I wasn’t going to mention Bierocracy at all except that I ended up there twice in a week. It’s a different scene after work on a Wednesday (old folks and babies are thrown into the mix) compared to closer to midnight on a Friday (average age 31) but more importantly is that it falls into that “second city” category, or tier-2 as the non-Beijings and Shanghais are called in China, that I’m encountering more and more in NYC.

The staff is nice, the patrons chatty, ‘90s radio grunge rocks at a perceptible but not intrusive volume, sliders and kale salads can be consumed, but if it weren’t for the $14 cocktails and the looming Manhattan view if you cared to step outside, you would have no idea you were in New York.

I wouldn’t say Bierocracy would fit in Wilmington, DE, but I read this awe-inspiring wedding tale while sipping a Bayreuther Zwick’l (and trying not to hate-click “She Went to a College for a Job, and Found a Husband, Too” ) and it seemed appropriate.

Ok, talk may turn Queensy if initiated, as it did with the Long Island City real estate broker sharing our communal table who clearly has never been to Jackson Heights if he thinks I’m sitting on a gold mine (talk to me in five years if I can hold out) and that there are hipsters anywhere near Roosevelt Avenue.  Or his friend whose grandma lives near me, and visits are an excuse to go to Las Margaritas (oh, I know it).

Maybe wholesome is the word I’m looking for.

Was I carded? No. But card-related, the credit card minimum is $30 and that’s kind of strange and not very tier-2 of them.

Age appropriate? It can be. That’s the thing about US tier-2s, no one really judges and who are you trying to impress anyway?