinking happened in high school were social nightmares for me; I simply didn't go to them. My friends and I would smoke some, but mostly we'd just play music and make each other laugh. So I protested and balked, but little did I know in a few months I'd be downing drinks in my first New York bar. But that's a story for another time.

But mostly what I remember about Stones are the people; or, rather, my experiences with them. There was the owner, Benny. He was a white haired man that looked something like a cross between Colonel Sanders and Barney Miller. Friendly and jovial, he was there every night, often bartending. He always remembered my name.

There were two waitresses I knew, too. One was older and was often giving me stuff her grown kids no longer wanted: toys, coloring books, etc. I got some neat stuff. There was another, whose name I cannot recall, but she was my first bar/service industry crush. She had long brown hair and pretty eyes, and she gave me Reese's Cups after every meal. That formula still works for me to this day, by the way.

More than this, I remember how welcome I felt. I was an only child with parents older than my peers'. This was a place that was familiar, comfortable, and fun. I remember warmth and family and goodness. To this day, that's what I feel in any good bar. In a city where apartments come and go, and definitely feel temporary, a great bar can be more homey than any of them. That's probably why I go to bars when I'm down: not to drown my sorrows so much as to bask in the perfect feel of home.

Mono-Lagering: King's Head Tavern

2011-04-12T18:01:00.002-04:00

So, for this past weekend's crossover drink-up, I wrote a Mono-Lagering now up at Comics Should Be Good. Promise to put some original content up here in the next day or two.

I love you very much.

Money-saving Link

2011-04-06T15:41:00.002-04:00

Kudos to eagle-eyed reader Kizzy-Kay, for finding this list of drink specials for the week. Enjoy!

Mono-Lagering: Macri Park

2011-04-05T16:25:00.007-04:00

Given a gift of free beer coupons from 30 different bars from Brokelyn.com, Mr. Rice has decided to visit each one, and record his thoughts.

Williamsburg, as much of a pain in the ass as it can be, is really accessible from Bushwick. So since the past couple weeks of work have been particularly draining, I decided this week's bar should be closer. So, after walking by it for years, I finally went in Macri Park.

The first thing that struck me was the music. It's not every day you get a Nancy Sinatra deep cut that segues into some obscure early rock and roll. Perhaps it was the Sinatra thing, but I immediately felt that Quentin Tarantino was DJing. Anyway, the bar looks great. Rich red, semi-velvety wallpaper, a fireplace, plush booths, and a long, well-worn bar all added together for a sort of old lodge feel.

The crowd was decidedly gutterpunky. In my polo and blazer, I started out feeling fairly out-of-place. This was an afternoon regulars crowd, really, not that dissimilar to those of which I've been a part. But something struck me as different this time; I really felt "other."

The beer selection was very standard. Nine or ten drafts, the ones you always see (Brooklyn Lager, Hoegaarden, etc). Not really caring for any of the selections I went with a Stella. Stella is not a very good beer; it has an acridity that is never quite refreshing. But it is a reliable beer, and one I've had during dozens of funtimes, so I kind of give it a pass.

As Beck came on the sound system, I jotted down some notes as I looked around more. There was a backyard area I didn't bother with. I was more interested in the front . . .there was an open-air area with couches where you could drink and smoke outside under an overhang. I got another Stella and a Maker's Mark (again, not a great bourbon, but one that I can still enjoy) and went outside.

The view was . . .well, absolutely shitty. Yes, there's a park across the street. But it's a terrible park. Noisy cars drive by, annoying Williamsburgers strut by, and there's Kellogg's Diner reminding me of all the terrible meals I've had there. Still, it was outside, and that was sort of novel. I was about to pick up my book to read when I recognize a passer-by. It's my friend Chris who I haven't seen in ages, and who was recently talking to me about this blog. So he gets a beer, "Oh, shit, sitting down with Joe and I know I'll be stumbling home."

We catch up; I met Chris through his girlfriend, an old friend of mine from grad school. She's a teacher, too, so I do some minor co-venting through him. After a bit, my planned guest arrives, as we are joined by Sarah. Sarah's the girl that gave me the coupon book in the first place, and she's brought hers along. With a couple of notable exceptions, I've never had trouble staying friends with exes. It's not always an ideal situation every moment of the experience, but it's way better than some sort of dramatic bitterness; at the very least it's better than the spine-tingling fear you get when you find yourself in an unpleasant ex's neighborhood.

So the three of us shoot the shit, drink some rounds, smoke some cigarettes, and generally have a pretty great time. Chris leaves and Sarah and I go in; with the weather turned chilly, the novelty of the front area had died. Also, those plastic couches are the least comfortable non-medical thing I've ever sat on.

At this point we whipped out our coupons and got our free Stellas. And I think here I should talk about the service. I've hedged a bit on this, because I bartend sometimes and I have a shit-ton of friends in the service industry. I don't like bitching about service like some indignant, entitled Yelper or something; it feels crass and generally low. So maybe it was an off night, or maybe I looked like an asshole, or maybe a lot of things. But the service was lousy. Getting the tender's attention in a bar with only seven people in it should not be a Herculean task. My inner insecurity told me it was because I was "other." I don't know; my inner insecurity is often full of shit.

The bar has a great look. It has a great soundtrack. The location is extremely convenient. But the fact is, I just didn't like it. Sarah and I tried to suss out what exactly made this bar seem so inadequate. I knew I'd surely not love every bar in the coupon book, but I usually, at worst, feel neutral about a drinking joint. I actively don't like Macri Park. I mean, it's no Union Pool; I'm unlikely to have some sort of mental breakdown amongst the sweaty bearded, be-tightsed twentysomethings looking for excuses to fuck around indiscriminately. I don't hate it. I just didn't like it.

But here's the thing: something doesn't have to be good to enjoy it. Shit, you don't even have to like it to enjoy it! One thing Sarah and I have always had in common is that we say "Fuck you" to not having fun. Joy and beauty can be found anywhere, as long as you're willing to look. So when Ricky Nelson came on, I took her hand and we got up and danced. There we were, the non-regulars dancing in a bar with no other signs of such activity. But fuck your self-consciousness; dancing is goddam fun.

I don't like Stella. I don't like Maker's Mark. I don't like Macri Park. But I'll be goddamned if I'm going to let any of that get in the way of a fine night.

Speaking of fine nights, I hope to see you all Saturday at King's Head. This crossover is going to be stellar, and if you're lucky, you might be able to buy me a drink.

Photos by Mr. Rice on his shitty phone.

FUCK MONDAYS!

2011-04-01T16:31:00.004-04:00

Let's do this announcement right now! My buddy Brian "Criminally Handsome" Cronin, who runs Comics Should Be Good, a fine blog about having sex, I think, and I are co-throwing a big party whereupon our two blogs collide in a Bacchanal celebration of everything we love, often ourselves. If you live in NY, or if you'll be in town Saturday, April 9, come join us! Click on the flyer to engorge it. I mean enlarge it.

Big announcement next week!

2011-03-31T17:15:00.001-04:00

Be sure to check in Monday afternoon for a big HCAR announcement. I'm excited, or what passes for excitement and emotion in my drained soul.

Mono-Lagering: High Dive

2011-03-29T21:17:00.006-04:00

Given a gift of free beer coupons from 30 different bars from Brokelyn.com, Mr. Rice has decided to visit each one, and record his thoughts.

This week I went back to Park Slope again, to a place called High Dive. I expected either a beautifully seedy shithole or, oddly, a pool-themed place. Why I thought that was actually possible, I have no idea. When I got there, I realized I had been there under previous ownership. I don't recall the name of the place; neither it nor the previous bar itself were notable in basically any way. Entering High Dive, I knew the change had been for the better.

It was a spacious bar, decorated casually and invitingly. There was the main bar area itself, a large corridor with some high tables, a back room with lower tables, a pinball, and lots of board games, and what looked to be a backyard, too. This would be an excellent place to throw a party, or just to party.

So I sat down at the bar and ordered a Lagunitas Brown Shugga to keep my brown ale streak going. I was surprised by the amount of hop in the beer. If you've ever read this blog before, you know that hops and I are not on the friendliest terms. I was, at first, disappointed. But I have to say, it really did balance the sweetness well, keeping it from being overly syrupy. So I guess those bastards have a point.

I really liked the "buy a drink" board on the bar wall. Anyone can pay for a drink for a friend they figure will drop by later. Three columns: To, What, and From. Some people bought whiskeys for friends, others just put money down. This is a place friends go, together or separately, to have a good time. I even recognized a name or two. My brotherman Alex came in, dropped down, and ordered a Jameson.

New York is a drinker's town. Public transportation almost everywhere you look, more bars than Rykers, and a rich semi-literary tradition of great indulgence in the sauce. When we first set out to make Here Comes a Regular a drinking blog, we didn't want it to be some frat house nonsense, nor a mere house for reviews, nor some apologetic skirting-around-the-topic neurosis-fest, nor even some misguided braggadocio list of times we got SO WASTED.

No, this blog is for the drinker's life, the real drinker, the kind that a lot of folks don't quite understand. I received an email from my mother today, the kind you never want to receive. There were concerns expressed that a thirty-three year old man like myself should not find himself "living like [he's] twenty-one." People I know from elsewhere, sometimes even new New Yorkers, they nervously laugh when they point out that I go out quite a bit.

So there's a special layer of drinking life in New York. I genuinely think it's the best city on earth, but it isn't without flaws. Perhaps primarily (other than vicinity to Jersey and the existence of Staten Island), is that this is a fucking stressful place to be. Every part of your life, in New York, has a heightened level of stress than it would in a lot of other places. Working in New York? Jesus, just getting there can give you hives, whether through overcrowded subways, aromas, or chapped legs during the summer.

And dating, shit! Some of the smartest, wittiest, best looking people in the world flock to this city. You see them all around you. But we're all so busy trying to be quietly polite by giving everyone their space that we don't meet all that often. It's difficult to settle down with anyone, too, when you see hundreds of new temptations on your way home every night.

So life here is stressful; that's not exactly news to anyone. Alex and I discussed work stresses and ordered another round. This time I also got a Buffalo Trace White Dog, perhaps my favorite market moonshine. I took a belt of it and chased it with the Brown Shugga. HOLY SHIT GUYS. I think I invented something right then. That shine mixed with the sweetness of the ale to form a creamy, powerful punch. I immediately started raving, and the bartendress talked about making a drink special out of it. It was that good.

So, yes, in New York you're stressed and you're working your ass off just to get by. But you get well compensated by living in the funnest place in the world. All those bars are joined by entertainment of all sorts. Gospel every Friday at Fat Cat, Kung fu film festivals, comic shops, comedy, comfortable theaters . . .we've really got everything. So after we work our ass off we party our ass off. So maybe not everyone in the country understands; I don't really care. In this town you have to fight to be happy, and that's one fight I'm not backing down from.

And there's no one better to party with than your friends. Alex and I yucked it up throughout the night, being joined by other friends later. Stupid running jokes and plays on words, the sort of secret handshake at the core of every friend group. There's not a sad face in the crowd if its friends.

And that's the ultimate drink special, isn't it? Booze plus pals equals fun. That is fucking SCIENCE, man (this post has had so much science). And I, for one, can't wait to make science happen at High Dive again. Check the drink board; if you're lucky, I'll leave you one.

Photos by D. Alexander Cox.

Mono-Lagering: Full Circle Bar

2011-03-22T17:01:00.008-04:00

Given a gift of free beer coupons from 30 different bars from Brokelyn.com, Mr. Rice has decided to visit each one, and record his thoughts.

Despite some mounting evidence to the contrary, I believe myself to be a lucky man. I have a great love of coincidence, games of chance, etc. So when I find myself on some unpredicted ley-line of probability, I like to ride it to the end. For instance, my first outing for this project found a bartender that recommended the second. The bartender at the second recommended a restaurant that my friend Nicole and I found ourselves in randomly when another place was too crowded, and, seeing as though I know Nicole through a series of coincidences and chances, I let her pick this week's.

As she read the descriptions of the bars in the coupon book, one compound word caught her eye: skeeball. So we met up at Full Circle Bar in Williamsburg (really, is there another neighborhood that could sustain such a specific business model as "skeeball bar?") to varying degrees of excitement. See, I like games of chance, right? Well, I don't care too much for games of skill, which, nominally, skeeball is.

I'd been once before on some misguided internet date (is there another kind?), so I knew at least the bar part was solid. Five varied taps and a ridiculously large selection of canned beers, a friendly, knowledgeable bartender, and a vibe more relaxed than one expects from an establishment based on throwing balls into holes. I sat down with a Chelsea Brewing Co. Black Hole XXX Stout, a beer as strong and thick as something with so many possible innuendos in the name should be.

Nicole soon joined me and got an Empire Cream Ale, which she insisted on calling a Cremalé. Our friend Conor also dropped by and got another Cream Ale, a smooth Boddingtons-esque brew perfect for this sort of in-between weather. We three went to the back room to play skeeball, whereupon they immediately started just completely destroying me. Remember, I like chance, not skill.

That preference has had a weird, long influence on my life. In Eastern Kentucky, my complete lack of athleticism shaped me to an incredible degree. I tried baseball, basketball, tennis, even golf once, and my sheer amazing incompetence took away any pleasure participating in sports could have given me. I can't run, I'm uncoordinated, I can't throw, and can't catch. Objects that move at me quickly make me flinch. This is embarrassing at my age and nearly crippling during adolescence.

And it didn't exactly do wonders for my dating life. I grew up internalizing the idea that I was unattractive and unsuitable, despite all my conscious knowledge otherwise. When I moved to New York and widened my dating pool by a seemingly-infinite amount, it took me years to process the change. I'd vacillate between dating too capriciously, drunk on my newfound status and dating too desperately, still not believing I was truly worth it. It took the dissolution of my marriage to really force me to get my head into a healthier place.

So, after that, newly alone and single for the first time in six years, I became a regular at the bar Harefield Road. Because of this, I had the chance to make a shit-ton of new friends. When the bar was putting together a softball team, I was asked to be the "coach" and at first I froze. All those old insecurities, that bullshit teenage guilt and paranoia, reared an ugly set of hydra heads.

But, fuck it, right? It's just coaching a group of friends from my bar. It didn't even matter that, in our Harlem league full of giant Dominican men and giant Dominican women, we were a petty gnat the other teams barely noticed. Though, after a while, the time came to strengthen the ranks. Nate, the true manager of the team, and I were sitting brainstorming how we could get better. He chanced to see two guys in the back that seemed athletic. He approached and asked if they'd be interested in joining the team, and so it was that I met Conor and Eric, and soon Nicole, through them.

If Conor and Eric hadn't been sitting in the back yard of that bar that particular day, I may not have ever met them. If Eric and Nicole weren't at the same bar one night, they may never have met each other. Friendships can be this incredible fine web of coincidence and chance. So now, by pure chance, I'm actually active in a sport, even playing when we're short a player, and over almost all my anxiety about it.

So after another couple beers and a bourbon, we alight to a Dominican restaurant that happens to be around the corner from my apartment. We ate like kings (and a queen) and drank muchos Presidentes, and perhaps had the correct amount of pernil and mofongo that makes our rival teams up in Harlem such unstoppable homerun machines. Afterwards, we crossed the street to the bar around the corner from me, Ali's, for more Presidentes and bourbons. It just so happens that Ali is my landlord's brother-in-law, and when I was unsure of taking this apartment I dropped in the bar and we worked it out.

We watched basketball. It may have taken me till now to take part in sports, but I almost immediately began to appreciate the spectator part when I left Kentucky. I couldn't growing up, there was too much bitterness wrapped up in the idea. But I love a good game, and don't mind taking a chance on betting on them, either.

It's hard not to think of myself as lucky; and I don't even mean in the liberal guilt way. A series of events and coincidences unpredictable to most any oracle has led me up to every moment of my life. To a bar where I become a regular and meet friends, one of whom gives me a coupon book for bars. To a skeeball bar with chance-met friends, delicious Dominican dinner, and the warm pleasure of a night spent happily.

Conor and Nicole played pool with the owner, and eventually I gave in and played too. They absolutely outclassed me, but that's OK. They've got their skills, but I'll take my chances.

Photos by Nicole Marie Ball

If We Must Drink - Let it Not Be Like Hogs

2011-03-16T23:27:00.001-04:00

The ancients, without the benefit of Diving Revelation, came to a completely reasonable conclusion regarding virtue. They invented a test, called "The Golden Mean", a sweet spot of behavior that did not tend toward an extreme, and applied this test to human actions and determined thereby whether or not such actions were virtuous, and the degree of their morality or immorality, by how closely the act adhered to the mean.

For instance, bravery stood in the middle between cowardice and foolhardiness, love between lust and frigidity, and moderation in consumption between abstention and gluttony.

It is upon this third point, moderation, that I wish to expound in my maiden post, as a way of introducing my philosophy of booze.

We who drink, and who care about drinking, should strive for moderation. This is not to say that we must shun the pleasant effects of alcohol or be ashamed when drinking on account of the act itself is pleasurable. Rather, moderation is best defined as a capacity to enjoy something, really enjoy it, without guilt because we are aware of our limitations. In this context, one may drink regularly, and even heavily, while remaining moderate.

Furthermore, one must understand moderation not only as attention to one’s capacity while drinking, but the integration of one’s behavior while drinking with the behavior of drinking itself. This is to say that as one consumes and is conscious of that consumption one must also balance the consumption with the realities, activities, and persons attendant to the consumption, i.e., one’s companions, bartender, wife and children, banker, family and reputation, prevailing customs and standards, liquor store owners, landlord, the highway patrol, school children in the vicinity, the boss one must answer to in the morning, etc.. The virtue in this exercise is self-proving in that those who do exercise thusly will be spared many, many physical, financial, and moral consequences.

I would also add that, for a serious drinker, the manner of one’s drinking should reflect such seriousness. Just as one would be unwise to exercise extreme fastidiousness in any endeavor, one ought not to be conspicuously picky or fay when it comes to his choice of drink. While it is legitimate to hold a preference or particularity, there is nothing so amateurish or unmanly as a booze snob of any variety. Take a wine snob, for example. Wine is the simplest of all alcoholic beverages. Fundamentally, you simply squeeze grapes, set the juice in a cool, dry place for a period of time, and you are ready to go. The complex chemical reactions that turn Welch’s into wine, while able to be manipulated to some degree, are automatic, a gift of nature and the loving God Who is its author. Everything ancillary to the wine itself, including debates about containers, shady sides of hills in particular French provinces, vintage, etc., are inside baseball nonsense of the order of debates over the superiority of Dungeons and Dragons in the pre- and post-Gygax eras.

And this general principle stands for those who will drink labels rather liquor. One cannot be moderate if one binges $350 bar tabs once a week drinking himself silly on overpriced rotgut for the sake of his social standing. The opposite is also true: The hipster who will not touch a beer that costs more than $2 or less than $8 likewise suffers from the moral disease. This behavior is, I hasten to add, the surest course to making drinking a misery over the course of a lifetime. The serious drinker knows that he can satisfy his thirst with a far greater degree of satisfaction, while spending a fraction of what his conspicuous counterpart does, by concentrating on drinking what he likes over a longer period of time.

We cannot mention the urban trend of yuppie/hipster joyless drinking without also mentioning their opposite on the axis of virtue, the howling winos who suffer from alcoholic dependency. Since you are reading this on the internet, you are probably not a wino, nor do you seek to join their ranks, and I don’t think I need to give a full treatment of why being a wino is a bad thing. But to illustrate the Golden Mean, we should note that the wino has more in common with the yuppie/hipsters than with the serious, manly drinker who practices moderation. Therefore, if I were to make a classification, I would say that the extremes of the axis and those who occupy them (bums, hobos, frat boys, investment bankers, etc.) are closer to "alcoholics" than a conscientious man who puts away a fifth-and-a-half a week while watching TV in the evenings.

Thus I conclude that the heart of moderation is a dedication to enjoyment of consumption, rather than a dedication to consumption itself. As I write this, on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, I find that many otherwise responsible adult people of my acquaintance are putting a lot of work into consumption. They are making a real effort to abuse their livers, getting up early and steadily drinking through to the next. They remind me of those kids, those infant booze hounds I knew in school who mistook liberty for license and ability for duty. I’ll repeat that, if one does not practice moderation, and concentrate his efforts on enjoyment rather than abuse, then his bender is without purpose, empty, shallow, and, I’ll guarantee, painful to live with.

I’ll end with a quote from Victor "Trader Vic" Bergeron from his Bartender’s Guide which encapsulates my drinking philosophy better than anything I could write:

"Dedicated to those merry souls who make drinking a pleasure; who achieve contentedness long before capacity; and who, whenever they drink, prove able to carry it, enjoy it, and remain ladies and gentlemen."

Mono-Lagering: Mission Dolores

2011-03-15T21:17:00.004-04:00

Given a gift of free beer coupons from 30 different bars from Brokelyn.com, Mr. Rice has decided to visit each one, and record his thoughts.

For my third bar in this series, I headed back to Park Slope. Mission Dolores is actually the first bar in the coupon book I've visited that I've already been to, and while I'm not exactly a regular, it's not uncommon to see a familiar face there. An offshoot of sister establishment, Bar Great Harry on Smith Street (about which I will say more some other week), Mission Dolores is kind of a combination of a series of questionable ideas and choices. That might sound like this will be the first negative review in this series, but I'd like to posit there's something to be gained from questionable choices; a true unappreciated beauty in fuck-uppery.

Opened, I believe, this past summer, Mission Dolores used to be a car garage, and parts of the basic structure still exist. It's divided into three main compartments: the first, a long, hall-like passage open to the outside; the second has an open roof and ash trays galore, and only the third is completely encased in man-made materials. That's the part with two pinball machines, a juke, and the bar. And in that first summer, goddam, was that a glorious set-up! Access to smoking and fresh air can be a rarity in this city, and it's appreciated wherever we can find it.

But it's not easy to remember that it is actually pleasant outside in New York about a total of twenty-five days a year, the other three-hundred and forty consisting either of torrential rain, bitter cold, or searing heat; or, some days, a fucked up chimera of all sorts of shit weather. So, walking to this bar before Spring has sprung, I felt ready to see a bar on its last legs, a sort of "OOPS THERE ARE OTHER SEASONS," colossal mistake.

But I'll be damned if I didn't enjoy myself. The beer selection is large and full of fun surprises. The only problem was myself (an oft-repeated theme in my life). My stomach was sending odd signals to the rest of the body (also an oft-repeated theme), vague but unsettling. "Something might happen, and it might be bad, but I don't know what or when!" Drinking beer to settle a stomach is one of those perfectly questionable ideas; wait, what, that's a terrible idea! Fuck logic or health, I say it works. A couple of hearty beers can straighten out a confused stomach almost as easily as a confused heart.

So I began with a Bear Republic Heritage, a nice 7.8% caramel-tinged stout that immediately brought a smile to my face, and the equivalent thereof to my digestive system. As Van Halen and Queen filled the aural landscape, I actually reminisced to a previous trip to this bar. I was to meet up with a girl I had recently dated. We split because I was still feeling summery rambunctious independence and . . .she was not. It was a decidedly questionable idea, but I was high on my own testosterone and serotonin, and I think I had a case for her contacts or something?

We talked and we flirted and I felt intoxicated by the unspoken power struggles going on. She wanted to be OK with flirty independence, but hoped more that I could be convinced to come in from the wide world of pointless dating.

Flash forward to me back at the bar, nodding at the virility I felt then and the stupid irony of the fact that the night before it was I seeing another ex, and in this situation I'd been the clinger and she the sheet of Downy in the dating pool. The imbalance of power, of affection, it's a see-saw, a sine wave of heartbreak and annoyance. To continue to try after untold amounts of fuck-ups and shit-storms, well, that's a goddam questionable idea isn't it?

So I ordered another beer, a Victory Baltic Thunder. Another malty delicious glass of power, this time 8.5% APV. You could taste the strength, but not obnoxiously so. Perhaps ordering two high-APV beers before meeting up with friends for a night of beer and dice isn't the greatest idea either.

But what great idea isn't questionable? Think about the first person that ate a chicken egg. What exactly was his plan? "Hm. The next thing that comes out of that animal, I'm straight up going to eat it." And then he ate it and it was awful! But this did not stop our egg innovator. Do you think he immediately though, "How about if I put it on fire?" Were there other steps before he finally realized, "Ohhhh, yeah, this is good!"

In the middle of the twentieth century, some guys basically thought, "OK, so we have these crazy Nazi scientists who have built giant rockets. What if I were to strap myself to one and go into space, and hopefully come back? BINGO GREAT IDEA LET'S GO!" It's completely insane, but it changed the world, and allowed Tom Hanks to produce hours of boring cinema.

Mission Dolores has a great beer selection and a friendly, open, helpful staff. Sure, it can be crowded at night on the weekend; crowded with folks that sometimes seem like cartoon parodies of how the rest of the city sees the Slope, juggling strollers and neo-liberal solipsisms like an early astronaut with his myriad of dials and scopes. And it's directly neighboring Rock Shop, a similar bar with live music and TVs. It's a block away from the place I signed and finalized my divorce.

But like the exploration of culinary arts, the cosmos, or the minefield of dating in New York, sometimes a questionable idea can be a great time. Come on folks, let's strap in, get a little stupid, and make some mistakes together. Can't make a space omelet without breaking your heart a few times.

Mono-Lagering: The Narrows

2011-03-08T19:13:00.004-05:00

Given a gift of free beer coupons from 30 different bars from Brokelyn.com, Mr. Rice has decided to visit each one, and record his thoughts.

So I started looking through the coupon book that is my map for this experience and then noticed that one bar, The Narrows, was a VERY short walk from my own apartment. I was confused at first, as I recognized the cross streets, and have walked by many times. The description said it was a "speak-easy." I recalled then my conversation with the bartender at the Sackett, another Bushwick resident, and he had made mention of the joint. So my next venture seemed obvious.

There was a bit of hesitation for me, though. I wasn't sure why, at first, but I soon figured out it was the "speak-easy" bit. I was reasonably sure I wouldn't need some sort of arcane password or something, but I still felt fairly . . .done with the whole idea. I remember soon after graduating college there was a huge surge in bars that styled themselves as speak-easies and at first they were really intriguing to me, but had soon lost their appeal.

So I walked with some trepidation down Flushing and found the spot . . .I'd walked by, thinking it was either a weird apartment or some private club, the likes of which would never admit me. I stepped in and immediately felt at ease. The majority of the place is the long bar and the stools. A large, lush booth is in the frosted front window, more tables and booths in the back, and behind all that an open area. (During the summer they grow their own mint and other fresh ingredients.)

It was classy and attractive, but not haughty. I was apparently the first customer of the evening (the privileges of the teacher's schedule), and the amiable bartender/co-owner started chatting with me. Keith was very personable and charming, and I had a great time talking to him about all sorts of topics.

I read the cocktail menu and ordered a "Caulfield's Dream." The ingredients (rye, lemon, demerara, spearmint, Angostora bitters, and a cava float) sounded both interesting and daunting. That's a lot of strong flavors coming together, but by God they were mixed perfectly. Sweet but strong, like that girl you never had the guts to ask out.

Keith was the first to bring up the "speak easy" part. He said people often ask him if that's what it is, but in truth, the answer is simpler. See, this stretch of Flushing isn't necessarily a place you want to advertise that you're a bar. Most of the other nearby bars' regulars are the sort of men that drink despite family or duties, the sort of men that get rowdy and regularly kicked out, only to move on down the line. The Narrows is not the sort of bar you get kicked out of, really. Not that anything goes, but if you're drinking there you most likely know how to drink properly.

Secret knowledge again; the insider club of Real Drinkers . . .the original impetus of this blog in its first incarnation. There's no secret handshake, well, that I know of, but there are plenty of knowing looks. Someone orders a Ketel Bloody Mary? You'll see a sign of disapproval from every Real Drinker. At such a time, you show yourself a sap that pays for advertising.

My next drink was my coupon beer, a Smuttynose Old Brown Dog. So far I'm two-for-two on reliable brown ales for my free beers. Brown Dog is sweeter than the Brooklyn, but not cloyingly so. Conversation somehow turned to exes, and we shared the secret knowledge of being particularly burned by Korean ex-girlfriends. On the bright side, I discovered Do Ke Bi in Williamsburg had attained my dream of melding Mexican and Korean cuisines; I shall soon indulge.

Keith began working with a tequila he was infusing with jalepeno. It was the main ingredient for my next cocktail, the "Word." (punctuation included). Other than the spicy tequila, it sported Scotch, Chartreuse, marachino, and lime, with the option of a bit of bitters to bring it all together. Another mix of somewhat disparate strong flavors, but who all came together, Voltron-style, to make something great.

Somehow we got to talk about Star Wars . . .here's some secret knowledge for you: did you know that the word "Ewok" never appears in the script or movie of Return of the Jedi? Not once, but we all know the damn name of those stupid teddy bears. Not all secret knowledge is useful.

Why do we love and hate secret knowledge so much? The reason isn't hard to grasp. There are few things in this world more immediately exciting than the prospect of secret knowledge. Most of humanities' creation stories are harbored almost completely in such knowledge. Prometheus brought us the secret of fire, Eve the secret of right and wrong. But just as we love secret knowledge, we fear it. Neither Prometheus nor Eve go unpunished in their stories, one remembers.

We want to know something that none or few others know. We feel exclusive, above the rabble. Ninety-nine percent of human life is spent finding ways to feel better about ourselves than others, whether we judge by morals, open-mindedness, or knowledge. But none of these things ever really bring us the justification we really desire, that we so crave. The speak-easy becomes déclassé. We, deep-down, know our own hypocrisies.

Next, I had to have some of that jalepeno tequila on its own, so I got a glass with a Sol-with-lime-juice chaser. Definitely the simplest drink of the night, but perhaps even more satisfying. We are often all struck with the idea that perhaps simpler would be better, or at least easier. I don't think I'm out of line when I say most of us have looked at someone we consider more stupid than ourselves, perhaps laughing on the train with their buddies, or canoodling with a romantic partner we'd never consider, and thought, "If only I were that simple."

We throw that thought far away, knowing how awful, how demeaning it is. More, we know it isn't true. Every man and every woman suffers in this world, no matter their intelligence or education. Even when we are the holders of secret knowledge, we constantly think there's something else, something more secret, the cheat code to happiness.

I've been reading the Parker novels by Richard Stark. Fantastic crime fiction, compelling, sharp, and they move at an amazing pace. The main character is cold, smart, and ultra-competent. It's an easy world to visit when the emotions of the day become overwhelming. In the book I'm currently reading, a corrupt policeman, another thief, and some other characters are searching for a dead safe-man's secret stash. But Parker knows the real secret knowledge: it doesn't exist.

And sometimes that's the most secret of all knowledges: nothingness, there's nothing to know. There is no secret handshake to happiness or success or the life we desire. There is the yearly, daily, hourly journey, one filled with disappointments, but with pleasures as well. Fine cocktails, good conversation, stories, friends, and food. We don't need to be chained to a mountain whilst birds eat away at our soft bits, least of all chained by our own desperate minds. We modern Prometheuses (Promethei?) are alive, alive, ALIVE, monsters stumbling around with the brains of murderers but hearts that can feel on their own. Sometimes the secret is to forget about our knowledges and enjoy the experiences.

Actual Footage of Me Drinking

2011-03-07T17:00:00.003-05:00

Over at, World of Awesome, the other blog for which I write, my partner Alex has written up a piece about the first bar in which either of us were regulars, Shades of Green. He even took some video of me pounding delicious Smithwickses. Please to enjoy the enjoyment. Tonight I'm going to my next Mono-Lagering bar, so I hope to have something up in the next day or two.

Mono-Lagering: The Sackett

2011-03-01T21:24:00.008-05:00

Given a gift of free beer coupons from 30 different bars from Brokelyn.com, Mr. Rice has decided to visit each one, and record his thoughts.

So, the first bar I tried was The Sackett (661 Sackett St. between 4th Ave & 5th Ave). Mere blocks away from my buddy Alex's place, I had apparently walked by it for over a year without knowing it was there. The Bushwick-to-Park-Slope commute is not one that engenders anything other than "I WANT TO GET TO WHERE I AM GOING," by the time you're out of the train, I suppose. That and I am not a particularly observant person by nature.

So I was on my way to Alex's for our weekly Dungeons and Dragons game (yes, actually) and I had plenty of time in between my teacher-out-of-work schedule and the normal-people-out-of-work schedule to indulge in some beers, and I popped in. I was made comfortable pretty much immediately. Not a huge joint, but pleasantly basement-y. Now, I've seen a lot of bars that try very hard to be basement-y and it just comes off as pretentious. What was that bar in the Village? Apartment or something like that? Shag carpet, bric-a-brac . . .it got the look pretty much dead on; the only problem was that it was awful.

It's fun to think about old times, downing cheap beer in brown basements, hiding from the adult world looming just upstairs (in the form of whichever parents were lax enough not to be a problem) and just a few years away (in the form of leaving high school and realizing the reason those parents were so lax is that no one has a fucking clue what they're doing). And, yes, we have nostalgia for those times and those friends, the friends of stupid pranks, the friends of inside-jokes nearly, but never quite forgotten.

But we weren't really any more happy then. It seems so much simpler, but the minor pains of teenage life, at the time, seemed to hurt just as much as the drudgery and unbelievable depths adult life contains. A prom date refusal, by way of the unfortunate law of emotional relativity, seemed just as painful then as a true, adult love cut short by the random capriciousness of disjointed human interaction.

But the Sackett wasn't trying too hard. It was sort of an expressionistic set of a basement. A couch, something slightly rough-hewn about the walls. Some board games, some books. It was just enough to be Not Every Other Bar, but hardly some Epcot of Misguided Post-Boomer Idiocy.

I sat down and ordered a Brooklyn Brown bottle. I really like a good brown ale, but what a goddam razor's line that is. The slightest chemical miscalculation and it can taste like someone found rotten Quik, that awful rabbit hobbling behind with a gangrenously unlucky foot. But the one from Brooklyn is good. It was happy hour and all drinks were two dollars off, which is a pretty great deal when the average beer is already only five or six. I felt my mind relax from the stress of the first day back to work after a break. I began to talk to the bartender, but another customer came in.

This was one of those faux-business men, the born New Yorker salesman, ten years on the job starting at 19. He's got the shirt and tie, but the social niceties afforded by more comfortable beginnings are nowhere to be seen. He talks loudly to . . .clients? . . .peers? . . .on his cell-phone while sipping a cocktail. I bristled with annoyance, and then again with class guilt. Oh, how hard to be the middle class white asshole who just happens to know how everyone should act all the time! And yet, it was legitimately annoying. Some niceties are there for a reason.

Turns out he was a salesman for a credit card processing company; the sort of company that supplies your local bar with the credit card machine, that takes a bit off the top of every credit card purchase to the dismay of service industry workers nation-wide. He chatted up the bartender about meeting the owner, yet complimented the company currently being used.

He's not really at the bar, he's looking for business. Like that Village bar, he's got the costume down perfectly, but ten years later he's facing the same malaise that MBAs have at some point, that we all have at some point: we have to keep doing this stupid shit until we die. Not that every job is stupid shit, or even that his is, but there is no denying we're knee-deep in the horseshit that is practical living: I really want THIS but I have to do THIS in order to live long enough to be too old to do that first thing we really want.

The salesman leaves and I continue my conversation with the bartender. It turns out that he's practically a neighbor, just a few streets over from my apartment in Bushwick. We shoot the shit about local joints and "how the neighborhood has changed" and so on, both putting on our own costumes. Oh, yes, we're cracker-ass imports to the neighborhood but WE'RE not the ones gentrifying the place where all my students' families have always lived, no, that's those OTHER guys. The hipsters with their cafes and their art spaces. Meanwhile my favorite local place has price points that price out anyone native to Bushwick.

At this point I order my free pint, a Six Point Pilsner. Normally a fan of darker, maltier beers, a good pils is my next choice. The beer selection at the Sackett is small but very diverse; a lot of great mirco-brews, and without the preponderance of the current trend of "LET'S SEE HOW FUCKING HOPPY WE CAN MAKE THIS BEER," that seems to shape beers these days. Christ, if I wanted that, I'd eat a bunch of flowers. I don't begrudge hop-fans their love, but some bars cater to them exclusively. Some of us like malts, guys.

I hadn't had the Six Point pilsner before, but it was quite good. Crisp with an easy finish, just sweet enough to entice, but not so much to ruin any refreshing qualities . Actually, one of my favorite beers is a pilsner, Presidente. I first came across it here in Bushwick, as it's imported for the local Dominicans. I first bought them out of a sort of pretentious loyalty to the neighborhood, the sort shown during my talk with the bartender.

But here's the thing, it's fucking delicious! It's my all-time favorite pilsner and among my top five favorite bottled beers anywhere. It goes with just about anything, and I never get tired of it, even after a long bender. So that pretention, that play-acting, that class-guilt-derived impulse, it actually led to a genuine discovery, to knowledge and pleasure both gained.

David Bowie and Bjork played on the juke, in rapid succession. Two musicians well-aware of the power of pretend, of putting on a mask, a pretention of persona; but they also know sometimes that is how you actually do something worthwhile. Whether calculating or stumbling, we can never be sure what the actual results of anything we do are, even our neurotically- or socially-driven charades.

Later, I move on along to Alex's and we roll our twenty-sided dice. Like in real life, we're role-playing, and, like in real life, sometimes that turns out well. A few touches create a relaxing atmosphere in a bar. An abrasive costume can earn a living for a family. And a guilt-ridden cracker can find a delicious beer. If you don't roll the dice, you never get a critical hit.

Resurrection Time

2011-03-01T21:15:00.003-05:00

So, obviously, that fell apart. It turns out that when you put a bunch of heavy drinker/writers on deadlines, it is a poor idea. But a new idea has been rambling through my brain for a bit, and I was going to make a whole new blog for it, but why waste all that internets?

So I'll be posting them here. See, I have this book of coupons. An ex of mine gave it to me as a Christmas present. We were going to make a blog about each of the places and then show it to Brokelyn, the site where she bought them. Well, things didn't work out that way, but it is still a fine idea. The idea has developed from a simple review to using the review as a platform for thoughts and expression. It's difficult to explain, so I'll just post the first one in a bit.

But if anyone still looks at this, welcome back. Or welcome for the first time, I guess. And to any past writers, feel free to post here again . . .no more deadlines, no more assignments. Just, if this seems like a place to put something, if you have an itch to scratch and nowhere else just seems right, welcome back.

The HCAR offices are open again.

The Masked Drinker's Guide to Benders

2009-04-21T19:06:00.007-04:00

In drinking, like all things, moderation is the key. What some people never tell you about that guide is that “all things” includes moderation, so one must moderate in moderation as well. And there sometimes—not too often—comes a time in someone’s life when it’s time to go a little off the deep end. A good bender can be a damn fine thing, but you really have to do it right. I’ve done it wrong in the past and learned from my mistakes. I just got back to work after a week and a half off and I quite explicitly decided to make it a bender. So I’d like to now share what I’ve learned about this noble and horrible experience.

First off, make sure you have ample time to be to yourself. You’re going to need anywhere from a weekend to two weeks (longer than that I really highly don’t recommend) where you are pretty much free from normal human responsibilities like family, work, and hygiene. (Just kidding.) (Kind of.) Point being if you need to check in on Granny every now and then or work with children or make spreadsheets to keep yourself employed, don’t go on a bender then. Self-destruct in moderation! I’ve often used spring break, but it’s very vital not to do it in the way low folks like Floridians would. A bender is not an excuse to yell lewd things at impressionable girls. A bender is a hedonistic self-exploration.

It often helps to have something of an impetus for the bender. It can be something as simple as “I have time off” to something rather more serious like, “Holy shit, my marriage just ended.” Sad-started benders need to be monitored more carefully than others, as the point is to come out a little better than you started, not way more depressed. I’d say stick to a good reason at least your first time. No bender is trickier than the barely-avoiding-depression bender.

I should add that you should let people know what you’re about to do; at least the ones that won’t give you hell about it. I, uh, in particular mean people that you share some sort of activity or some such with. Like, uh, a blog. I’d like to publicly apologize right here for not sending anything in last week. Sorry, theoretical adoring fans, arch enemies, and lovely crushes. Also, sorry Colonel Harmon. Really should have kept you of all people in the loop on that one.

Mostly go to bars where they know you. Now, don’t only go there, as they’ll get really tired of you. A bender’s a nice time to explore joints randomly. Remember, though, not everyone’s on a bender so don’t be an asshole, at least not more than you usually are. Respect the rules of trying out new bars, just do so within a week-long stint of drinking.

Remember to eat. Some nights you’re going to be stuck with the dregs: a friend’s leftover sandwich, microwave bar food. That’s unavoidable. But make sure you eat normal food too. Pasta keeps your stomach from completely revolting and just leaving by way of the first orifice it can find. At times when you’re just starting for the day or nicely buzzed, eat something really good and tasty. You’ll appreciate it whilst swimming in your debauchery.

Speaking of food and digestion, be prepared to not digest too well for the entire time. We’ve all had beer shits before, but understand that a real bender’s gonna involve beer shits pretty much every day. Stock up on TP and the stomach placebo of your choice and just roll with it. You get used to it, anyway.

You’re going to be tempted to bathe less. This is not a great idea. Everybody skips a day every now and then but if you skip more than one, you’d better have a major excuse, and it has to involve either an explosion or sleeping with someone ridiculously hot. Otherwise, for Christ’s sake, nobody needs to smell your drunk ass. If you must, buy some cheap beers to drink in the shower for motivation. That’s actually really fun.

Bender friends help. They’re not always available and do make sure they’re good bender friends. Bad ones quickly lead you down paths that not even you want. But someone who shares your break or purpose and can actually hang with your drinking style is pretty awesome. Nothing’s worse, though, than a lightweight bender friend. Can I call them frienders? When you’re out and ready for a multi-hour stretch and he or she is hiccupping after one beer, problems arise.

It also helps to have a non-bender friend, someone who’s generally staying sober, or at least normal. This has to be a close friend you trust and who is not judgmental. You need someone watching out if you’re about to step over a line, like drinking a fifth of whiskey near some cops or hitting on someone you really shouldn’t hit on. REALLY SHOULDN’T. But if you’ve got a judger, they’re just going to be on your case about everything so you never know what to take seriously. A cool non-bending friend can be a real ballast making sure you don’t go about this all wrong.

Keep some sort of record of what you’re doing. I don’t mean some weird OCD list of every drink you have. But a journal or something. Personally, I like to keep my camera around. Benders often lead to amazing, unexpected times. It’d be a shame if you couldn’t remember them. So make sure there’s something that will keep these good times around even after you clean up.

Lastly, when it’s time to rein it in, do so. When you’ve set yourself a time limit, never extend it, not even for a day. You’ll feel terrible for a day or so but, man, you will feel great once you’ve worked it through. Elongating a bender is the surest way to wreck it. There’ll be another time. Besides, it’s time for moderation in your excess.

Photos by the Masked Drinker

The Morning After, A Syrcls Brunch Review: Easter Sunday Brunch!

2009-04-14T16:58:00.014-04:00

The Masked Drinker Gets Poetical

2009-04-08T08:41:00.001-04:00

“She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.'
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

'This music crept by me upon the waters'
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.”

Thus sayeth T.S. Eliot in “The Waste Land.” Why bring it up, especially since I am clearly an idiot in a mask that drinks too much? The answer is threefold. I’ve been teaching “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to 10 year olds this past couple of weeks and it’s been kind of awesome. Also, as you might know, the poem quoted above begins with the famous line, “April is the cruelest month.”

Thirdly April is National Poetry month, which may or may not have something to do with the previous two reasons. Poetry and drinking have a long, weird history, really. I mean, pretty much any poet worth his or her salt (from Shakespeare to Hank Williams Sr.) was a giant drunk, or would have been if they weren’t so goddam nuts they weren’t ever around booze. I’m looking at you, Dickenson.

It was only last week when I was about to enter Shades of Green in Manhattan in order to a) play a nerdy board game with my friends and b) try to flirt with a cute waitress (the two go together like peanut butter and chocolate IF YOU ARE ALLERGIC TO PEANUT BUTTER). I was finishing up a cigarette when a fellow came from inside and asked me for a light. He then began to expound upon all sorts of topics, like the original location of Tammany Hall, how kids only study things like business today, and the genius of song and poetry. He then recited “The Harlot’s House” by Oscar Wilde from beginning to end. It was impressive on the other hand, and long and weird and creepy on the other. So maybe if you want to memorize a cool poem suitable for bars, perhaps a multi-stanza epic isn’t quite the way to go. (Although that may have been super impressive to some Ren Fair girl, but if you want to impress a Ren Fair girl I don’t want you reading my goddam blog in the first place and getting your greasy little fingers on it.)

(I was going to post a photo of Ren Fair people here but realized I hated neither you nor myself enough to do so. But now the image is stuck in my head so I have to look at something awesome.

Whew, much better.)

So, with that in mind, I have decided to supply you, my reader, with your own easily-memorizable poetry to use and enjoy this month or whenever the fancy strikes you. For convenience sake, I’ll keep it in “fun size” haiku poems. Enjoy!

Home with cold beer
Oh no where is opener
My life is pointless

You are beautiful
I think that you should make out
With the Masked Drinker

Oh man gotta pee
I should have stayed with liquor
Beer goes right through me

This is like magic
I’m pretty sure that whiskey
Just made me charming

Dear God I’m hungry
Oh, look, it’s a White Castle
This is a mistake

I have bought four drinks
I hope next comes a buy back
Yay life has meaning

This party is lame
So I will play this guitar
Wait, I don’t know how

You’re familiar
How is it that I know you?
Oh, yeah. We had sex.

Holy shit this beer
Tastes like homeless dude asshole
It’s free? Glug glug glug

What is the best blog?
It’s “Here Comes a Regular”
It’s because of me

Eh? Eh? Whattaya think? Should I start sending to publishers?

Feel free to add your own!

The Morning After, A Syrcls Brunch Review: Beast

2009-04-06T13:22:00.005-04:00

Let’s face it, the last thing you want to do when you wake up from a long (and possibly regrettable) night out is to get out of bed and cook yourself something awesome to make yourself feel more human again. At least for people like me, who pretty much don’t cook at all, going out to brunch is pretty much your best friend. So that’s why I’m here: to share my tales of urban brunching— tales of caution, and/or tales of awesome.

Sunday morning, I found myself in Prospect Heights and in the middle of the most gorgeous, most perfect Spring day of the year. I danced with a few of my good friends at the Rub, a hip hop party at Southpaw, until the sun came up. Though I could've looked at this weekend as a raging bummer disappointment due to an unfortunate rude awakening the previous morning, this weekend unexpectedly turned out to be just what I needed after all.

Some of the other much-needed things included but were not limited to: Schooling some offensive asshole on nature vs nurture(I had him at "nature vs nurture"), getting a set of amazing massages and genuine affection, spending some QT with my girl friends, going to a new yoga studio with a friend who was originally against it, semi-surpassing my expectations at my first attempt at making baja-style fish tacos, and "pimping" out my bed (new down pillows and jersey sheets!).

But back to Sunday, me, my friend Alexi, her boyfriend, and their roommate (who I used my magical powers of persuasion and shoulder-riding...what? I wanted a ride to brunch!) decided to have brunch at Beast, a bar/restaurant down Vanderbilt. Because we all stayed up dancing, etc., we got a little bit of a late start, waking up around 1:30pm. Had I been in Williamsburg, it would've been such a shitshow trying to go to brunch on such a coat-less day, so that made me even more happy than waking up next to an open window with the sun and spring weather coming in.

Admittedly, we were all pretty hungover and a bit out of it. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, they were out of my top 2 choices for brunch: French Toast and the Sauteed Polenta (the latter especially sounded amazing). I'm also fairly sure that the Australian waitress wanted to kill us. Not entirely sure why, but, I guess it must have sucked to have to be working on such a gorgeous day. Also, I'm pretty sure I was laughing about me mistaking something Alexi said for "a dingo ate my baby" fairly loudly.

We started with some mimosas & bloodys (included in the $13.95 brunch special), and a bread basket that was pretty damn amazing. Alexi and her bf got the bloodys, which are according to them, the best in the United States. For the main thing, I ended up picking the veggie wrap with chipotle aoli. Alexi had the pan-seared scallops, Alexi's bf had something egg or meat-related that I forgot, and Alexi's roommate had an egg and spinach special with a side of fruit.

As Foxy loves to tease me, I'm obsessed with portions. Although overall, I liked the fact that the veggie wrap claimed to come with a salad and potatoes, I in fact found a total of TWO (yes, as in one-TWO) little potatoes on my plate. Had the wrap not been so tasty, I probably would've minded way more. I have to say, though, I would've really like to try the sauteed polenta.

I would definitely go back...but perhaps when I'm less loud and hungover.

Pictures from the interwebz

The Masked Drinker's Bourbon Pairing: Shotgun Willie

2009-04-01T08:34:00.000-04:00

Let’s talk music. Now I might be a man of strong opinions when it comes to music, but I make no attempt at seeming like I’m an expert. I’m basically one of those annoying guys who “knows what he likes.” But I can freely admit when I like some terrible fucking things, and when I hate some amazing stuff. It’s nice when what I like coincides with What Is Good, but not necessary.

Today I want to talk about an album that is not only Good but Perfect Drinking Music. And that’s Shotgun Willie by Willie Nelson. I don’t understand how this came out as a country album in 1973. It’s funky, jazzy, funny, and completely awesome the entire way through. The title track starts off with this crazy bass line and simple guitar work. The lyrics are silly, metatextual, and make fun of the Klan on top of it. When the horns kick in you know you’re in for something special. Willie’s classic, often underrated guitar work doesn’t hurt too bad, either. Listen to it.

Then, of course, you get that second track, “Whiskey River.” Now, I’m a man of certain traditions and rituals. When I see a “L’occatan en provence” shop, for instance, I say the name out loud in a terrible French accent. This was designed to drive an ex of mine nuts, but I still do it, even when alone. I dunno, I like this stuff. Anyway, whenever this song comes on, no matter my state or the time of day, I take a glass of bourbon. The lyrics are simple, but exactly what you need them to be.

Whiskey River, take my mind
Don't let her memory torture me
Whiskey River, don't run dry
You're all I got to carry me

I'm drowning in a Whiskey River
Bathing my memory's mind in
the wetness of its soul
Feeling the amber current flowing from my mind
To warm an empty heart you left so cold

Damn, I couldn't find the album version, but here's a good live one.

Those two stanzas are just repeated in between some great music and solos. Everybody gets a turn, classic jazz/bluegrass style. That funkyass bass is still there, and the vocal harmonies are churchly beautiful.

Incidentally, Willie released his own bourbon called Old Whiskey River and it’s pretty damn good, actually. I remember being offered it by a waitress friend whilst in a heartbroken state. I took it because it was nice of her and, hey, free bourbon, but I really didn’t expect much. Blew my mind that a celebrity bourbon could be so damn tasty. Pretty hard to find these days, and it’s not my absolute favorite, but it’s always a welcome sight.

Next up is “Sad Songs and Waltzes,” a sad and funny little tune where Willie tells some woman that broke his heart that she doesn’t need to worry about anyone finding out, because no one will listen to this song. Cake (remember them? Faux Bee June does.) did a good job covering it, I recall. It’s kind of hard to find a good waltz these days. OK, let’s start a movement, Waltzcore. Who’s in? Cotillion INSANITY all the way. Man, we will make some parties that will be THE THING.

The whole album’s great. There’s classic great country like “Local Memory,” more crazy 70s countryfunk like “Devil in a Sleeping Bag” . . .it’s all over the place in all the right ways. “She’s Not for You” is a minor key masterpiece. The Bob Wills cover “Stay All Night (Stay a Little Longer)” is what we all want to say after that fourth drink and that cutie next to you just cracked the perfect joke and smiled that smile.

Anyway, I can’t recommend this album highly enough. Don’t be afraid if you don’t like country; it’s barely recognizable as such. Just get a tall glass of straight bourbon, nothing too fancy. Sit back, relax, and have a damn fine time with an American genius. (Not me, Willie. Although you’re welcome to try me sometime, too.)

The Morning After, A Syrcls Brunch Review: Smoke Joint

2009-03-29T19:32:00.009-04:00

Let’s face it, the last thing you want to do when you wake up from a long (and possibly regrettable) night out is to get out of bed and cook yourself something awesome to make yourself feel more human again. At least for people like me, who pretty much don’t cook at all, going out to brunch is pretty much your best friend. So that’s why I’m here: to share my tales of urban brunching— tales of caution, and/or tales of awesome.

This weekend solidified my 30-day fast on booze as a complete failure. It all started with Rosé at Mother’s, which turned into Tempranillo at Huckleberry, which spilled over to the next day after The Vagina Monologues. I did start out drinking two mocktails very, very fast. But I caved and drank beer, beer, beer at B-Side, Lakeside Lounge, and some no-name bar in the East Village. Abstaining from meat, sex, and alcohol is way, way too hard to do all at once. Since something had to give, I’ve decided to let it be alcohol, since I only drink on the weekends anyway.

I wasn’t really hungover all weekend, which was nice, though I did feel super guilty about letting myself down on the pact. I had originally planned among other things for (what turned out to be not-) sober weekend was a screening of Cool Hand Luke at BAM. The friend who invited me is an aficionado of BBQ style food, and wanted to go to this place Smoke Joint, pretty close to BAM, off the Fulton stop on the G. So instead of a traditional brunch, I opted for that.

I guess it was a little bit of punishment for failing the alcohol pact. The funny thing was, after failing in that arena, it was a hell of a lot easier to not eat meat, even at a place like that. Go figure. Anywho, I split a side of BBQ-seasoned fries with my friend, and had the mac & cheese with a side of BBQ spicy corn. Oh, and I had some really, really sweet sweet tea.

The best thing about the meal was the fries, I have to say. The mac & cheese was a super small portion, and I didn’t even finish it. It was pretty rubbery and tasteless. The corn was pretty good, with all the spicy BBQ seasoning, but it wasn’t as good as I expected. I definitely contemplated getting a second order of fries My friend had the pulled pork sandwich. I’m sure it was pretty good, since it’s like one of his places to get BBQ. Oh, and he swears that BBQ sauce has restorative powers for hangovers. I don’t know about that, but I do, as a rule, know it to be true that BBQ sauce is categorically superior to ketchup when it comes to meat and fry condiments.

After the fry fest, I got a chocolate chip cookie for the movie. It was huge with huuuuuge chips. It was aight, probably better than what I could get at BAM, but nothing to write home about. Overall, I spent like a bit over $10, and though much of it left a lot to be desired, it was cool to be full with pretty small portions of 4 different things. It did kind of get me in the mood for Cool Hand Luke too, what with all the almost subtitle-worthy heavy ass southern accents, which must be at least partly due to the characteristic heaviness and spiciness of BBQ cuisine.

Pictures from the interwebz

The Masked Drinker's Guide to Las Vegas

2009-03-24T19:51:00.010-04:00

I’m not a huge traveler. I came from shit-town, Kentucky and climbed my way to the heights of awesomeness in Brooklyn. New York City has just about anything you could want in any place, so rare is the time that I leave it. When I do, it’s with a mission in mind, be it food (lobster rolls in Maine), friends (wedding in Arkansas), or duty (family in-sigh-Kentucky). But way back in my college days my two best friends were attending college in Las Vegas. So, every spring, I’d go visit them.

And, seriously, fuck Las Vegas. Jesus Christ is there a worst place on the planet? (Other than the internet.) “Oh, but it’s party central, Masked Drinker!” you might be shouting at your screen (your coworkers hate you). No. It is stupid central. “But they have no open container laws!” (Stop shouting.) And, yes, that’s pretty awesome, at least, until you realize that most people in the world have no business drinking so much as to need to take it out from building to building.

Drinking in Las Vegas is a lot like going out to eat on Valentines Day or having pizza in Los Angeles: fucking amateur hour. Screaming morons with retarded novelty cups half-filled with shitty drinks or shittier beers lurching from specially-designed human maze-trap to otherly-themed human maze-traps wasting money that could be used for something useful like curing AIDS, getting me a better phone, or curing phone AIDS.

My friends did the best thing they could possibly have done for me when I first arrived. They picked me up at the airport and drove me straight to some casino. They gave me twenty bucks and let me choose where to spend it. I sat down at a blackjack table and lost it all within ten minutes. Don’t go to casinos in Las Vegas. They are designed to take your money and sense of time away. You might get a free drink or two, but they will taste like they were poured through the sole of your shoe.

It’s not that I mind gambling. Hell, I love poker. (Real poker, not that “Hold ‘Em” bullshit. Poker isn’t an exercise in card counting. Well, not that explicitly. It’s an opportunity to drink and lie with your friends. And sometimes lay with them.) But big casinos are just awful wastes. Also, you inevitably will find yourself faced with a line of elderly people mechanically dropping their savings into slot machines, and I don’t know about you, but pondering the meaninglessness of my own mortality isn’t high up on my AWESOME FUN list.

And casino bars suck. Hell, all theme bars suck. If I may paraphrase Tolstoy in a blog entry about how much Las Vegas sucks, all good bars are similar; but each shitty theme bar is shitty in its own themey way. Again, I lucked out as I had locals, or local-enoughs to be able to be hooked up with a normal bar filled with normal people who actually knew how to drink. It’s the only place, other than peoples’ apartments, I’ve happily been drinking in Las Vegas and I don’t mind telling you what it is. It’s called the Stake Out. Now, this was back in college so maybe it’s too college-y for me now, but I never had less than a good time there.

I’d like to take this time to anti-recommend a bar in Las Vegas, now that I think of it. There’s a Cheers branch there, and one friend and I went to see what it was like. HOLY SHIT IT WAS AWFUL. You’d think the most famous bar license in the world would have a bit of quality control. It was a horrible little hellhole with only two people other than us in it: the bartender and a customer, both with long, curly hair. We found the juke and played some early Van Halen and dude turned it off. He had the audacity to purport Santana was a better guitarist. Suffice to say the night ended with us throwing bottles in a rage and scooting on out.

That’s what Las Vegas is like. It brings out the retarded in you. Sometimes that’s funny, or at least is in retrospect. There was the time we semi-accidentally Cool Hand Luked a college parking lot; an epic story filled with danger, superhuman feats of strength, and a miraculous shopping cart. Unfortunately, even masked, I don’t think it’s the best idea to share it online, but let’s just say mistakes were made and we’re all very lucky to be where we are today.

So I guess I’ve had good times in Las Vegas. But it should be noted said good times were had with the people I had good times with in the middle of nowhere, Appalachia, so that may have just been the company. Go if you have to. Maybe it’s an experience people need. And you won't do so badly if you get some locals and get away from the strip. But understand that it’s going to be a weird, depressing experience filled with the lowest thoughts and deeds mankind has to offer at the moment. And that at one point you’re going to be totally wasted, carrying someone’s booze through a shortcut that takes you through a loud casino, and all the sudden you’re going to realize what Hunter was really talking about.
Images stolen yadda yadda. I'm just happy I remembered how to do roll-over text.

The Morning After, A Syrcls Brunch Review: Roebling Tea Room

2009-03-22T18:03:00.009-04:00

Let’s face it, the last thing you want to do when you wake up from a long (and possibly regrettable) night out is to get out of bed and cook yourself something awesome to make yourself feel more human again. At least for people like me, who pretty much don’t cook at all, going out to brunch is pretty much your best friend. So that’s why I’m here: to share my tales of urban brunching— tales of caution, and/or tales of awesome.

This past Friday, me and a few friends went out for Broke Ass Stuart’s book signing/reading/walking tour/drinking fun (check out BrokeAssStuart.com). We stayed out fairly late, and partially because my friend Abby decided it would be a great idea for she, my friend Chloe, and I to split a huge bottle of champagne at like 4am, after already having drunk quite a bit, I was a total wreck Saturday morning.

I had decided that it would be my last day before making my pact with a friend to go off alcohol completely for 30 days. I know it sounds crazy, but I’m going to give it a shot and see what happens. Especially because, on Saturday, I had been planning on going to yoga, but I could barely get off the couch, and I feel gross about it. Also that night, I was also supposed to go see my friend Matt’s improv show at the UCB theatre, and meet up with other friends at what I later discovered to be an amazing party on S.5th & the Williamsburg Bridge (that big white old building everyone wants to live in. One of my friends didn’t get home until 9:45am, because she was dancing for so long! Instead, I put in Season 1 of Arrested Development, got ready to go out, and accidentally passed out at 12:30am.

So, I slept until about noon today, and it was possibly the best thing I’d done for my body since I last worked out, a few days before. And since that nice, long sleep left me slightly lazier of a lazy ass, plus the weather being in the high 50s, my roommate & I decided to walk to Roebling Tea Room. Though in the past he swore he’d never go back due to a pretty bad service experience we had there once. But, I have a pretty short-term memory/concern about that sort of thing.

For some reason, lately, I have been obsessed with Ricotta, and I had my eye on the ricotta, fig spread with walnuts & greens plate. [Sidenote: they also have the most AMAZING Baked Brie platter on the evening menu. Seriously, I go out of my way for it]. Unfortunately, and probably because of the recession, the portion was significantly smaller than I remember. But it was just as tasty. I think the greens they use now are slightly more bitter, but it was a nice contrast with the sweet, lightly creamy sweetness of the ricotta/fig/walnut mix. When I’m craving ricotta in the morning, I can truly think of nothing more satisfying, semi-healthy, and meat-free. Then again, I can’t think of any brunch dish that typically pairs ricotta and meat, but whatever. Oh, and I looove the orange juice there, and the large sized glass they give you.

My roommate got the baked eggs and grits with cheddar, 2 huge slices of fancy toast with apple butter. Although the grits at Roebling are different than my faaaaaavorite grits ever, at Relish, I like that they use sharp cheddar as opposed to something more mild. The only thing I didn’t like about this was again, the small portion of everything but the toast—opposite from my plate’s issue. We didn’t have a service problem this time, and even though it always looks crowded, we were seated in like 10 minutes. Also, there is always some waiter I or whoever I’m with thinks is cute. The one I normally like wasn’t working this morning, unfortunately. He has black glasses, brown hair and I think at least one sleeve-- which I normally find unappealing, but on him it doesn’t bother me. I think they might have hired new/more people, because there seemed to be way more waiters working brunch than usual…or at least the presence is more obvious.

Oh, and we both also thought we saw Perez Hilton when we first walked in, which essentially, would be THE nail in the coffin to this neighborhood. But we can all thankfully breathe a big sigh of relief that this was a false alarm. The dude turned out to be more of a John Norris lookalike. Funny though, because my roommate and I always seem to be at the same events and restaurants as the actual John Norris. Anywho, yay for Roebling Tea Room ricotta, and figs!

Photos by Misoserious.com

The Masked Drinker's Bourbon Pairing: Garth Ennis comics

2009-03-18T10:23:00.003-04:00

I’ll be honest. I’m not doing so well right now, folks. I have had a bit too much too many days in a row. Jobs that start early and nights that go late can add up. And that goddamned animal holiday yesterday filled every bar with rank amateurs of questionable skill, knowledge, hygiene, and moral fiber. But I soldier on, fear not. I’ve got another bourbon pairing aimed right at your soul, high caliber style.

You may have noticed I’m a man who enjoys the occasional dip in the nerd pool. OK, fine, I’m prune-fingered from staying in too long. THIS METAPHOR IS GETTING TIRED. So this week’s bourbon pairing is all about me bringing you, the reader, into a pleasant nerd cave filled with excellence.

See, one thing that always goes well with bourbon is the comics of one Garth Ennis. Ennis is an Irish writer that came to American comics by way of a slightly different route. Most comic writers grew up reading the same superhero comics that are around today, but not Ennis. He grew up on a steady diet of British war comics, more anthology-based, more morally complicated, and often laden with irony and honor like ketchup on a classless person’s steak.

He’s worked on a number of books that are prime bourbon material. One of his few forays into (somewhat) traditional superhero fare was Hitman, the story of an Irish gangster with x-ray vision. Superheroes were skewered and satirized while keeping the action going and the humor ribald. Friendship between men, a common theme in his work, is an important strand throughout. I honestly don’t think it’s his strongest work, as some of it seemed derivative of the works of John Woo.

He’s more famous for the series Preacher drawn mostly by Steve Dillon. There were sixty-six monthly issues now collected into nine trade paperbacks. Both a love letter to the myth of America and a deconstruction of Judeo-Christian (especially Catholic) belief, Preacher is the story of Jesse Custer, a tortured man with a complicated background and a strong right hook who one day acquires the “Word of God,” an ability to make people do whatever he says. He, a hitman girlfriend, and a vampire best friend go off to find God and “make him pay for all the suffering.”

The tone moves from slapstick, gross-out humor to elegiac romance to action buddy-movie and everything in-between. Steve Dillon’s artwork is clean, full of expression, and representational enough to ground even absurd concepts, like the failed suicide called Arseface. There are lots of great moments and overall it’s an impressive, personal work. There are unfortunately points where Ennis falls a bit too in love with his characters, and tidies things up a bit too neatly, and other points where his critique of religion is more adolescent petulance than thought-out theology, but it’s a remarkable work well worth checking out.

It’s my masked opinion, however, that a more recent epic is even better, and it comes from the strangest place. Ennis and various artists spent the past few years working on the Marvel Superheroes gun-toting vigilante, The Punisher. The character debuted as a Spider-man villain, but eventually became popular enough to support several of his own titles (including a near pornographic “file” book detailing the various guns he uses). Largely and for ages thought of as something of a joke by readers over the age of 13, Ennis was given free reign to do whatever he wanted with the character. He started with a dark comedy called “Welcome Back Frank” that teamed him again with Steve Dillon. Sort of a morbid Road Runner cartoon, villains were dispatched in increasingly violent, absurd methods. But then Ennis wrote “Born,” a sobering look at The Punisher’s time in Viet Nam and here is where he seemed to really find what he had to say about the character, and, more, through the character.

He quickly relaunched the book with rotating artists for different stories and a darker, more serious tone. Now an adults-only book, it tackled various issues in the world today from sex trafficking to the war on terror. In truth, it became a years-long epic examination of the world and especially the United States, in today’s both post-Viet Nam and post-9/11 environment. Harrowing, poignant, and yet never losing the pulp excitement and action that carries the character, the series is one of the most significant pieces about America I’ve seen in the form. Frank Castle, the Punisher, is portrayed as a man of his time, completely dedicated to his psychopathic war, a relentless killer who just happens to kill terrible people. But the Punisher is more a vehicle for the social examination that Ennis is doing; he’s often less a character than a device.

A book about a guy with a skull symbol on his chest killing bad guys has no right to be such a vital, amazing work of art. But it is. Also collected in trade paperback form, I cannot recommend it more highly. Crack it open, pour yourself something brown and hot, and let the two things rattle your brain together with toughness and meaning.

The Morning After, A Syrcls Brunch Review: Balthazar

2009-03-16T21:02:00.012-04:00

Dawn Weiner on Hitting on Boys in Bars

2009-03-16T07:27:00.004-04:00

Syrcls apologizes for the delay in her brunchery, but promises "a free round of e-bloody-marys-on-facebook." I have no idea what those words mean in that order but it sounds promising. Thankfully, faithful reader and previous contributer Dawn Weiner has more words of wisdomfor ladies in bars. Enjoy.
--The Colonel

In my youth, when no one around me had figured out how to work a proper relationship, my friends were falling in and out of first loves, and no one knew what they were doing at all when it came to the opposite sex. Most every guy you liked was single. Or willing to dump his girlfriend to be with you. But it’s a different story now. I realized this when I admitted to a freind that I was hot for our student teacher at NYU.

"Nope," my friend said. "He’s married."

"How do you know?"

"Dude, he’s got a ring on his finger!"

Ooooooh.

That was me at 25. I’m 28 now and I ain’t playin’ anymore. People are married now. They’re in serious relationships. I’m nowhere near any of that. I can’t even get a kiss. The last time I got licked was by my cat. I recently got dumped by a guy who didn’t appreciate that The Wire was the best damn drama series in the universe. And the guy before that had never even seen The Big Lebowski until he met me. I have been in perpetual dating FAIL mode since I moved to New York over three years ago. Forget About Intimate Lovemaking, Fucking Avoid Infected Lovers, Fear All Imbecilic Losers.

Where do you meet people in this city? Bars. How do you hit on men? Like this:

(The following doesn't mean I had any luck, mind you. Just very large balls.)

I'm in a Park Slope bar with some of my perpetually single girlfriends and my perpetually single self when a hoard of guys walks in. One of them is carrying a blow-up plastic doll and all of them are drunk. Bachelor party. Congrats to the groom-to-be and his soon-to-be ball-and-chain, but huzzah! I spot a cute guy in the bunch. I tap the dude with the fake woman and ask him to point out all the single men in his posse. My friends squeal, "Oh my god, Dawn, what are you doing?" They’re embarrassed. I’m not. The groom drunkenly obliges, giving me a rundown of who has a girlfriend, who is married and who is single. The one I liked was taken. Shoot!

I’m at a bar by myself in the lower east side early on a Saturday afternoon just after getting off work. I’m downing a few before I pick up some Chinese to-go at Congee Village nearby. A very attractive (to me) guy comes through the door with a friend. "Mmm mmm mmm mmm mmmmmm," I think to myself. I can’t see if he has a ring and I don’t care. I think I’m drunk. Fantasies of sharing my soysauce noodles, shrimp paste pork ribs, sauteed pea shoots with garlic, and fish with ginger congee, with him dance in my head. I ask the bartender to the "guy in the hat's" next beer is on me, pointing out the dude out. When he gets his pint, he cheers me from across the bar. The bartender comes back and tells me that he has a girlfriend and wants to buy my next drink in return. I accept and walk over to him to apologize. He says he’s flattered, but his girlfriend will be at the bar any minute. My fish with ginger congee tastes watery and thin the next day, because I couldn’t finish it by myself.

This one didn't occur in a bar, but in a restaurant. They serve alcohol in restaurants and I sure do drink it, so there. I was at Momofuku Noodle Bar to celebrate some kind of school-related milestone that I invented for myself (I went to class sober! Or, I went to class!) and I ordered one glass of sake, and then several glasses of white wine. The waiter asked if I switched to the wine because it was cheaper and I said yes. When I got the bill I wasn't charged for any of the wine. Wowee zowee. After several more visits and friendly exchanges I decide I like him. But I do nothing. Then one day I'm allowed to leave early from work because I'm crying after having just found out that I didn’t get the world’s most perfect job for me. I walk into Momofuku Milk Bar to pick up a slice of friendly chocolate cake. My eyes are red and my nose is leaking and guess who’s slicing my cake? A few weeks later I take my friend to the Milk Bar and we order two slices of cake. He wordlessly packs me a blueberry lemon cookie for free. I’m, like, totally bonkers for him at this point. Finally, back at the Noodle Bar, I point him out to the girl with the clipboard. Seat me in his section I say. We eat very well and he brings us a free soft serve to share at the end. "Do you have a girlfriend?" I ask. "Yes."

So there you go. Buck up ladies. Don’t fear making the first move. And don’t waste your time. Find out if he’s single first before you get totally disappointed after you’ve been talking to this guy for like an hour about your favorite Simpsons episodes of all time when he casually slips in mention of his girlfriend of four years.

More tips for girls drinking alone who want to get chatty with the bodacious boozing boy at the bar:

Read something interesting. I don’t even know what that means and I personally don’t care what someone thinks about what I read, but if it’s interesting it could be a conversation starter.

Listen in on their conversation and jump in if you have something to add. But only if it's appropriate. Guy having intimate conversation with a girl. Inappropriate. Guy with buddy out for a few beers. Appropriate, sometimes. Use your common sense.

Smile at him if he glances your way more than a few times, buy him a drink through the bartender, ask him to watch your stuff when you go to the bathroom, ask him what he’s drinking, drink something weird so he can’t help asking what you’re drinking, bring your dog to the bar because he’ll probably want to play with it (and maybe you, later), start an argument with the bartender about stuff that people like to weigh in on, like who has the best pastrami sandwich, NY or LA (LA wins IMHO). Do whatever. But don’t act a fool. You’ll make us all look bad.

--Dawn Weiner

photo appropriated by my assistant. It seemed appropo.

The Masked Drinker's Guide to Karaoke

2009-03-11T09:48:00.000-04:00

There are a lot of things you know about me already. You now that I wear a mask. You know that I drink. It can even be inferred that you know I’m completely fucking awesome. But there is something that you may not have known about me that is a subset of my overall awesomenity. What I now refer to is my status as a Main Guy of Karaoke. Underneath this writerly exterior lies a wailing behemoth of rock, and from time to time it gets out.

But karaoke is no amateur’s game; it is not to be approached willy-nilly. There are certain tips and guidelines I’d like to share with you that I’ve garnered over my years of belting out tunes in establishments built up by Asian immigrants.

First, perhaps most obviously, drink. Now, you’re probably thinking, “Extremely handsome masked guy, why for you tellin’ me such obviousness?” Well have you ever seen the people who karaoke sober? Let’s put it this way: you know when you’re not wearing shoes and you stub your toe; and you don’t just stub it but you bend a toenail back; and there’s that rush of painful air on your tender, exposed, stubbed skin? That sucks. But sober karaokeers suck worse than that. They take this shit way serious.

That’s the crux of a lot of these tips. Don’t take it too seriously. To that end, avoid singing songs that have emotional value to you. This isn’t a recital, nor a serenade on a first date. This is having some funtimes and blurting out some funsongs. If you have a wedding song or a song your dad had played at his funeral or a graduation song and for some reason you actually like thinking of high school, do not sing these songs. You will ruin them, and then you will feel bad.

Have some go-to songs, too. They should be fun, light, and recognizable. I recommend having at least one solo go-to and a couple duets. Duets are automatically better than solos, as you’re having fun with a friend (or a stranger that maybe you make out with later), and no single person must carry the burden of hitting every note in the song. One of my solo go-tos is the theme from “Cheers.” Getting the bartenders on your side is a nice step in karaoke rockage.

If you’re going to rap, be sure that you really, really, really know the song. I dialed up “Intergalactic” by the Beastie Boys once, because I love that song. Well it turns out I knew about 60 percent of the lyrics and thus 40% of the time gawped and looked an even bigger fool than usual. That shit is fast and difficult, and after a few drinks, the tongue doesn’t want to work like that. But I’ll say this: in the rare event someone does pull it off? MINDS ARE BLOWN.

You know those songs that you assume you’re going to hear when you go to karaoke? Like “New York, New York” or “Crazy” or “Piano Man”? Well, you are going to hear them. So don’t sing them. Nobody wants to hear the same song, no matter how good it is, over and over and over again all night. Put a little variety into the evening. Something you loved growing up, but don’t hear all that often. And if you know it, never fear a little old country. Even in Downtown Manhattan you’re going to be surrounded with more fans of David Allen Coe than you would have ever guessed.

Speaking of the people around you, show them some love. The best karaoke is public karaoke. I’m not so down with the private rooms with just you and your palsies. Do that a few times and you can predict what everyone’s gonna do. And it gets boring. One of the pleasures of karaoke is interacting semi-artistically with total strangers. So when somebody goes up and gives it their all, you goddam well better applaud! Especially if they’re into it. (Not taking it seriously, into it. Very different. Serious-takers have pained faces and sing important tunes with vibrato and heartfelt emotion. They make you want to leave, die, or both. Into-its are totally rocking out and having funtimes.) Cheer, high five, spread the love. It’ll come back to you. Don’t be one of those shitty groups that only listen to their own friends and never have fun with anyone else. They are like stepping in dog poo, except at karaoke and with singing.

Speaking of Into-Its, totally be one. Rock out with your best moves. Nobody expects David Lee Roth, but do what you can. A little dancing and rock posing goes a long way. Which is not to say do only the barest minimum amount. Let the rock flow through you like electric fuck. A lot of rock stars are neither hot nor that good at singing. It’s all about that electric fuck juice. Drink heartily of it.

The most important thing is just to let loose and have fun. Bring some friends who are ready to party, meet some new folks, and rock it out. The second most important thing is not to sing “Bohemian Rhapsody.” You can’t sing it, it takes forever, and everyone else in the room will hate you. If you MUST sing it, wait until right before closing time. Then people will be drunk enough to form a chorus with you instead of resenting your sorry ass.

portrait by girl the Masked Drinker wishes he remembered. And, yes, that's open mic and not karaoke but it's the best I had. Shut the fuck up. Other picture stolen from internet and written on using photoshop in its basest form by the Masked Drinker.

A Syrcls Brunch Review: Ordering In!

2009-03-08T21:01:00.007-04:00

HCAR Drink Tasting: The Southern Bride

2009-03-06T12:05:00.002-05:00

Hey, folks. I know Faux-Bee June usually writes up these drink thingees, but she’s off in the hills of Scotland collecting the heads of her enemies, so we drew straws and guess who got the short one? The hint is: he wears a mask and is me.

This week we had a gin drink called the Southern Bride. I thought maybe this meant it was 16 years old but it was actually 2/3 Gin, 1/3 grapefruit and a splash of Maraschino. Gin and grapefruit both prove to be pretty strong tastes, so we got some pretty strong opinions. Onwards.

Our roster:
Staff members Faux Bee, myself, Syrcls, and Rachel and frequent guests Meatball, Fraulein N, and The Pet sat around on a cold end-of-winter’s night and tried to enjoy life.
Generally folks didn’t like this drink. Every single contributor mentioned that it was too tart or bitter, and that gin and grapefruit just do not go well together, like peanut butter and knifestabs. Rachel felt that the drink was best suited for old ladies in Atlantic City, but Meatball put down a Johnny Ryan comic long enough to comment it was for Upper East Side Ladies. I felt it was more for sorority girls, and the Fraulein darkly commented more literally that it would be suited for “A woman getting married south of the Mason Dixon line.” So we basically thought it was for women of low taste.

When asked where and under what circumstance they pictured themselves having this drink, The Pet, Rachel, and Fraulein all flatly said they would never drink this. Syrcls allowed that if she were depressed and there was no Nyquil, she’d give it a whirl. Faux Bee would indulge if she were dating a fellow with a deep expense account. I was more lenient, thinking that on a hot summer’s day this might be a bit more pleasant.

On the subject of improving the drink, everyone mentioned some sort of replacement. Tossing the gin for vodka was a popular choice, but the Fraulein and I agreed that the grapefruit was the most offensive part. I thought maybe lemon juice and some sweetening agent would make this a pretty nice summer drink. Syrcls would improve it by “throwing it in the toilet.” She went on, “Dark chocolate beforehand probably made this even worse. Eww. Just eww.”

In conclusion, Ms. June donned her lab coat to tell us that grapefruit actually hinders the liver’s ability to process alcohol, so it’s basically the worst mixer of all time. I still hold to the belief that nuclear waste and razor blades are a worse mixer, but to each his own.
Sorry if I did this wrong. Faux Bee is better at it. Let’s hope the Quickening doesn’t drive her mad with power.

The Masked Drinker's Bourbon Pairing: Mad Men

2009-03-04T10:50:00.001-05:00

The Masked Drinker was having computer problems, so I have posted this week's article for him.

--The Colonel
A main fact about me is that obviously I am extremely wise. I have been dropping twenty dollar knowledges on you from the inception of this blog. But my role as educator need not be limited to how to guides for bar living. Starting this week, I’m also going to occasionally talk about booze pairings. Specifically, I’ll be talking about bourbon pairings.

Now when I say this I don’t mean foods you should eat that go well with bourbon. I love bourbon more than I love a lot of people, but it’s not exactly refreshing or thirst-quenching. And the rich, caramel overtones in truth blend well with very few edible things. No, when I talk about bourbon pairings I’m going to be talking about experiences, media, and non-edible concepts that are great in and of themselves, but pushed along to splendor with a nice glass of Kentucky’s finest.

Today I want to talk about a television show that goes so well with bourbon, partially because it’s so often consumed by the characters of the show. That show is Mad Men. Now, 99.99999999999% of TV makes me wish the robots would finally rise up and destroy the puny humans, but every now and then something worthwhile gets by. Upon seeing ads for a show on AMC of all places about advertising guys in the fifties, I was certain that this would not be one of those worthwhile times. Hokey jokes about “Hey, back then people sure did act different!” and some weird deification of the world’s most disgusting business.

Well I was wronger than a Klansman in Bed-Stuy. While the first couple of shows did have some snickery, “Boy, wouldn’t it be great if we had a machine that could copy papers for us?” moments and the constant smoking seems to overdrive the point home, quickly something far more subtle comes through. The show, in truth, is actually about the societal change this country went through in the mid-twentieth century and, more importantly, how that affected different people.

The show covers all sorts of people, from executives to housewives to children to the nearly-invisible black help . . .and each person reacts to and is affected by these changes differently. Some fear it, as it represents the end of their control; some fear it because it gives them control and they don’t know what to do with it.

Both the writing and the performances are pretty goddam sublime. January Jones turns what could be a typical frustrated housewife into a vibrant, discordant ball of petulance and neuroses. Jon Hamm, handsome guy extraordinaire, plays Don Draper so perfectly that every revelation both fits and shocks. Anyway, there’s countless places to read up on what makes Mad Men so damn good, so I won’t belabor the point.

What I really want to talk about is that it’s a damn fine show along with which to drink. The characters drink pretty freely, at home, at bars, and at work (oh, how I wish . . .) and they drink well. Lots of bourbons and ryes consumed throughout an episode. But here’s the catch, folks. Don’t drink in your ratty old t-shirt with that band you don’t even like anymore on it. Dress the part. In Don Draper’s world, men and women dress well, all the goddam time. At the very least, have a pressed shirt unbuttoned with a loosened tie. You’ll feel better. Ladies, put on a dress. Match your underwear. Make your drink an occasion of awesomeness.

But if any of you assholes want to make a drinking game out of it, I will personally crawl through your internet tubes and shit on something you love. Drinking isn’t a game! Drinking is an art, it’s a life, and it’s a pleasure. You heard me! Don’t fuck around.

So, I hope you enjoy this bourbon pairing. Mad Men Season 1 is available on DVD and season two probably will be soon. Make a party of it and live it up. Enjoy a drink, enjoy a cigarette, enjoy your friends, enjoy the show, and enjoy living in a world that can completely remake itself when necessary.

Mostly the drink.

pictures again stolen, I almost feel bad, but these dudes are awesome

A Syrcls Brunch Review: New Orleans Edition

2009-03-01T21:45:00.009-05:00

I ordered the crabcake (on a bed of greens, with citrus drizzle) and a side of potatoes. Foxy ordered the potatoes as well, and for the life of me, I cannot remember what she ordered, but I think it involved seafood. Anyway, if you are in New Orleans ever, seafood is a MUST. I don’t think I’ve tasted anything that fresh since I was in Hawaii a few years ago. The potatoes, however, were underwhelming, and I thought the crabcake portion was a little small, though that could’ve been my own fault for ordering nothing else.

On a nicer day, eating in that garden would have been a complete and utter delight. Take a look at that shit! I’ve rarely seen that level of non-showy combo garden/old building quaintness outside of Tuscany. And though the potatoes and waitress left a little to be desired, I highly recommend this place if you feel like dropping mad bones on a truly good quality brunch in a lovely environment. I think it definitely played a part in saving my mental health from the raging lunatic in my brain from the night before.

Photos by Syrcls

The Masked Drinker's Guide to Gay Bars (For Straight Dudes)

2009-02-25T08:19:00.005-05:00

So I was at Fashion Week last, uh, week, surrounded by bizarre examples of genetic perfection, free wine, and toilets whose seats never stand. I spent some time trying to get the designers of Original Penguin to release a nice line of comfortable-yet-stylish masks, but they just don’t yet see the market for it. Anyway, this is all just to say that it made me feel now was a good time to write up why gay bars are basic places of superfun.

My first experience with a gay bar wasn’t really my best. However, it was a bar in West Virginia, and that state and the word “best” never go hand-in-hand. See, my high school buddies and I found out that there was a gay bar in the town near where we grew up and we were overcome with curiosity. It was what you’d expect in an Appalachian gay bar: dudes whose only idea of gay culture is what they’ve seen in bad comedies and ladies who could kill every one of us without even loosening their large-custom-buckled belts. The music was loud and bad, and we were too young to get served. The best part was a redneck football player we had grown up with running up to my friend and proclaiming, “I always knew you were, too!”

Anyway, that’s not the usual scene from what I can tell. Gay bars, maybe especially if you’re straight, are just fun, relaxing places to be. Even some fairly open-minded guys are a little freaked out by the idea that “OH SHIT I AM GOING TO BE HIT ON!” Listen, in New York, at least, gay dudes are hell of picky. If you DO get hit on (which probably won’t happen), then consider it a pretty awesome compliment. If you can make it in the NYC gay scene, you are one hot fellow. (Unless you’re at a chubby chaser bar, but whatever, you probably aren’t.)

Gay bars—and I stress bars here, not clubs—usually have decent selections, prices, and specials. The happy hour at my favorite gay bar, Nowhere, is two for one domestics and well drinks for, like, four or five hours. That’s fucking crazy! A man can get much loaded on Yuenglings and whiskeys while hardly spending anything.

Gay bars are actually pretty amazing for dates, too. Bring a girl to a gay bar and you know no asshole’s gonna try to hit on her while you’re peeing. And, at gay bars I’ve patronized at least, straight couples are almost as cute and exotic as puppies playing with tiger cubs. That’s pretty fucking exotic and cute. Also, there’s usually a juke or DJ with danceable music, and after a few cheap rounds you are so on that, admit it.

Lesbian bars are a bit trickier. First off, if it’s a really anti-male lesbian bar, don’t be an idiot; just don’t go. But most lesbian bars are just bars that happen to be run for and by lesbians. Whenever I’ve found myself in one, I act like I always act in a bar not really meant for me. Just stay friendly, and don’t hit on anyone. And don’t hit on anyone by not hitting on them, either. Girls are totally onto that trick, guys. It’s just that straight girls sometimes pretend it works because it’s easier that way.

I don’t know if I have any gay readers yet, but I just realized that if I do, this is probably the lamest article they’ve ever read. So here’s a picture of Clive Owen as a measure of apology to you, my theoretical gay reader.

Anyway, not all gay bars are alike, obviously. But I’ve never been to one that wasn’t a fun time. I’ve never been forced to dance ala Police Academy. The bartenders are sometimes happy to hear about girl-dating problems to remind them of some of the reasons it’s awesome to be gay. This is, at least, what I’m telling myself whilst I bemoan my latest girltragedy.

So try it out. I recommend, as I said, Nowhere on 14^th between 2^nd and 1^st Avenues. Good juke, pool table, nice seating, fun environment. But please don’t go all at once. Then you’ll ruin it. I know my audience is comprised of ruiners. RUINERS.

pictures stolen from the internet, as he so often does, by the Masked Drinker

dude how hot is Clive Owen? It's ridiculous.

The Vodka Vixens

2009-02-23T09:30:00.002-05:00

Apparently the office suffered a power outage over the weekend. I suspect some sort of kitchen-appliance blunder, but as yet have no proof. In apology for the lack of content, I felt that I might contribute something.

As I have mentioned before, after the War, I made my wages as a writer of novels for men and certain jaunty ladies who crave adventure. My recent forays onto this internet have shown me that my works are out of print and rarely spoken-of. Forgive the ego of an aging man who wishes once more to share the stories he found inside his brain. From time to time I'll share excerpts from my older novels; truly, going back and having my loyal manservant type them up has reawakened the love of the craft. I have begun taking notes on a new work, my first in many years. As for now, I hope you enjoy this selection from The Vodka Vixens, the sequel to my 1965 book, The Vodka Killers.

Charles checked the .44 like he did every morning when he woke up. It was a routine that almost comforted him. There were no complications. There were no expectations. There was no anger, no sadness, no emotion at all. Ever since that fateful day in '56, uncomplicated times were seldom indeed.

But that was a long time ago and far away from his current location. Getting into Cuba had been easier than he had anticipated. The agency had set him up with a rubber raft after he disembarked from the so-called "fishing ship" the Orca. It had seemed legit, but civilians rarely are used in such a capacity as this Quint. Charles also knew that in this line of work, it was sometimes beneficial for the right hand to be kept in the dark about the left hand's activities, lest they find themselves handcuffed together.

After his other routines and calisthenics Charles put on the sort of linen shirt popular in the area as an attempt to blend in. There were fewer Anglos doing business here than in Batista's days, and fewer still vacationing since the embargo. But there were enough, and the dark, swarthy features Charles inherited from his Apache grandfather would help him look more like the local Spaniards than most Agency men.

He winked at the girl at the front desk as he left the hotel and her tan skin blushed even further. He walked the streets a bit, turning here and there, in an elaborate pattern established to discern the presence of tails. Finding none, he went to his meet-up destination, a bar hidden away on a side street.

It was dingy, sparsely-populated, and hot. Charles immediately felt at home. The bartender's hair was tight and curly, but Charles couldn't draw his eyes off her lips. Thick like soft pillows inviting him to come rest on them for a night or two. Perspiration caused her white linen shirt to cling to her in ways that Charles' never would.

"Hola, Senor," she said with a voice somehow both thick with sensuality and lilting with promise. "What'll you have?"

It took Charles a moment to notice she'd spoken to him in English. Nerves ajangle and ready for death-causing action. "You speak English . . .very well," he said, testingly. He wondered if his meeting place for his contact had been compromised.

"I was born in New York, actually," she replied. "I welcome the chance to speak the way I grew up."

"New York, eh? What brings you here?" Charles' hand slid subtly down towards where he kept his sidearm hidden.

"And I'll have a bourbon, neat."

"No bourbons here . . .have to go somewhere that can get past the embargo. Let me make you a local drink." She began mashing a mint into a glass, mixed it with cane surgar syrup, carbonated water, and rum. Charles was intrigued.

"You never answered me why you're here," he asked, watching her top it with a lime.

"Here in this bar or here in Cuba? I'm here in Cuba because I had family here. I'm here in this bar to meet you, Charles."

In less than a second Charles' .44 was leveled straight at her, but her smile nor the sparkle in her eye remained unperturbed.

"Canary Jackanape Soluble," she said.

"Moist Familial Arbitrary," Charles returned.

"I've never known a man with seven heads," she continued.

"Babe Ruth was a fat bastard," Charles continued, knowing he was a phrase away from success.

"Kitty kitty meow meow smell the HELLO," she said.

"Abraham Lincoln was a homosexual," he finished and put the gun down. "They should have told me my contact was . . ."

"A woman? Oh, Charles, I'd heard you were at least a bit more open-minded than that."
He took a long swig from the drink she'd made. "No. That my contact was so . . .intoxicating. What is this drink?"

Smile and eye still unperturbed, yet eyebrow arched, she replied, "A mojito. The sin here almost makes the rest of it worthwhile. Cigars, rum, love . . .but I get the feeling the Reds won't stand for it too much longer."

"Well, I always say 'Enjoy it while you can.' Besides, we'll kick this bearded Marxist out soon enough. Now what say we get down to business?" Charles said, downing the rest of his drink.

Her finger traced her collarbone and her smile widened. "Business before pleasure?"

Charles smiled, but before he could decide they were interrupted.

"Oh, Charles, it pains me to see you drinking this filth," one deeply accented voice said.

"With this filth," an almost identical one replied. Before even turning, Charles recognized it. Olga and Natasha, the Rasputin twins. Two of the Kremlin's deadliest and most beautiful agents. And he had a feeling this time he wasn't going to get off so easily.

The Masked Drinker's Guide to Etiquette and Protocol

2009-02-18T10:41:00.000-05:00

So far my Masked Drinker’s Guides have been pretty situation-specific. But I get asked fairly often about very general issues dealing with drinking. It’s kind of surprising and amazing what some people don’t know. However, I have to remind myself that not everyone is a seasoned, well-worn barhound. Some people go to bars pretty rarely and are therefore unaware of some standard practices that seem obvious to a guy like me. So I’m going to try to address these general issues for the inexperienced drinker in this column; topics like tipping, buybacks, flirting with the patrons or staff, etc.

First off, tipping. The basic rule is: tip, you fucking asshole. Bartenders make an extremely low wage, and, like all of America’s service industry rely on tips to actually live. So they’re busting their butt to get you that sweet sweet booze that makes the sad go away. So tip. Bare minimum is a dollar a drink. But here’s the thing; some drinks are more work-involved than others. If you’re asking for a martini or a cosmo or anything that involves shakeage, it’s courteous to leave something more. I tend to leave two dollars for my first drink, and alternate between two and one for most of the night. Never tip with coins, it’s a pain in everyone’s ass. And if you think your tender is doing a substandard job, tip anyway. Just tip a dollar. Everyone has an off day, but if you shirk on a tip you can guarantee you’re persona non grata in every bar that tender knows. That’s just assy.

Another big topic people ask about is that of buybacks. In case you don’t know, a buyback is a drink the bartender buys for you, usually after three or four that you’ve paid and tipped for. It’s a personal thing on the number, and some bars don’t even allow it. So, for Pete’s sake, don’t ask the bartender about it. That’s basically heck of gauche. It either happens or it doesn’t. And when it happens it’s a magical, wonderful time full of rainbows and superpowers. Appreciate it. And always tip for it; I tend to tip extra for a buyback. Not the full price of the drink, obviously, but two or three bucks is a nice way to show your tender that you appreciate them. And the buybacks will come more often if you do so.

“Hey, is that bartender hitting on me?” If it’s a male bartender, maybe. Remember, it is his job to talk to you, in a way. But it certainly happens. If it’s a female bartender, the answer is almost always no. So don’t hit on them. They’re at work, they hear it all the time and they don’t want to deal with your drinking ass hitting on their sober ass. Be friendly, respectful, joke around, but don’t hit on them. If they’re interested, they’ll let you know when they’re off shift. But they aren’t. Trust me. And guys, as Ms. Weiner’s article shows you, be careful about hitting on patrons, as well. I already went over how to meet girls at bars, but let me reiterate that going up to random girls in bars is very rarely a good idea. Make sure you have your signals straight if you think she wants you to, and be ready to immediately and politely retreat at the first sign of resistance. Better for everyone that way.

I know there’s a lot of debate about bringing babies and children to bars. My parents had a favorite bar that I was in a lot as a kid, but it was a bar-restaurant (with the best fried shrimp EVAR). That’s a big part of how I feel about it. If there’s food there, sure, bring your kid. If the place doesn’t serve food, leave the rugrat with a sitter. Babies under two get special exemption as long as they are not loud asshole babies. But once the little critters start becoming mobile, please leave them out of my bar. I know they drive you nuts and you need a drink; trust me, I know. But they drive us nuts too, and we didn’t choose to bring them into this world. I’m sometimes willing to make an exception if the kid is cute enough, shuts the fuck up enough, and basically sits there with their Shirley Temple/Roy Rogers/inappropriate whiskey drink and lets me forget they’re there. But that happens about as rarely as the Colonel not having an anecdote so just forget it.

I feel like those are the main topics I most often get asked about. Readers, if there are any other questions you’d like answered, respond to this post or email me at themaskeddrinker at gmail dot com. I look forward to hearing from you maybe.

retarded, spent way too much time on it photoshop by the Masked Drinker

Guest Post: Dawn Weiner's Guide to Drinking Alone for Women

2009-02-17T20:22:00.004-05:00

Hey, folks. I got an email from a faithful reader earlier in the week in response to my guide to drinking alone. Dawn wanted to talk about the female side of the issue and I thought it was pretty interesting. So here's our first guest post, written by the lovely young Dawn Weiner. If you have something you think might make a good guest post, email us at hcarblog@gmail.com.

So I’m sitting at the bar, by myself, eating a sandwich. A guy comes up and sits next to me. He glances over at me a few times. He’s interested. I’m not. I’m eating a sandwich.

Me: (eating a sandwich)

Him: So do you come here often?

Me: (mouth full of sandwich and without looking at him): Yes

Him: That a good sandwich?

Me: (mouth full of sandwich and without looking at him): Yes

Him: What do you…

Me: (interrupting him midsentence): Do you mind? I’m trying to finish my sandwich.

Him: Sorry.

After a few minutes I finish my sandwich. It's delicious.

Him: So do you…

Me: Look, dude, I’m not interested in talking with you so could you please stop talking to me.

Just another mildly annoying interaction recalled from my many years as a solo female drinker in New York City bars.

There are several assumptions floating around about women alone at bars.

They are alone and want someone to talk to them, most likely a man.

They are alone because they wanted some quiet time out of the house and to be around people but not be with people.

They want to engage in a friendly chat, either with the bartender or other patrons.

They want to read a book/magazine/paper and drink.

These are all true.

They are alone because they want to get fucked up and maybe also get fucked (perhaps by the bartender or any of the guys sitting along the bar)

They are alone because they are a drunk and couldn’t find someone else to check out with.

These are not always true.

If you’re a woman drinking alone at a bar, the bartenders are your best friends. They keep an eye out for you in case some hooligans from the other end of the bar traipse over to harass you. This happened to me once. I had my laptop up on the bar and was doing some research when these drunk tourists came by and the drunkest one of all stood next to me and demanded that I engage in some conversation with him. I refused his advances. All of a sudden he started yelling at me about what a bitch I was, and then all of a sudden his buddies grabbed him. One of them said, “Lets get out of here man. Come on! We have to go NOW”. What happened? Well, the bartender caught wind of what was happening and took the drunk guy’s buddy aside. He told him that if his friend didn’t stop harassing me, he'd physically throw them all out of the bar.

Most women are afraid to go to bars alone. I’m one of the few among my friends that hasn't been. I don’t do it much anymore, and if I do it’s to my friendly neighborhood bar. But I was quite a successful lone female drinker for a while, there. Wherever I went. Men wanted to talk to me (usually without hitting on me) about interesting topics. I was nice and polite to all my bartenders, and tipped them very well. Once, some mysterious stranger somewhere told the bartender to bring the lonely girl (me) a drink. Thanks, dude, but I'm alone, not lonely. At the bars I frequented most, the male bartenders became extremely protective of me, making sure that the men I was talking to weren’t bothering me. And making sure to let them know right away, because they’d take care of them pretty quick otherwise.

I even made up a signal at this one joint, where I didn’t even know the bartender. This drunk guy was slobbering all over himself and screaming at me about lord knows what. I yelled out really loudly, “YO!” and held my hand up in the air. The bartender looked up and I took my arm down, pointed it at the dude and then thrust my hand toward the door. I said, “This guy needs to go!” The bartender nodded, jumped over the bar and shoved the guy out into the street.

Sometimes people feel sorry for you. Once at Union Square Cafe bar (the best place to eat, there, is at the bar). I was eating seriously the best fucking donuts I've ever had in my life. Half the bar looked over when they arrived and exclaimed "Oh, my God, what is that? Is it good?” I was working on a glass of 20 year Tawny port when a drunk rich lady took the seat next to me as I was polishing off the remainder of my drink and asked me if I was by myself. How sad it was that I was by myself! I told her that I was very happy considering that fresh tasty donuts and port make for excellent company.

Personally I have more fun at bars by myself than with my friends. With your girlfriends you’re always chatting about boys and junk, and leering desperately at the men around the bar that you’re all too afraid to talk to. By yourself, you keep your own pace, decompressing after a long work day or whatever. You don’t have to gaze intently into your friend’s eyeballs to ensure her that you are indeed listening as she blathers on about this boy and that blowjob. You are free to look around! And that is especially fun when there's a cute guy at the bar. You can eyefuck the shit out of him. Who cares? Maybe they’ll talk to you. Maybe he'll get scared and leave the bar and you’ll run to the window to watch him go. This actually happened.

Another great thing about drinking alone is that the bartender can become your friend (for the time being) and even your matchmaker. They know all the people in the room and can set you up. You can’t get to know your bartender when you’re with your gaggle of girls. But you should, because he or she's the most important person in the room. Besides protecting you from men, bartenders are a great source of entertainment. They're interesting people who have have lives beyond the bar. You can exchange boy dirt with a girlbartender. They’re usually tough and smart and have good stories. Boybartenders are usually good to look at, have an excellent sense of humor and sometimes are good for a romp in the sack. Also, friendly banter with your ‘tender increases the likelihood of a buyback.

Drinking alone is a fun activity. You've gotten your quiet time, a nice buzz going, increased your knowledge of various topics depending on who you were chatty with at the bar, read your magazine or book, talked with, or drunkenly smiled at, a cute guy at the other end of the bar. Now its time to go home and burn frozen sausages in the pan because you drank too much and passed out long before they were cooked. Or you are buzzed enough to chat with your parents about what you’re doing with your life. It's a pleasant conversation. Or maybe you drink more and sing loudly to various musicals you drunkenly bought on Itunes.

Whatever it is that you do when you get home, make sure you get home intact. Be aware of your surroundings while you walk home. Don’t call people on the way home because it will distract you. No Ipods neither. If you’re really blasted, take a car service and ask the driver to wait until you are inside your front door. Be safe.

--Dawn Weiner

photo totally stolen from internet

The Morning After, A Syrcls Brunch Review: Spike Hill

2009-02-16T12:43:00.009-05:00

The Brown Derby Tasting

2009-02-13T11:00:00.003-05:00

One of our more enjoyable tasks at the HCAR offices is cocktail tasting and testing. Recently, to bring a new life to the exploration we were sent a tattered copy of Patrick Gavin Duffy's The Standard Bartender's Guide by our sponsor and superior, Colonel J.R. Harmon. The drinks within hearken back to days when Galliano flowed the streets like gold, and requesting a Wild Turkey Mist with a Twist, would not yank forth looks of disdain from your bartender.

This week’s tasting was a small affair, and we decided to venture towards an area of drinking that not many of us were familiar with: Rum.

The Brown Derby.

Editor's Note: This drink is not actually in the book I loaned the young folks that staff this blog. I was deep in the midst of a conversation with the charming young Rachel whereupon she mentioned a time in which she drank a Brown Derby. I confirmed with her that it was, indeed, this drink, and it brought me back to another time. This drink was named after the famous Los Angeles location. I spent a few years in that torrid, horrid town doctoring movieplays, consulting with fat producers, and drinking whenever possible in order to rid myself of the awful malaise found everywhere in Hollywood. I was introduced to this drink by a young starlet who decency and history dare me not to name. I have always enjoyed it, and think fondly of her whenever I drink it. Here's to you, my dear, to all our failings and our triumphs. -- Colonel J.R. Harmon, Ret.

Tasting Roster:
The Masked Drinker
Ladyboy
Rachel
Sara
and
Faux-Bee June (your author)

Guests:
The Pet
Fräulein N

It should be noted that there is another cocktail that goes by the name of “The Brown Derby.” This is not that cocktail. This is this cocktail:

Two Ounces Dark Run
One Ounce Lime Juice
One Teaspoon Maple Syrup

As usual, we mixed a small number of cocktails and divvied them up into smaller rocks glasses for the tasting.

For the first time in an HCAR tasting, every single person agreed whole-heartedly that the drink in question was quite enjoyable, and would likely be enjoyed again and again. Among the characteristics that were unanimously agreed on: The smooth finish, and light (not overpowering) rum flavor. Three of (us, myself, the Masked Drinker and Fräulein N) ventured into the tasting with a bit of hesitation about sipping a rum based cocktail. We were all pleasantly surprised that the rum really did not impose itself, nor did it leave the syrupy aftertaste we dreaded, in fact the MD thought the rum added an agreeable “heartiness” .

Rachel noted that the lime and maple syrup complimented each other. Ladyboy agreed that “the maple and lime are alternately dominant.” Sara noted that it was “sweet, but not too sweet.” The Pet and I were equally charmed by the maple syrup aftertaste which was, once again, not too overpowering, and not at all (shockingly) “syrupy.”

We all agreed that the drink was likely to be enjoyed by a wide variety of drinkers, even those not normally given to ordering cocktails. Ladyboy felt that it is not a drink that “requires a particular drinking style or encourages specific associations,” and Sara said that “It’s a cocktail for someone who doesn’t normally order cocktails,” although it was widely accepted that a few would suffice, and the drink might not stand up as the only drink of the night, if one were in it for the long haul.

The tasters mentioned in equal numbers that The Brown Derby could be enjoyed in the summer, on the beach with a funny little umbrella in it, and in the winter, cozied up in front of a nice wood burning fire place with one of those zigzag afghans that your great aunt crotched.

The range of ideas for improvement ran from “my glass would be bigger” (Sara, echoed by the Pet) to the idea of a pork garnish, by the Masked Drinker. (His interest in savory garnishes might not have anything to do with the fact that he recently reported on the Bacon and Bourbon Expo.) I couldn’t come up with a bit more than a sprig of mint for improvement, although Fräulein N’s suggestion of a splash of soda water sounded like it might cut the sweetness just that much more to appease my palate. She also mentioned that she would like to try it with maple sugar instead of maple syrup, which was suggested in the recipe, although the syrup texture pleased her as well. On the maple angle, Rachel admitted that she had previously enjoyed the recipe “kick[ed] up at least 10 notches” with the use of “a special high grade maple syrup that was aged in bourbon barrels” which (while the HCAR offices don’t currently stock it) just might make the shopping list.

Ladyboy was interested in seeing if it would work as a warm cocktail, but we dissolved into round two before testing the hypothesis.

The Masked Drinker's Guide to the Astor Center Bourbon and Bacon Expo

2009-02-11T06:28:00.000-05:00

Ladies and gentlemen, this past week I enjoyed a little slice of paradise. As if by astral projection, I found myself in a place beyond the pleasures of we mortal ken. Valhalla, the Elysian Fields, Heaven, Nirvana (yes, I know that one doesn’t really fit, shut up you pedant)--they all have a new companion, a new equivalent: the Bacon and Bourbon Expo at Astor Center in Manhattan.

I signed up for the Center’s mailing list years ago and consequently, as I have with all other things I sign up for, ignored everything they sent me. That is until last month when I saw those two magical, lovely words in a subject heading. Either one would have given me pause. But both? Holy fucking shit. I was in.

As I strolled up to the event, there was a line out the door. In a moment of panic I nearly began pummeling those more timely attendees ahead of me, but then I noticed the line was moving at a brisk pace. I didn’t really know what to expect, and I had tried to keep my hopes reasonable. I needn’t have, because the night was better than my meager mind could have imagined.

I walked around in awe, the smell of bacon thick in the air like an aphrodisiac for my mouth. Many brands of whiskeys and bourbons had stations set up for tastings. It was about at this moment that I ran into fellow staffer Ladyboy. Nearly overwhelmed by the surroundings and sensations, we banded together as a Two Man Team of Awesome. We first went to the table staffed by some folks from New York’s most famous secret cocktail-and-hot-dog speakeasy, PDT. They had previously infused some bottles of Four Roses bourbon with bacon and were pouring samples of a Bacon Old Fashioned. Maple syrup subbed in for sweet vermouth and it was pretty fucking delicious. We agreed it was a perfect way to start the evening.

Just then two plates of bacon passed by and we pounced upon them like hungry lions on the African plain. The first was a simple applewood from D’artangan with a nice sweetness laced in with the familiar savory base. Ladyboy scoffed a bit at the next offering, an uncured wild boar bacon. Our smirks ended as soon as those lovely bits of fried boar fat crossed our tongues. The fat in the bacon was smoother and creamier than any bacon I’ve ever had, and yet gave no lingering feeling of greasy regret.

We switched back to bourbon at this point and decided to start at what we figured was the bottom of the ladder. Wild Turkey isn’t a brand that you hear about much once you’re out of school. Once you can afford a bourbon that a) tastes nice, b) doesn’t punch your tongue with hate, and c) still is quite potent, you kind of leave Turkey aside for desperate times, like airport bars with no other choice. Well, the brand had brought their more upscale products and who am I to turn down free bourbon? We started, as recommended, with the American Spirit. A step up from old 101 (“Kickin’ chicken,” as we called in back in Kentucky, “it’ll put your dick in the dirt.”), it still had a strong, bitter start and the familiar sweeter tones of bourbon never dropped by. To me, it seemed more like a straight whiskey than a bourbon. Next we sampled the Rare Breed. This was definitely a step up, with that sweetness finally showing through yet still quite strong. We decided to wait to sample the American Honey, which the friendly rep described as a “dessert drink.”

Whiskey palettes sufficiently aroused (is Wild Turkey the fluffer of the nice bourbon tasting world?), we moved on to the Tuthilltown Spirits table. The charming rep at this table did little, unfortunately, to alleviate my natural suspicion of bourbons not made in Kentucky. People, my home state has very little over which it can be proud. Has there ever been a sports highlight reel without that goddam last minute shot Christian Laetner made at the NCAA finals? Basically we have the Derby and we have bourbon. So forgive me if I seem a bit proprietary here. Anyway, we started with the corn whiskey which is sweet and basically exactly what you’d expect: a commercial, nicer moonshine. Ladyboy remarked that it smelled more like tequila and he’s not off-base. Shine’s a purer whiskey, clear an without oak or caramel character. Their Baby Bourbon was next and you’ll forgive me for describing it as immature. It had the characteristic tastes of bourbon, but they weren’t rounded or fully formed. This was probably my least favorite bourbon of the night. Their Four Grain Bourbon was a marked improvement, but one I still eye with xenophobic caution.

I must interject with something amazing I heard at this point in the evening. A middle-aged couple in front of us at the Tuthilltown stand conversed with the rep. At one point the woman said, “Yes, we attend ALL the rum events.” How many rum events are there? Are they nautical by nature? We from the World of Whiskey are frightened and weary of these Rum Folk. Have we any rum people in our readership here? Perhaps we can learn from each other and forestall the imminent Booze Wars.

Actually, the crowd at this event was pretty weird. It was a definite odd mix of people. There were two or three groups of pressed-shirt middle-aged douchebags. You know the guys, they chew on cigars in public and learn about scotch so they can talk about scotch with other douchebags who learned about scotch to talk about scotch. They had a decent showing. Then there was the segment that looked more like the audience for a Weezer concert. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that nerdy white guys and their Asian girlfriends can find common ground in booze and pork-based products, but it took some getting used-to.

At this point, a talk was about to begin in the classroom. We moseyed on over and stood in the back. A few more bacons were passed around including a Hickory smoked number Ladyboy described as “hamtastic” for its sweet, glazed-ham flavor. A poem was read, the real meaning of “uncured” was revealed. (Apparently if it’s marked “uncured” bacon is still cured; but the government only recognizes select, very artificial methods of doing so. “Un”cured bacon is cured, but in a more natural, better way.) Pitmaster Scott Smith of R.U.B. in Chelsea talked about how he cures his own pork belly slabs and makes a deep fried bacon appetizer out of it. While that slab was beautiful and the appetizer sounded amazing, most of my attention was focused on the thick-cut wonder pictured here in full Captain-Kirk-looks-at-a-hot-alien fuzziness. That and the Evan Williams single barrel being passed around . . .who knew Evan Williams made something good?

As some woman in the audience then started to argue with the host about the proper pan to fry bacon in, Ladyboy and I escaped the room to sample more whiskeys. I made a beeline for the Buffalo Trace table. They make my absolute favorite bourbon, George T. Stagg. And while they didn’t have it that night (hell, it’s hard to find in the best liquor stores in New York, so limited is the batch), I had been wanting to try their other offerings. The actual Buffalo Trace bourbon was very tasty, probably the best straight bourbon I had all night. The vanilla undertones complimented rather than contrasted the sharpness from the high alcohol content. It really was like Stagg’s younger brother. The Eagle Reserve, however, was a bit disappointing. It fell flat . . .it’s definitely a nice bourbon, but I should perhaps have tried it before the Trace.

Our last table of whiskeys for the night were actually not bourbons at all. Frankly, I’d avoided it all night but was now at the point where I was brave enough to try. See, I can recognize other good whiskeys. I’ve had a scotch or two I could tell was just fantastic. But I didn’t like it. I’ve had so much bourbon for so long that other whiskeys just taste . . .off to me. So close and yet not quite there. But, hey, what the hell. I’d recently found a mixed drink involving Rittenhouse so how bad could their table be?

We first tried a real oddity, the Bernheim Wheat Whiskey. This was a weird whiskey, let me tell you. I’m sure it has its fans, but it is not for me. There was a slight licorice flavor to the finish that really troubled me. Not my favorite flavor profile, that. So it was with no small amount of dread that I continued on to the Rittenhouse Rye. My dread faded as soon as it hit my tongue. This was a good whiskey. Ladyboy and I agreed there was a flavor we couldn’t place. “It’s definitely in my spice rack,” he said. Despite the mysterious flavor, we both enjoyed it quite a bit. It officially became the first non-bourbon whiskey I’ve ever liked enough to want more. Luckily, they also had their 23-Year aged rye. Whereas 23-year-old humans more often than not are simple, undeveloped, and annoying, apparently their rye equivalents are wise old masters, the sort that might teach Kwai Chang Caine how to walk on paper without wrinkling it. The flavor was complex with at least three layers, each quite delicious. The small sample we had wasn’t enough to quite discern each one, but I look forward to trying later on.

After the event ended, Ladyboy and I ended up going back to the office to get some reports and filing done. Well, and to have a couple of wind-down beers as well. Rachel was there, having been polishing up a Wine profile, and as we excitedly described our night to her it became clear just how magical the evening was. Bourbon and bacon are two things we sometimes take for granted; I mean, they’re almost always good enough. But when they’re great, a sublime enlightenment occurs. Bacon may have originated elsewhere and bourbon may just be adapted from Scots-Irish whiskeys but there was something beautifully American that night. The sort of America known not for supporting third-world despots, but for being where Batman, Snake-Eyes, and the A-Team can team up to help out a school besieged by zombies; later on, they have pancakes.

God bless America.

photos by the Masked Drinker

The Morning After, A Syrcls Brunch Review: N. 6th

2009-02-08T13:47:00.009-05:00

Let’s face it, the last thing you want to do when you wake up from a long (and possibly regrettable) night out is to get out of bed & cook yourself something awesome to make yourself feel more human again. At least for people like me, who pretty much don’t cook at all, going out to brunch is pretty much your best friend. So that’s why I’m here: to share my tales of urban brunching— tales of caution, and/or tales of awesome.

After a, for some reason, long night of going to see Tim & Eric, and then watching one part of documentary Make ‘Em Laugh (despite the lame subway advertising campaign) and drinking tons of cheap beer, me & my roommate were jonesing for some Roebling Tea Room or The Lodge. On the way, walking Northwest on Metropolitan in the crazy freezing 20 degree weather, we spied a cool vintage shop called 10 ft. Single (vintage surfboards in the window) on that weird corner where N. 6th splits off, right across the BQE, near Havermeyer. It reminded me that I had never been to the place located on the opposite corner, appropriately called N. 6th. Okay, we were kind of also attracted to it because a Playgirl van was parked in front, but anywho… We were the only ones in there for a while, even though it has a great location, and it was 12:30pm. The place isn’t heated especially well, as I definitely had to keep my heavy scarf on the whole time. I ordered a hot chocolate & OJ. I thought it was pretty cool that they serve even their non-alcoholic cold drinks in beer stein thingys. I have to say, though, that the hot chocolate was pretty “meh” and not even hot. Overall, however, I was pretty satisfied with the variety offered on the menu.

The waitress was especially friendly, and from San Diego (where I’m from), and helped me make up my mind between the various things I had picked out that looked good to me. It was between the French Toast, Zucchini Pie, Artichoke Pie, and Mozzarella/Tomato/Basil/Pesto panini. I went with the Artichoke pie, served with greens, and my roommate got the scrambled eggs with a goat cheese, mushroom, and truffle oil crostini.

When I initially got served, I had doubts that the small wedge and side of greens would be enough to satisfy me. The Artichoke pie is less like a quiche (as the Zucchini Pie was said to be), and more like a…uhhh….pie. It was pretty rich: mix of mozzarella, artichoke hearts, and flaky, buttery pie crust. The fabulous crust was really the key element that that balanced out the richness, aside from the portion size. My roommate’s crostini was much tastier in the sense that it had a stronger flavor, though I really did enjoy the pie. However, I do disproportionately favor things with truffle oil in pretty much all situations.

N. 6th, like many places in Brooklyn, are cash only, but have an ATM inside. This came in handy, when we stopped by 10 ft. Single on the way back home, where I purchased an awesome sweater with seagulls on it, wearing sea captain’s hats. It’s definitely one of those rare places that have a huge space, and carry a combination of really nice vintage pieces and low-priced normal thrift store type stuff.

Anyway, getting back to the restaurant, though I was skeptical about the portion of the dish I had, and I definitely wanted more after I finished, I think the portioning was actually done wisely, as I probably would’ve felt gross had I eaten more. Though the venue itself and the hot chocolate was inexplicably cold, if this place played one of those weird games at the movie theatres where you pull a lever & it rates your “love level” or whatever, it would be “Red Hot Lover.” That certainly was a lot of build up for that lame of a joke. Oh well, you get the picture.

Photos by misoserious.com

Pegu Club Tasting

2009-02-06T22:14:00.005-05:00

One of our more enjoyable tasks at the HCAR offices is cocktail tasting and testing. Recently, to bring a new life to the exploration we were sent a tattered copy of Patrick Gavin Duffy's The Standard Bartender's Guide by our sponsor and superior, Colonel J.R. Harmon. The drinks within hearken back to days when Galliano flowed the streets like gold, and requesting a Wild Turkey Mist with a Twist, would not yank forth looks of disdain from your bartender.

This week the office tasting was on Superbowl Sunday, and so we had many guests stop in. Ladyboy and Rachel made chili, the Masked Drinker donned his mask and shortly before Bruce Springsteen attached his balls to the camera, we sipped The Pegu Club.

Tasting Roster:
The Masked Drinker
Syrcls
and
Faux-Bee June (your author)

Guests:
Juicy
The Pet
Meatball
Lacroix
LP
IamanIndian
Russell
JPMaxMan
Fraulein N
Cleopatra

Two Parts Gin
One Part Curacao
Splash of Lime Juice
2 Dashes Bitters

As usual, we mixed a small number of cocktails (in this case, three) and divvied them up into smaller rocks glasses for the tasting. We used Beefeater Gin, and instead of curacao we used Cointreau.

Curacao, incidentally, is a liquor from the Island of Curacao off the Venezuelan coast. When the Spanish brought Valencia Oranges, the oranges failed to grow properly and the surviving trees produced a fruit now called the lahara citrus. This citrus is a major component in the flavor of traditional Curacao, though it is often simply made with orange. The blue color of Curacao is food coloring added to make the initially colorless drink look exotic. On the mass market, Curacao and Triple Sec are very similar, and since the HCAR offices didn’t have any traditional, high end Curacao available, we decided that Cointreau – a popular brand of Triple Sec – would better suit the drink than the taste of blue food coloring and artificial citrus.

The majority of the tasters did not know the ingredients or recipe prior to tasting.

The large size of the group arranged for a wide variety of responses. In general, the taste profile was agreed upon, and, in the area of improvement, many people had similar thoughts. But there was a large polarity when it came to the overall view of what place people thought the drink should hold in the umbrella culture of cocktails, which we I will explore after our initial discussion.

First impressions didn’t always match the end result, it seemed. Cleopatra was given the most strait forward impression, stating that it tasted like lime and gin, and was a suitable sipping drink. Sycrls and The Pet (both notorious for not liking to taste alcohol in their spirits) said, respectively, that it tasted “like rubbing alcohol and lemonade” and “like a medicine I was given as a child.” Nonetheless they both agreed, (along with IamanIndian, who had similar misgivings at first) that it grew on them, and was “not so bad by the third sip.” Which is also nothing startling considering that the main ingredient, gin, as long been considered an acquired taste.

Russell thought that it was similar to a margarita, which it is, and thought that if any change were necessary it would be to “take out the gin and add tequila. – Oh, and put salt on the rim of the glass.”

It is no surprise, given the comparison to a margarita, that most people would have liked to see a bit of sweetness added. IamanIndian mentioned simple syrup or orange juice, which LP and Lacroix echoed. JPMaxMan and I thought that more cointreau would have done the trick, but since that’s pretty much orange flavored simple syrup, there was little to argue.

From here we moved on to discuss whom we thought might be most likely to enjoy this drink, (pre-revision, of course).

For my own part, I’d like to mention that my first response was that it was not overtly masculine or feminine, and could be enjoyed by anyone at a cocktail party. I was very, very wrong.

The split went like this:

The women in the group tended to argue that it was a “Ladies Drink.” LP said it should be served by “Ladies on a Ladies Nite in the summer.” Fraulein N agreed, naming it “spiked ginger ale” but also saying that she wouldn’t be likely to order more than one. IamanIndian was a little harsher; she strayed from the category of “ladies” but argued that it would be the kind of drink that Mrs. Krabapple on the Simpsons might indulge in. Lacroix was the only one of the women to argue that, perhaps, it would be better suited for her grandfather’s palate, which is what most of the men would echo.

Running on the assumption that the Masked Drinker is a man, he felt it was for “A man in seersucker. He has a goal in life. He will meet it.” JPMaxMan would serve it to Lord Byron, while Juicy was a bit more flexible in his listing, stating that his uncle, Santa Claus, lumberjacks and Eskimos would be included in the target market.

The Masked Drinker and I, both being devout whisky drinkers and usually disgusted by gin, were both pleasantly surprised, agreeing that it would definitely be something to try again, but Juicy seemed to sum up the groups sentiments best. “This goes into the same category as a hot toddy. It has its place.”

All in all, this drink may demand a re-visit if not primarily because it does not contain a whole raw egg.

One of our own spreads his fame

2009-02-05T11:29:00.002-05:00

The masked one is too shy to brag, it would seem, but he has been interviewed and profiled at another place of good readings on this internet machine. Read it and know his secrets, lest he sneak up and attack. That is called intelligence.

Yours truly,

The Colonel

The Masked Drinker's Guide to Drinking in Bars in Which You Do Not Belong

2009-02-04T07:52:00.008-05:00

Recently I've found great delight in a sub-genre of the drinking life. I've always enjoyed finding and walking into a random bar I've never seen. It's not always the greatest bar ever, but you're guaranteed at least one decent story, even if it ends, like every story from my high school years did, with the phrase, "and then we ran away."

Little did I know the thrill of taking this just one step further: bars in which you simply do not belong. You know them . . .you walk in and it is as if a needle scratches off a record. All eyes on you like a stranger in some old west saloon.

Now I don't mind saying, my first few times doing this, it scared the masked crap out of me. But after a few successes, I realized how much fun it was—I guess it's as close to my weak-stomached self can get to enjoying a roller coaster.

The reasons behind my out-of-placeness varies, but generally it is because I am "other." Other nationality, other race, other culture, other orientation, other gender, other age . . .you get the point. Like on the Electric Company, one of these things is not like the other.
Whether it's been an old mafia bar in Williamsburg, a Mexican salsa dive in Bushwick, a lesbian bar in the east village, or an old man speakeasy in Appalachia or anything else out there, the same method of becoming accepted has worked every time. So this week's Masked Drinker's guide is How to Go to Bars in Which You Do Not Belong.

Step one: walk straight to the bar. I won't lie—with every eye on you you're going to want to turn tail. Don't. Walk straight to the bar and sit down. Don't go to a table, no one wants to waitress for your alien ass.

Step two: order quickly and decisively. As to what you should order, look at the folks around you. Get the beer they're drinking. I don't give a shit if you hate Bud or Corona or whatever, get it anyway. You do not want to be the asshole asking for a goddam microbrew beer.
Step two-point-five: order a shot with your beer. No purple nurples or kamikazee's or other mixed drink shots. Make it easy on the bartender. Whiskey, tequila, vodka. Ordering a shot straight off shows you mean business. Real drinkers will take note, and you're one step closer to acceptance. If you want to go full bore, down the shot and order a second for sipping.

Step three: tip immediately. This might not be commonplace at the bar, but either way you let your tender know you're taking care of him/her. Don't overtip, though. No one wants a show off. A buck or two per drink is perfect.

Step four: listen. What's the tenor of the conversations going on? Baseball debate? Work woes? Raunchy jokes? Pay attention without being a creepy eavesdropper. Get the mood of the joint and basic personalities of the inhabitants.

Step five: talk. Throw something into the conversation if possible and appropriate. Crack a joke about something on the TV or juke. Whatever you do, just make sure it's funny and slightly self-deprecating. Establishes you as a fun person who isn't stuck up their own ass.

Step six: do not force it. Try joining in or talking no more than twice per visit. Sometimes the natives take longer to warm up than others, but the last thing you want to be is the annoying pest that keeps bugging everyone. Just wait and try again next time. I've never had to do this more than three times, and usually one will do.

Step seven: regardless of your reception, stay a while. Get at least two more rounds. If you've struck up a conversation with someone, buy them a round. This might seem like base bribery, but, hey, if it works . . .

Step eight: come back. Let them see you're not just a one-shot drinker who walked into the wrong place and acted like it wasn't a mistake (honestly, that's how this all got started). Come back within the next week and repeat the previous steps. Hopefully you'll see some of the same patrons or staff members. You're well on your way. Note, though, that you should be doing this alone. Bars in which you do not belong might accept you, but they don't want to feel like you and your asshole friends are going to take over. Once you're accepted, you can bring a friend or two over from time to time, but don't lead off with that.

There you have it, folks. Eight simple steps to making yourself at home in a bar where you're supposedly out-of-place. In today's increasingly tribal times, it's good to break through these barriers and get drunk with people who don't look or act just like you. Somebody get me the Nobel Peace Prize for Drinking now. I want it.

photos taken from internet

This One's On Me: The Apologetic Bartender

2009-02-03T15:12:00.003-05:00

Bartenders make mistakes. Some more than others, some fairly minor, some quite explainable. Life goes on, people get their drinks and an occasional bad review gets posted on the Internet somewhere.

Sometimes, however, a bartender makes a mistake so dire that it causes them to go against their bartender ethics. For these, we must repent.

One recent evening, as I was looking forward to wrapping up my shift, I noticed that a fellow was returning to the bar for his third pint of the evening. I have the luxury of being able to offer people a drink on the house at or around their forth drink. This is the buy back, and it’s no mythical creature, as some presume. It doesn’t exist at all bars in New York, as it is said to have in the past, and it is a discretionary gift from an attentive bartender where it does. I am unapologetic for those occasions when I miscalculate, when I misestimate the members of a group who are buying. In short, I do not feel bad if I forget to give you a buy back, it is a luxury extended to my by the owners of my bar, and it is my prerogative.

I did, however, make the ultimate blunder, for which I must now confess. The gentleman in question was a foreign chap. Possibly German, but possibly from an entirely different region of the earth, we only exchanged basic pleasantries and the name of his desired beer. His hair reached his shoulders and was a bit scraggly. By the time he came up for his third beer, it was clear that he either had been living in some part of the States for a while or had miraculously managed to read the section in the Rough Guide that covers gratuity. He had been leaving a perfectly appropriate dollar a beer and a genuine “thank you.” So I resolved that, should he return for a forth, I must remember to buy him his drink.

The bar became busier, and the number of long, scraggly hair wearers increased (the bar I tend is in a part of town where men take the occasion to wear their hair in this manner. There was probably a lot of confusion due to plaid, as well.) When our soon to be slighted friend returned, I was pleased that I remembered him and happily informed him that he need not pay for his drink. He, it seemed, was unfamiliar with the buy back process, was quite thankful, and asked me if I was sure twice. Again he left me a dollar tip, and very generous “thank yous.” So it only occurred to me after I had served a number of plaid wearing, long haired men that perhaps I had inadvertently bought someone’s first drink. Perhaps our foreign fellow was still sitting in the back, with his third beer. Perhaps I had bought back the wrong drink.

The thought of having bought some unassuming person’s first drink annoyed me a bit. There are only two reasons a female bartender would buy a strange male’s first drink. I do not find the scraggly/plaid look particularly attractive, and I am perfectly capable of paying my rent without using my boss’s alcohol reserves as an ATM machine. Nonetheless, mistakes do happen, so I carried on.

But it wore at me that perhaps this nice foreign fellow was going to go all night now with out a drink on the house. He’d have to drink eight or ten beers before he’d be up for another one, and by then my shift would be long over. I became consumed.

When he returned and ordered afresh, I put on my repentant face and as I handed him his next beer asked him if I’d bought him his last. He looked a bit confused, so I stuttered, mumbled, felt quite foolish I just, um, wanted to know if I got you you’re last beer, I’m, it’s busy… Suddenly I could see that something dawned on him. He said yes, and thanked me again. I picked up the ten-dollar bill he’d left on the bar, and by the time I turned around with his change he was gone.

I left the change under a coaster near where he ordered, and to my relief, he soon came back past the bar towards the bathroom, but when I tried to hand him his change he refused and looked down, embarrassed. My mission to show appreciation for a friendly, if not uninitiated, drinker was botched. I had inadvertently taken on the role of the greedy bartender and utterly failed at introducing someone to the simple kinship of the buy back.

Photograph from the Internet

Rachel's Style Profile: Tempranillo

2009-02-02T21:09:00.011-05:00

Tempranillo is referred to as Spain’s “Noble Grape.”The word tempranillo literally means “little early one.”This seems quite appropriate considering the grape’s short growing season and early ripening tendency. With Spain being the world’s third largest producer of wine, Rioja being its most famous wine, and Tempranillo being the primary grape in Rioja, one can easily see the importance of this grape to Spanish winemakers. Tempranillo is grown primarily in the Rioja Alta and Ribera del Duero regions of Spain. Although traditionally Tempranillo is blended with other varietals such as Garnacha (Grenache), Mazuelo, and Graciano, recently we are seeing a surge of pure Tempranillo wines coming out of the woodwork. As its popularity increases, Tempranillo is now being grown in California, Australia, and South America.

What I love about Tempranillo is that when it’s pure, it’s BIG and BOLD. Think of it as Spain’s answer to Cabernet. Tempranillo is medium to full bodied and rich. You get hints of dark fruit, such as cherries and plums, tobacco, leather, strawberries, and herbs. Higher end Tempranillos are aged in oak barrels, so there’s often an oaky presence going on as well. Tempranillo is higher in acidity and lower in alcohol content.You can easily sip it just for the sake of enjoying its complexity, or it makes a great pairing with food. I think it makes an excellent companion to steak or lamb, and you can never go wrong with Tempranillo if you’re enjoying some traditional Spanish tapas.

So yeah, it may be cold--that kind of non-motivating, debilitating, couch ridden, order everything delivery, so as not to leave the house COLD, but there’s nothing like curling up on the couch with a big glass of wine and avoiding it all.

The Morning After, A Syrcls Brunch Review: Snowshed Lodge Cafeteria

2009-02-02T07:36:00.006-05:00

Let’s face it, the last thing you want to do when you wake up from a long (and possibly regrettable) night out is to get out of bed & cook yourself something awesome to make yourself feel more human again. At least for people like me, who pretty much don’t cook at all, going out to brunch is pretty much your best friend. So that’s why I’m here: to share my tales of urban brunching— tales of caution, and/or tales of awesome.

This past weekend, I went on a group ski/snowboarding trip to Killington, VT. So, technically, this isn’t an “urban brunch” post, but I felt the need to share this. After all, sometimes, we take some things for granted living in major metropolitan cities.

It’s not that I was expecting a ski lodge cafeteria to seriously be up to the standards of a brunch at a restaurant, but I guess I just was expecting the food to be edible. To be fair, the bagel I had was okay. Though, honestly, how do you fuck up a bagel?

I miraculously stuck to a vegetarian diet this weekend, despite the fact that, if you’re a vegetarian and go skiing, it is virtually IMPOSSIBLE to find anything without meat of any kind. Everything is chili, steak, burgers, etc. etc. And for breakfast/brunch, everything was eggs, sausage, bacon, etc. Even the so-called “Mountain Muffin” was filled with meat. So this is why I opted for a bagel, a side of home fries, and an orange juice.

The prices were obviously a complete rip-off, which was to be expected at a resort, but honestly, the $3 I was forced to shell out for the worst so-called home fries in the history of humanity was possibly on par with getting mugged for $40 a few months ago— at least on a “why me?” level. When the girl at the counter was SCRAPING these flake remnants of what I can only assume were potatoes and bell peppers on to my plate, from one of those metal containers heated from underneath, I didn’t have the heart to tell her to stop. She was, for lack of a better descriptor, probably mentally challenged, so I felt kind of bad ordering her to do anything.

So I paid about $10 for the whole thing, though it was fairly obvious at that point that I would probably break my jaw if I attempted to chew one of these shredded, charred pieces of “home fries.” However, my roommate was unconvinced. He took my plate, slathered ketchup all over the place, took one bite, and looked like he was going to keel over. I was “for reals” legitimately concerned that he might’ve chipped a tooth. He then attempted to get my money back, which I think was a little excessive, but then again, I would go to great lengths to avoid food/server/cashier confrontations of that kind, because I’m kind of a pussy like that. Plus, I feel like you kind of take a risk when you buy food, and you just kind of have to be prepared for that stuff. I mean, it wasn’t the mentally challenged counter girl or Italian cashier’s fault that the quality of lodge food can sometimes be horrendous.

We didn’t get my money back, mostly because the cashier was Italian and didn’t really understand what my roommate was saying. I guess it could’ve been worse…I could’ve gotten bad meat. Right? At least that tainted peanut butter going around hasn’t made its way to me as far as I know.

Oh, also, there was this waffle hut I found the next day outside the lodge, more by the actual skiing area, that had amazing Belgian-style hand-held sugar waffles. I was about to not get one, because I was afraid it would make me late to return my skis. But I got it anyway… and never looked back. Moral of the story: ALWAYS get the waffle. Always.

Fun and semi-unrelated alcohol fact: there is a beer store just outside the Killington resort that sells nice ales. I got a LaChouffe ale that I had all to myself, because for some inexplicable reason, everyone was more interested in drinking Bud Light. But that’s another story. Whatevs, more for me!

Photos from the Internet

"Kiss & Tell" at Bushwick Country Club

2009-01-31T14:44:00.010-05:00

Sitting at the table directly across from the brightly lit photo booth at Bushwick Country Club, I couldn't help thinking, "This whole bar must have been able to see everything..."

As part of my ongoing photo project "Kiss & Tell," I ask friends, acquaintances, and strangers to tell me the story of a memorable place they have had an intimate encounter. My idea behind the project is that often the most memorable part is not the person you are with, but the space in which the act takes place. Whenever possible, I take the storyteller back to the scene of the crime to hear their story and take a photograph.

This is how I found myself sharing a beer at Bushwick Country Club on Wednesday night listening to a friend (all storytellers remain anonymous) tell me one of the best stories I have heard in a while:

"He and I had slept together before. We were at a friend's house nearby hanging out and drinking, of course. As the night went on, we were getting closer and closer. I was playing with his hair at one point. We were supposed to come to this bar with a group of people, but we left early. This was the same night I became a Country Club member. If they still have that sign-in book, our names would be in there. It was just he and I and one other guy who was a friend of his. This guy sat at the end of the bar right next to where it all happened...

The bar wasn't crowded and since we were being loud and goofy, I knew the bartender noticed us. So we go into the photo booth together. I thought we were just going to take some pictures. We start kissing before the first flash even goes off. He must have had me pressed against the wall or something because in the strip of photos, you can only see the top of our heads in the first frame and the next three frames are empty. I think he still has the strip of photographs.

The sexual tension was unbearable. Then my pants were coming off. It felt like I was alone with him in what, at the time, felt like a private enough space. Then my underwear was off and on the floor outside the photo booth. At that point, I realized I could hear people out in the bar saying, "ohh...her underwear..." We had sex with me sitting on his lap facing him. Fun. Quick. It was a break in the tension more than anything else.

Afterwards, I made him go grab my underwear for me and heard the bar congratulating him. I got dressed and came out. You must have been able to see me naked right through that curtain. Then the bartender said, "Looks like you just christened the photo booth." And on the bar waiting for us were two shots of whiskey and two cigarettes."

More stories and photographs from "Kiss & Tell" are available on my website http://www.saramacel.com. If you have a story you'd like to share, please email me at sara@saramacel.com. All photos by Sara Macel, 2009.