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Barred: Bar Below Rye
When: Tuesday, 8:48pm
What did I drink? Strictly Rhythm (Beefeater gin, Aperol, Dolin Dry, grapefruit bitters, Zucca) $11; two Bulleit bourbons on the rocks, price unknown.
“Ghost! Just because I’m a potter doesn’t mean I like Ghost!”
Bar Below Rye isn’t huge, and was lacking enough bodies to ensure a conversation-muffling din. Even over Cults, Sleigh Bells and Belle and Sebastian, bands that wouldn’t be out of bounds on a Brooklyn middle-ager’s
WalkmaniPod shouts traveled down the bar.Ghost? A one-named underground potter that I wasn’t enough in the know to identify? Before Jonathan Adler had a string of retail stores (and dishes I couldn’t resist on One Kings Lane) his name would pop up in media as a celebrity potter, so it was an entirely implausible evolution.
Parsing, parsing…ah, Patrick Swayze was the impetus for the outrage.
I suggested that enough time would eventually pass and new crops wouldn’t be familiar with the movie, underestimating the millennial love of the ‘90s.
“I’m under 30 and everyone still says it,” the potter lamented.
Of course they do. And 23 years later Ghost is becoming a TV show.
Ghost inevitably led to Ghost Dad, which again triggered talk of Ghost Dog.
Age appropriate? Not in the literal sense, but the drunk and chatty vibe wasn’t exclusionary. Soon enough we’ll all be ghosts.
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Barred: Bossa Nova Civic Club
When: Tuesday, 11:49pm
What did I drink? Bossa Nova Smash (Old Overholt Rye, lemon, mint) $9. After midnight it became ladies’ night, therefore two for one, so a number of gin and tonics and beers were also consumed.
Bossa Nova Civic Club was the setting for a double birthday party. The women were turning 39 and 40, one visiting from Miami along with her 19-year-old son who is a DJ and lives in Williamsburg, which is kind of hard to fathom. “A grown man came out of your body!” (Unbeknownst to me, I was sitting next to the son earlier at The Rookery’s bar. I hadn’t seen this now-adult since he was in preschool.)If it’s good enough for Florent, right? (And yes, he showed up at the end of the night.)
There were gay men, black men, old men, even a Goth man named Geronimo who may or may not have been Native American. What there wasn’t were the typical L train Bushwickers and their beards and plaid. House music will have that effect.
Oh, there also weren’t any women over 40. It’s hard enough finding middle-aged women out and about as it is, and those who’ll stay out till 4am dancing on a weeknight are a rarer species still. Where are you?
Was I carded? Yes
Age appropriate? I would still say yes since Bossa Nova operates outside of typical Brooklyn bar conventions. A twentysomething from the neighborhood who was surprisingly welcoming of gentrification (more things to do) even gave me his number. (I didn’t ask–he told me to put it in my phone and watched as I typed so I had no choice.)
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Screen Time: American Horror Story
Fiona is certainly not happy about her waning powers and increasing decrepitude, never mind that her hair is falling out in chemo-induced tufts. She may be supreme of the coven, but she’s not immortal. (What’s Angela Bassett’s secret?)
All said, I do appreciate that she’s out and about, drinking whiskey and martinis, despite always being the oldest woman in the bar. Unfortunately, that’s made her prey for the reanimated ghost of an axe murderer who’s been stalking her since she was a teenage witch. All he had to do was call her “pretty lady.” It’s tough out there.
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Barred: St. Mazie
When: Thursday, 6:55pm
What did I drink? House white that was something Italian, not the rioja blanca on the menu ($9), gin and tonic (?)After nine months living a block from St. Mazie, I finally paid a visit only after getting locked out of my apartment for the first time. I had been under the impression that the bar was Spanish (there’s flamenco, right?) which didn’t appear to be the case at all. There were some young men at the bar, one in a trucker hat, drinking bottles of Brooklyn lager. I frequently walk past a sign on the corner advertising $1 oysters. No evidence of this special was listed inside. I’m sure that St. Mazie has something going for it–live music appears to be their thing–I just wasn’t able to unearth it on this visit.
Age appropriate? Mostly in atmosphere, not clientele. By 7:40pm two middle-aged-ish men had appeared, both with women who looked to be a good decade younger. It’s also quite possible that the guys just hadn’t aged well.
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Barred: The Randolph
When: Thursday, 7:11pm; Saturday, 10:53pm
What did I drink? B Side Daiquiri Down (rum, rye, honey, lime, Aphrodite bitters), Randolph Paloma (Holland pepper-infused tequila, lime, grapefruit, strawberry, agave nectar, smoked salts) $12Though the style The Randolph in Brooklyn is going for is that rock and roll ‘70s/’80s intersection that’s gaining popularity–old timey meaning neon, graffiti and eight-tracks–the feeling is refreshingly midwestern. The space is midwestern big (where else in NYC are two allowed to take up a booth?), the staff is midwestern friendly and the clientele is kind of uncool, which yes, I’m equating with the midwest too.
There’s also the matter of young customers and old people music. And I don’t mean ’80s pop so much as We Five (I’ve always loved their one hit) Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, Neil Diamond and REO Speedwagon (popular in the ’80s but not ’80s pop). It’s jarring. The closest thing to an old person is the gray-beard bartender who appears to be firmly in his 30s.
Was I carded? Apologetically on the weekend. I wasn’t clear if the “sorry” was for having to card period or because it was so ludicrous based on my appearance.
Age appropriate? Not so much. One visit was on Halloween when a friend was dressed as The Greatest American Hero. Her coworkers didn’t know who that was, and I’m doubtful that anyone at The Randolph did either, despite the nostalgia embraces elsewhere. -
In One is a Lonely Number 27-year-old Amy is left by her husband in 1972 San Francisco (I may have been a zygote in that very year and place) so she’s having a whiskey sour with her friend Madge (vodka) and the head of the Divorcees League of Marin County (scotch) who happens to be Janet Leigh. She was 45 at the time.
I have no idea if it was unusual for women to be out drinking alone in that era, though they very much appear to be in a fern bar, an early ‘70s San Franciscan invention meant to be welcoming to women.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/) -
Barred: McKeown’s
When: Thursday, 6:31pm
What did I drink? Pint of Bass ($4); Maker’s Mark on the rocks ($10)Though all Irish pubs, Upper East Side and otherwise, look the same, and I thought I had blocked out this incident, I’m fairly certain upon this random re-visit that McKeown’s was where I had a few (seriously, only two) beers before my 2008 birthday dinner when I got sick at the table at Cafe Boulud and threw up in a planter out front. I do not blame McKeown’s. This was also a stop off before a belated birthday dinner, this time at JG Melon (the difference five years makes).
There were young white kids that I would’ve pegged as Mormons if not drinking happy hour beers, men of retirement age, wrapping things up by 7pm bottled beer only, who mostly knew each other, and one woman who I like to believe was at least 40 because she wanted a white wine spritzer, sauvignon blanc, not pinot grigio, but was probably only 35 because she was British, and I don’t know, English ladies age differently.
As someone who has recently taken to Aperol spritzes, I won’t mock a white wine spritzer drinker. If anything, they are less likely to induce dinnertime vomiting.
Age appropriate? Yes, but more so If you’re an old guy with rough edges.
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Barred: Desnuda
When: Friday, 6:53pm
What did I drink? One glass of Torrontes, $9; The Reformer (Avua Amburana cachaça, Elcano Fino sherry, Cherry Heering, Peychaud’s Bitters, pasilla and moruga scorpion chiles), $14.
With oysters for $1 (6-8pm, Tuesday-Friday, all day Monday, Sunday) and oysters that are bong-smoked (not $1) Desnuda would seem to attract a younger crowd (not that grandmas are opposed to good deals and stoner gimmicks). And it does.
On the early side, though, the bar is relaxed, the chairs are comfortable, the staff welcoming. I would feel ok with returning on my own. A few solo men had taken up residency, one, slightly too serious, definitely older than 40 and reading The Memory of Love (yes, I had to look that up), which I don’t know how to interpret at all.
When the gentleman preparing the plates of raw fish asked how I liked the place, I said, “It’s nice; it’s not obnoxious,” which is kind of an obnoxious thing to say in retrospect, but it was worse, though funnier, because he thought I simply said, “It’s obnoxious.” As if I make a habit out of telling staff to their faces that their establishments are obnoxious (that’s what blogs are for, duh).
Was I carded? No. Places that are equally bar and restaurant rarely ID.
Age appropriate? Pretty much–at least in theory–at this point I’ve all but given up on seeing any women over 40 in bars, at least in North Brooklyn, but persist, nonetheless. -
Barred: Tandem
When: Saturday, 2:16am
What did I drink? 70% of a Sixpoint of some sortBreaking my nothing good happens after 2am rule didn’t result in any traumas, self-loathing, anger, crying jags–you know, the usual–and I do wonder if it’s the Bushwick factor, which on the surface would seem more annoying than Williamsburg but isn’t.
My group of grown women was talked into heading to Tandem by an entertaining, half-crazed 28-year-old man who greatly enjoyed using the word “retarded” and took a shining to us at a nearby rooftop party. Apparently, you can get away with saying you’re also 28 if it’s dark and everyone is very drunk or high. Or crazy.
In my notes (like the older-than-me coworkers who print everything out and re-type words rather just copying and pasting, my generational Achilles’ heel is texting troubles) that read: “3” arcrgw partyikxuoimmmm ok Cupid drunk dual" the only correctly spelled phrase was Norman Reedus, by which I meant to remind myself that there was a bartender who looked like Norman Reedus, but in no way was anywhere Norman Reedus’ 44 years of age.
An accompanying friend had drunk dialed (not dualed) the wrong OkCupid date, ending up with wires-crossed booty call. That gentleman was sitting at the bar and appeared to be the only patron over 40. We left this friend in the green lasers-and smoke-machine back dancing room in the company of the rooftop guy, and she’s still alive so I guess that was fine to do.
Was I carded? Yes, and I’m starting to wonder if bouncers only do that to preserve your dignity.
Age appropriate? Nah, though now that women close to 60 are snatching up lofts like it’s Soho in the ‘70s, all this could change. -
Who know how old detective Sonya Cross is meant to be on The Bridge, but Diane Kruger is old enough (37) to be an older woman at the bar. It’s hard to gauge whether this particular El Paso honky tonk is age appropriate or not because the Asperger’s-y character arrives with the sole purpose of getting laid and draws male attention within seconds of walking in the door, end scene. Middle-aged drinking is different if you’re Diane Kruger.
