Daily Story 2: Category: Sections from my books

I just realized I haven’t included any of my reviews of the bars from the book. So here are some of my favorites. Cheers!

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Blarney Rock
137 W. 33rd St. between 6th and 7th Aves.
212.947.0826
Beer - Budweiser, $3.75
A wooden leprechaun situated outside of this bar announces that there’s “14 TV’s inside!” The old-world ancestors of the people who own this joint must be so proud! This is a big, honking, no frills bar with old Kool-Aid stand type tables, peeling vinyl chairs and a huge bar running the entire length of this dive. It kind of resembles one of those old automat diner places that used to be in Times Square. The crowd is a woozy-boozy mix of tourists all looking to whoop it up in the big city and regulars who have probably paid for their bar stool a 112 times over. You can spot the regulars, they’re the ones that appear to be ten seconds from falling face-first into their booze. Ray the bartender on duty  is a friendly Irish guy who informs me that you see all the wacko’s in here. So if you’re in a wacko-watching kind of mood, this is your place. If not, well, that’s not my problem now is it?

The Coffee Shop Bar - Icons
29 Union Square West @ 16th St.
212.243.7967
Beer - Red Stripe, $5.00
There’s a massive, sprawling curly-que wooden bar in the middle of the Coffee Shop Bar with booths off to one side, tables and banquettes for eating lunch and dinner off to the other and another, smaller bar in the back. So the good news is, there’s usually a good shot at snaring a seat somewhere. But as we all have realized by now in our sorry-ass lives, when there’s good news, very often bad news is right around the corner waiting in the wings, ready to pounce. Such is the case here. This joint is loaded with attitude, mainly from the pretentious crowd that populate this place—which by the way resembles a coffee shop about as much as a giant brand new, sparkly, corporate Barnes and Noble book store resembles the beaten up, yet charming corner newsstand. The majority of the crowd here is young women who are wannabe models and actresses and sleazy guys in phony Wall Street and agent type mode. Basically the scene in here is this: The wannabe model is fed a line from the phony agent guy promising a photo shoot here, a screen test there. They go home, have sex and in the morning when the designer drugs have worn off and they’ve sobered up, they realize that they’re both losers. Good looking losers, but losers all the same. The wannabe model becomes a high priced hooker and the phony agent guy gets lucky the next night by telling some crack whore he can get her an audition for the next edition of Survivor. Oh, I saw Susan Sarandon having lunch in here once. She’s not here today.

Old Town Bar
45 E. 18th St. bet Park Ave. and Broadway
212.529.6732
Beer - Budweiser, $3.75
If you’ve been a David Letterman fan for awhile, then you’ve probably already seen the inside of the Old Town Bar. Remember when Dave was on NBC way back when Drew Barrymore was still in a diaper and Monica Lewinsky was just a gleam in Bill Clinton’s cigar? Well in the opening of his old show a camera snakes through a bar and this is the bar that it snaked through. When you visit the bar in person, you’ll see that the Old Town Bar lives up to its name. The long wooden bar, the dusty antique looking mirror behind it and the tables and booths all look like relics from a tavern your grandfather used to swill booze at. The clientele is mainly regulars and you can count on the place to be packed everyday after working hours (6:30 to 9:00) with a crowd ranging from suits to hardhats. After 9:00 it’s less crowded and easier to belly up to the bar, but think twice if you’re packing a cell phone. There’s a sign hanging from the bar declaring, “No Cell Phones!” A cell phone free island in a city that’s brimming over with assholes yakking on those godawful machines, that’s reason enough to thank whatever God you happen to pray to when the plane hits heavy turbulence for the Old Town Bar.

Iggy’s Kick Ass Bar
1452 2nd Ave. @ 76th St.
212.327.3043
Beer - Budweiser, $3.50
icons-people who list scab picking...,tourist free zone, crack whores
I came here determined to hate this place because of the decidedly cornball name, but just like Mikey taking his first bite of Life cereal after his chicken-hearted older brothers were afraid to taste it, I like it! I like it!
    This place is a genuine dive bar teeming with low-life atmosphere. There’s a gaping, fist-sized hole in the wall over the cash register and the walls are adorned with crude, childlike drawings rendered by the drunken, booze-ravaged customers. My personal favorite is a simplistic piece, drawn in red crayon that reads, “Help!”
    The customers range from a middle-aged, N.R.A.-styled, Chuck Heston wannabe looking guy in a beat-up military flak jacket trying in vain to light his cigarette, to two grizzled broads in their mid thirties who appear to have been around the block more times than a 90-year-old milk man. They’re howling with laughter while guzzling booze two barstools to my right. What they’re laughing about is anybody’s guess, but I’ll bet maybe the joyous guffaws are partially a celebration that their diseased livers have made it through another day of an endless rain of alcohol.
    It’s a refreshing change of pace for this reporter to be the most sober person in the joint for once. But just seconds after I write that line one of the grizzled broads just smiled at me revealing a mouth full of brown nicotine-stained choppers, and I realize that maybe being sober isn’t necessarily a good thing at this point in time, but a refreshing change of pace all the same.

Peculier Pub
145 Bleecker St. bet. LaGuardia Pl. and Thompson St.
212.353.1327
Beer - Budweiser, $3.50
icons - Future Maxim interns, fabulous babe bartenders
Looking for a bit of strange? Then this is your place. There’s 450 different varieties of bottled beer to be had here from over 45 different countries. The bar atmosphere has a large, German beerhouse feel to it with it’s emphasis on large wooden booths and an atmosphere that literally screams, “Hogan!” The clientele is a 50/50 mix of NYU kids and beery-eyed locals traveling around the world on 450 beers.

No Moore (The last bar reviewed in the book.)
234 W. Broadway @ N. Moore St.
212.925.2595
Beer- Budweiser, $4.00
“What an aptly titled bar, huh?”

Comments

[Biff]

I want to take my friend Iggy to Iggy's Kick Ass Bar. I'll wear my t-shirt from Iggy's restaurant, which is appropriately named "Iggy's." If we see Iggy Pop, I'll bet our heads will explode.