A Final Beer At...Caskey's Tavern

I first laid eyes on Caskey's Tavern, an old bar in Ridgewood, Queens, a couple years ago. The moment I saw it, I knew it would be the subject of one of my "A Beer At" columns on Eater. It seems somewhat fitting that it serves as the setting of the last entry in that series.

I began the column almost exactly three years ago. The first bar I visited, the nondescript Lilly Coogan's in the East Village, has since closed. Some 75 bars later, I covered taverns in four boroughs (sorry, Staten Island), from dives to Irish pubs to (ugh) sports bars, and went through about four or five Eater photographers. (They didn't necessarily love me when I chose joints in Far Rockaway and Inwood.) The column gave me the opportunity to say proper goodbyes to the Holiday Cocktail Lounge (gone) and Bill's Gay Nineties (on its way out) and discover what is arguably New York's oldest bar (Neir's in Woodhaven). Least favorite bar I visited? Tonic East. If that three-story Murray Hill frat party implodes upon itself and disappears, like that house in "Poltergeist," I'll be just fine with it.

A Beer At...Caskey's Tavern

Caskey's Tavern sits on a little bend of Fresh Pond Road, where Ridgewood, Queens, begins to turn into Glendale. It's 70 years-old and has always been owned by the Caskey family. The neon sign is worthy of comment. It's only says "Tavern"—not "Bar," as is usually the case. And the font is thick and casual, as if written by a red neon crayon. Next to the word is a tilted glass, not quite a cocktail coupe, not quite a wine glass, and whatever the contents are, they are aflame.

Inside, the old, beautifully carved darkwood bar is the main testimony to Caskey's age. That and the shuffleboard table, which the woman behind the bar said she believed was the the last one left in Queens. (The only other one I've found in the course of writing this column was at Plug Uglies.) Otherwise, the ceiling and floor and walls are on the modern, drab side. A large, bulbous, sloping jukebox sits near the door like a music-spewing Jabba the Hutt. There's evidence that at some point Caskey enlarged the place, because everything in the big room past the bar smacks of modern work, the kind of pool/darts area you'd find in any bar in NYC.

The blonde, veteran bartender, who said she worked Sundays through Wednesdays, divided her time between the Daily News and "The Godfather II" on the television. "Do you ever come here on the weekends?" asked a garrulous barfly, who was itching for some lively conversation. She looked at him like he was nuts. "No," she said. "Do you go to your place of employment on your days off? I go to a different bar, a bar where they treat me better."

Two young men came in, skateboards under their arms. They knew the bartender and greeted her warmly. "How are you doing?" she asked. "Great. We'd like two beers." "Great. And I'd like two IDs." The two gabby drinkers went out to the back patio for a smoke. "Maybe now we can hear the movie," said the bartender. I complimented her on the wonderful old bar. She said she, too, loved the woodwork, and lamented that some people actually paint over such beauty. She said she likes to watch "This Old House," because she likes to know how to do things, should she ever actually own a house.

On the long subway ride out to Ridgewood, I had been reading "The Old-Time Saloon," a reminiscence of the pre-Prohibition taverns by George Ade, a early 20th-century humorist. As I looked at the neglected, dusty bottles of spirits behind the bar at Caskey's, I thought of this passage: "Gin was the dominating theme song of most of the well-known cocktails but your typical dispenser in the saw-dust places didn't want to fuss with cocktails and he had a certain contempt for them as a weak substitute for honest to goodness liquor and fit only for dudes and weaklings."

I looked at the beer signs on the walls. "The average saloon," wrote Ade, "received from the brewery gorgeous lithographs and hugh, glittering street-signs. The better-known brands of beer were featured in highly expensive advertising campaigns."

Not much has changed.

I began this column three years ago, and today I end it. It's been fun. I have visited a lot of bars I see no pressing reason to visit again. And I have grown weary to my bones of the stultifying sameness of the Irish Pubs and the Sports Bars, and now know to avoid Murray Hill entirely. But I have encountered some gems: Molly's Pub and Shebeen, The Punch Bowl, Lucy's, Shelley's, Reynold's Bar, Milano's, Grassroots Tavern, Jackie's Fifth Amendment, Joe's Bar and O'Hanlon's in Astoria (not the one on 14th Street). To these places I will return. And I still remember Linda, the young cornfed beauty behind the bar at The Blue Room, the subject of one of my first columns. She was a dancer, newly moved to New York. I wonder how she made out.

—Robert Simonson

A (Last) Beer At...Holiday Cocktail Lounge

The Holiday Cocktail Lounge on St. Mark's Place in the East Village was the first New York dive bar I frequented on a regular basis, and the first New York dive bar I fell in love with. My habit was to visit Theatre 80 St. Mark's, a revival house across the street, see a double feature of old films, and then walk across the street to talk about the movies over a beer or two.

On Saturday, Jan. 28, the bar closed for good, after nearly 50 years. I paid the joint one last visit and wrote up the experience for Eater. It turned out to be a memorable evening.

A Beer At...Holiday Cocktail Lounge

Amy Winehouse was the balladeer of choice to the raucous mourners at theHoliday Cocktail Lounge last night. She was played twice within a half hour of my taking a seat at the old, beaten, horseshoe bar.

"This is the best night of my life!" shouts the louche young woman a few stools down. It's the third time she's said it. "Can we smoke in here?" The bartender, Jeff, a sane, seen-it-all fellow, shakes his head. "What? Is the Health Department going to shut you down?!" yells the woman, laughing. "It's all over anyway."

What she means is the Holiday, a beloved dive on St. Mark's near First Avenue,will close its doors for good on January 28. The owner has sold the building, beer-seasoned floor, memories and all. Everyone is the low-ceilinged, basement bar knows it, and they've been drinking many toasts to the joint's health.

A slack-jawed young man so drunk he can no longer speak gestures Jeff over. He'd like another beer, and a shot. Shot of what? "The green bottle," he muttered. Jeff points to the bottle. "This?" he says, disbelieving. I look at the man, who is sitting next to me. "That's vermouth," I say. "I like vermouth," he mutters. Jeff pours. "I've never seen that," I say to Jeff. "Me neither." This puts me in the mood for a shot, so I order a Jameson. Jeff likes Jameson. He pours two and has one with me.

Back on the other side of the bar, there's an argument about who invented pizza, the Italians or the Chinese. "Putting shit on flat bread does not make it pizza!" one man argues. "Give me a cigarette before I put my tongue in this woman's mouth," says the louche young woman. People are too slow on the draw, and the women lock lips. Jeff smiles appreciatively. "You're a lucky man," he say to the louche woman's boyfriend. "I tell myself that every day," he answers.

A raven-haired a few stools down is telling the story of when she woke up to find "Holiday Cocktail Lounge" written on her forehead. "You fell asleep on the bar," said Jeff. "I told you if you did that again, I'd write HCL on your head. What I wanted to do was draw eyes on your eyelids."

Jeff seamlessly slips out and is replaced by a second bartender who seems to be as loaded as his customers. He loves the bar and is not happy about the sale. More Jamesons are poured out in sloppy rows and people snatch them up. "What the hell," says the bartender. "It's all over." People start to leave, each saying "See you tomorrow" as they do.

I take a last tour of the bar. The Christmas decorations are still up, lending a celebratory tinge to the sad reality that hangs in the air. The wooden phone booth still has a dial tone. The tables between the booths, lit by sconces that were perhaps once fancy, are covered with empty pint glasses. A flat-screen TV is on, but nobody is watching. On one wall is a print-out of a narrative by the Holiday's founder, Ukrainian immigrant, Steven Lutak. "Our bar counter is in the shape of a half circle," he said, "like the table at the United Nations. People from many countries meet here. Also their money goes farther here. The price of the drinks must be the lowest in Manhattan." Lutak started the Holiday in 1965. The space had been a bar since 1936, and, according to the unhappy bartender, was a speakeasy before that. Lutek died in 2009. His son sold the building for $4.2 million.

"For what?" a drinker next to me has asked earlier in the night. "What can you do with all that money? $4 million goes pretty fast. This building would make money every day!"

I look up from the narrative and the bar is empty. I'm the only one there. Through the open doorway, I see people scuffling on St. Mark's Street. The sparks of a butt skitter across the pavement. The bartender and other members of the U.N. have gotten into a full-fledged brawl. I step outside. The night is cool and damp. "What, are they five-year-olds?" asks a man watching from the sidewalk, the only barfly not fighting.

Every night at the Holiday should end with a street fight. Rest in peace, sweet dive.

— Robert Simonson

A Beer at...Lucy's

My latest column at Eater, a classic dive in the East Village with a classic East Village hostess:

A Beer At...Lucy's

The heart of Lucy's, an Avenue A dive that has somehow held back the tide of East Village trendiness, is Lucy. She's a small woman about three times the age of the kids she serves. She had a puffy, light-brown coiffure that sits awkwardly on top of her head, and talks in a high, piping voice of an Eastern European songbird. She cheerfully takes orders, none of which are particularly difficult (beer, shot), and doesn't seem to have a mean bone in her body, probably because she doesn't pay much mind to the antics of her patrons.

The hipster-doofuses who populate the bar seem to get a kick out of Lucy. "Hey, Lucy! You like this song," said a young barfly, a juvenile delinquent smile on his lips, a PBR in his hand. It was "Cocaine" by Eric Clapton. He may as well have been asking Lucy if she had Prince Albert in a can. "What?" tweeted Lucy, distracted, smoothing out dollar bills plucked from the old cash register. The man asked twice more, intent on his joke. Finally Lucy paused and took a listen. "Yes. Yes. I like this song," she piped. She then took the TV remote and turned up the volume on the AMC presentation of "Young Guns."

The bar's facade is so warped with age, it looks like it might fall flat to the sidewalk at any moment. I believe it's held in place by the recently installed ATM machine. Getting past the often-locked metal gate is harder than at most dives. Lucy opens when she opens. It varies from night to night, but don't try coming before 7 PM. She also takes a ton of vacations, seemingly whenever she feels like it. Aside from her annual visit to her native Poland every August, don't be surprised to find the bar closed for a weeks at a time, without warning, any given month of the year.

Inside, there are two pool tables, a long old vaguely Art Deco bar, and an unintentional circle theme made up of round mirrors and round spaces where mirrors used to be. I've never seen so many bottom-shelf bottles prominently featured on the top-shelf shelf as I did at Lucy's. But the beer selection, in bottles and on draft, is surprisingly large and decent. A couple newer draft lines, hiding over near the window, draw on hipper craft brews like Goose Island. Their location seems to silently ask the question: "Who would drink this stuff when you can get a Bud?" Behind the bar, near the door, there's a glass-doored cabinet of tchotchkes. China cups and such. It's the kind of thing you'd see at your grandma's place. 

—Robert Simonson

You never where people are going to fall on certain issues. When this column came out on Eater a week ago, I had regular readers attack me for voicing even the slightest support of Coors Light. Meanwhile, respected bartenders took me to task for knocking Coors Light. 

A Beer At...Connie O's Pub

There are two taps at Connie O's. One says Coors. One says Coors Light. They both draw Coors Light.

"I know it says Coors, but it's always Coors Light," said the blonde woman behind the bar with the careworn face. If you want something else, there's Bud Light in bottles. If you want something other than that, go find another bar.

"$1.50," said the woman. $1.50? I looked at my watch. 9 PM. Not happy hour. I laid down two soft, crumbled dollars and got two quarters back. Hell, Coors Light ain't worth much, but it's worth that.

The woman retreated to her high, cushioned chair under the television. "You want to watch something else," she asked her two customers, an unsmiling, unmoving woman wearing a pony tail and a blank stare, and a sweatshirt-wearing retiree who had spread a bunch of dollars on the bar to make sure the mugs of Coors Light never stopped coming. The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree ceremony was suggested.

The channel was switched on both the TVs behind the bar, but to two different networks. So the program was never quite in sync. What Al Roker chirped on one set, he chirped three seconds later on the other. A Mariah Carey-Justin Bieber Christmas video premiered. 41-year-old new mother Carey, dressed in fur-lined Santa mini-dress, all but did a lap dance for the virginal Bieber. No one at the bar blinked, though the ponytail did say, "She just had twins." Michael Bublé lent his harmless head tones to "Silver Bells," back up by a African-American sextet. "Who's that singing with him?" asked ponytail. Roker said. "Naturally 7" repeated the bartender, "whoever the hell that is." "Who they singing with?" asked the retiree. "Michael Bublé," said ponytail, somewhat surprised. Pause. "Who's that?" said the old man.

"You got a tip at the end of the bar," the retiree informed the bartender. "No, that's Byron," she corrected. "He's coming back." Byron did come back. He didn't have long to walk to get to the end of the bar, where he sat alone and said nothing. Connie O's is a snug joint, with low ceilings and a very short, but very old, wooden bar. Video games, a pool table, and boxes and boxes of Coors Light make the Greenpoint dive seem even tighter than it is. And two small windows at the front give the room a bunker-like feel.

But Connie O's is not without spark, especially this time of season. The owner goes all out with the Christmas decorations (as, apparently, she does for every holiday). The lights in the lanterns are red and green. A shelf opposite the bar is laden with Santa and Snowmen statuettes. Lights and tinsel are everywhere you look. Even the bricks outside are painted green (they're always like that). It's damn cheery. As far as real holiday spirit's concerned, Connie and Rockefeller are pretty evenly matched. 

—Robert Simonson

A Beer At...The Pig 'n' Whistle

My latest Eater column:

A Beer At...The Pig 'n' Whistle

The way Irish pubs crowd the Theatre District, you'd think that George M. Cohan and his fellow Hibernians still dominated the New York stage as they did in the first decades of the 20th century. One of the oldest is the Pig 'n' Whistle, which, the sign says, was founded in 1969. This is one of a handful of bars in the City that go by that name, most under the same ownership. It was founded by John Mahon, who ran an Irish music hall in London, and Peter Magee, who owned a bar in the Bronx, also called the Pig 'n' Whistle. The website brags that the original location was in a W. 48th Street townhouse owned by President Taft, and that the place "quickly became the meeting place for New York's literary and banking elite." What bankers and writers were doing hanging about that part of midtown—or hanging out with each other—I have no idea.

The new location, on W. 47th near Time Square, is the meeting place of tourists and sports fans. Or maybe just tourists who are also sports fans. Anyway, no bankers. To my left at the bar was a Englishman who groaned or grunted with every triumph and failure of Manchester United. To my right were two strapping young German girls, sipping slowly through their glasses of Stella Artois, the ubiquitous Budweiser of imported beer. "Vat is that duck beer?" one asked the bartender. She meant the Goose Island IPA. The tap handle did kind of look like a duck. The bartender gave her a sample. She ordered a Boddington's instead. There is a long menu of Martinis, not a single one made with gin or vermouth. Also a Pig 'n' Whistle Ale on tap. But the bartender didn't know who made it for the bar, so I opted a pint of duck beer.

The guests over at the Doubletree Guest Suites across the street seem to like the Pig 'n' Whistle. Who can blame them? In the costly world of Times Square, it ranks as a cheap date. It's clean and there are t-shirts if you feel the need to take away a souvenir. A mother and two heavily-made-up daughters were given a whole booth, even though they announced their intention to only drink coffee. Most everyone else came in to watch the soccer game. The bartender killed the sound on the television when the commercials came on, but forgot to put it back on when the match returned. Nobody seemed to notice; they kept watching the game. The Englishman ordered another foamy Boddington's, "the cream of Manchester." He handed the barkeep a fifty. She held it up to the light. "It's OK," he said. "I just made it."

—Robert Simonson

A Beer At...Whiskey Wind Tavern

For this Eater column, I went out of town—a first for "A Beer At." Actually, I didn't go out of town expressly to write about this bar; I was already out of town, and found a bar to write about. But I knew about the Whisky Wind anyway. I've love it at first sight by name alone.

A Beer At...Whiskey Wind Tavern

On this, the last big weekend of summer, "A Beer At" follows the vacationers to the east end of Long Island, to the North Fork, where the wonderfully namedWhiskey Wind Tavern has been comforting old Greenport salts for three quarters of a century.

Most of Greenport's Front Street shuts down when the air turns cold, but the Whiskey Wind keeps its beacon on, offering the locals pool, foosball, a jukebox and a line of draft that includes regional pride Blue Point beer. Decor-wise, the only thing inside as interesting as the unique neon sign that heralds the bar's presence to the passerby is the old wooden bar, the round-framed mirror in the middle of which evokes a ship's wheel.

Old photos indicate this is the same bar installed by Bill Worth in 1940, when he founded the joint as Bill Worth's Rendezvous. Worth was a bootlegger who ran a Prohibition-era roadhouse by the name of the Worthwhile Inn. The bar was was then Meyer's Bar & Grill for a while before James Kuhlman bought it in 1993.

There's a sign behind the bar that reads "It's tourist season—why can't we shoot 'em?" But on a recent night, the Whiskey Wind wasn't dealing with too many tourists. And this being the north, not the south, fork, there was little danger of any slumming celebs. The stools were filled by locals and regulars, all men, all chatty, all about twice the age of the sweet, short, blonde and very young barmaid. The tavern is open until 2 AM, which is plenty late for this hamlet. You can be sure that the Whiskey Wind's lights are the last to go out to go out in sleepy Greenport.

The odd name, by the way, supposedly harkens back to the days when fisherman would wait out hurricanes or nor'easters—called "whiskey winds"—in their local saloon. So, was Irene a whiskey wind, then?

—Robert Simonson

A Beer At...Teddy's

A reader at Eater said the Mae West story I include in this write-up is apocryphal. Could be. Certainly, old taverns dispense their share of self-aggrandizing lies. But I found the tale in two sources. True, one of them was Wikipedia, but the other was the well-respected "Historic Shops and Restaurants of New York." It's funny: another old New York bar I've covered in this series, Neir's in Queens, also claimed a Mae West connection.

A Beer at...Teddy's

Is Teddy's an anonymous, unknown bar? Not exactly. I remember, back in the days when Williamsburg was an actual artistic enclave—when scruffy young men wore wool caps because they were cold and poor, not because it was part of the hipster uniform—Teddy's was a key artist hangout. But today this wonderful old tavern is overshadowed by dozens of trendier new watering holes. 

Teddy's is the oldest bar in Williamsburg. It's been around since 1889. For its first 30 years, it was a franchise bar serving a local brew whose name can still be seen in the beautiful stained-glass window facing the street: Peter Doelger's Extra Beer. That the sign is still there is a bit of a miracle, since Doelger's hasn't been made since Prohibition. Doelger was a millionaire beer baron, and probably a bit of a capitalist bastard; an anarchist once left a bomb on his doorstep. He also disapproved of his daughter Mathilda marrying a boxer named John West, even though that union gave the world Mae West.

One would love to picture Mae lifting one or two here at some point. But Mathilda remarried in the 1890s—wedding the son of another local brewer (sounds like daddy's doing)—so it's hard to say. Tammany Hall pols almost made good use of the place back in the day when saloons did double duty as political centers. An Alderman actually lived upstairs once.

The food served here is a relatively new phenomenon—new, meaning the last couple decades—and the weekend brunch is popular. Live bands play here Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays as part of a series that goes by the rather square name of "Williamsburg Nights." Television sets are tuned to the night's game. I always considered televisions in a historic bar a desecration of sacred space. But such are the compromises that must be made to please a modern clientele, for which drinking and talking is not entertainment enough.

The patrons on a recent night seem strangely not of Williamsburg. Parents with children, older couples, a group of visiting Japanese tourists. Or maybe this is just theother Williamsburg, the one that doesn't get the press. And maybe in twenty years, when the current crop of tattoo-parlor habitues have moved on, and the hot bar of the moment is a distant memory, these unglamorous barflies will still be here. And so will Teddy's. 

—Robert Simonson

A Beer At...Wheeler's

My latest column at Eater: 

A Beer at...Wheeler's 

It was a cool night in Sheepshead Bay. But every man in Wheeler's was wearing a t-shirt. And not necessarily the kind with words or an image on it. That would be too fancy. Just a plain white T, some of them the sleeveless sort known colloquially as "wife beaters." This was all the better to show off tattoos, celebrating the wearer's allegiance to Brooklyn or various girlfriends, on muscled-up biceps. There's a Bally's across the road from the bar. I was pretty sure some of these guys used it.

Wheeler's, founded in 1979, is a port in a storm for old school Sheepshead Bay. You won't find many of the Russian immigrants who have taken over the neighborhood in the last decade or so. Though you'd expect a joint as old and isolated as this to have long ago matured into an old man bar, the clientele is pretty young. They're mainly Italian-Americans, and they all seem very comfortable with one another, sending calls down the bar to friends—"Hey, Mick! You play this song? This is Mick's song!"—and offering bear hugs. And though Wheeler's clearly has a regular crowd, the bar did not make an outsider feel unwelcome. (And, believe me, as the only person in the bar wearing a shirt with buttons, I stood out.)

This place is local in the extreme. The television was showing not a major league game, but a Cyclones match that was taking place only a mile away. One patron, confined to a wheelchair, regularly rolled out onto the sidewalk for a long, leisurely smoke. There he sort of held court, taking to whomever entered or exited the bar. Most conversations were about some guy that both of the talkers knew. This guy was either a stand-up gent, or had recently pulled some unbelievable horseshit. One man spent twenty minutes on the injustice of a parking ticket he'd just gotten. It was OK, though, because Jimmy was gonna fix it. "Jimmy's my get out of jail free card," said the guy. I gathered Jimmy was a cop.

All the "Hale Fellow" camaraderie aside, my favorite person at Wheeler's was the incongruous bartender, a sore thumb if there ever was one. Tall, bone-thin, with greying blonde hair and a long, sorrowful, Scandinavian face, he wore a white shirt and black tie. He spoke little and smiled not at all. He could have easily been cast as a saloon keeper in a Eugene O'Neill play. I ordered a Brooklyn Summer Ale, which he took forever drawing it into one of the odd assortment of glasses that Wheeler's uses to deliver booze to its customers. I liked him tremendously.

—Robert Simonson

A Beer At...Twins Pub

From my Eater column:

A Beer At...Twins Pub

Perhaps because it shivers in the western shadow of hulking Madison Square Garden, the block of Ninth Avenue between 33rd and 34th Streets has preserved something of the tang of the city's pre-Giuliani underbelly. The gritty stretch holds not one but two Chinese takeout joints, a money order office, an antiquated office supply shop, a place to repair shoes and a couple dueling Irish pubs. It's a living museum of midtown Manhattan that John McNulty might recognize.

One of these pubs is Twins Pub, which has a couple of immediate things going for it. One is its unique signage, in which "Twins" is spelled out in gigantic letters on both the ground floor and the second floor, the upper version in red neon and curved, stadium-style. It's a hell of a beacon. The other is the unusual name itself. Twins isactually run by twins, a couple of middle-aged men named Pat and Danny. They're the sons of the man that founded Twins some four decades ago.

The place has been renovated since then, I'm sure. It's slick, and spic and span these days, not a stain on the smooth wooden bar, framed pictures of famous sports moments or red-white-and-blue bunting. There's a roomy dining area in back, and further space upstairs. The music is U2, Springsteen, Bon Jovi and nothing unexpected. Not a thing is out of place or broken in, which gives the bar an unexciting, antiseptic feel. But perhaps this is why its patrons like it. (That, and the $3 Harps.) "See you tomorrow," said the bartender to an elderly couple, who had enjoyed their drinks in leisure. Perhaps they come every night.

Given its location, Twins attracts people in transit, on their way to and from Penn Station or a game. ("Stuck in Midtown waiting for the bus with time to kill?" reads a Yelp entry.) Two women wheeled their luggage out of the pub after finished their beers, and then hailed a taxi. A couple stopped in for a nightcap after returning from a Yankees game that had been rained out. This was their point of parting. The man, who wore a bulging black leather jacket that read "World Champions," lived in New Jersey. His girlfriend lived in the Bronx. Very generous of her, I thought, to leave her home borough for 34th Street, just to say goodbye to her man at Twins. They both complained that the Yankees had given in too early to "this kind of rain." The twin on duty agreed. The Yankees, by the way, had played the Twins.

—Robert Simonson

A Beer At...O'Hanlon's Bar

Actually, there's yet another O'Hanlon's out in Forest Hills, Queens, I've learned. There are probably others as well. I'm not going to go to all of them. From Eater:

A Beer At...O'Hanlon's 

I was a paragraph or two into writing up this 14th Street pub when I realized this is actually the second time I'm portrayed a bar called O'Hanlon's in this column. The first such subject was the 72-year-old dive by that name in Astoria. Lovely place, that. This tavern, in Manhattan, is not nearly so old. But it was founded in 1974, which is something.

The corner of E. 14th and First Avenue must have been a pretty rough crossroads back then. O'Hanlon's bartender would have been equal to the scene. Small, wiry, and with the face of a longshoreman who just got off his shift, he was no ray of sunshine. "Is it still happy hour?" I asked. I had seen the sandwich board outside that said all domestic drafts were $3 during happy hour. He shrugged. Assuming that was a sort of "yes," I ordered a Brooklyn Lager. "Five dollars," he growled. "That's why I asked if it was still happy hour," I complained. "Brooklyn Lager is always five dollars," he answered. I was going to say something about how he should change his misleading "all domestic drafts" sucker sign, but I order a Bud instead.

O'Hanlon's used to have an old hand-carved sign outside. That's been replaced by one of those garish, faux-Irish frontages that are always painted some garish color. This one's red. This interior is appealing: low tin ceilings, wooden floors and iron pillars that sit a few steps below street level, giving the place the feel of a cozy den. The space is long and deep (it was a restaurant for decades before it became a bar). There's a pool room and then, further back, a dart room. Sit at a table across from the bar and the traffic between the front door and the back never quite ceases.

The clientele is varied, aside from the unifying fact that none of them put on airs. There are old men sitting at the bar; a crowd of just-off-work, loosened-tie office mates around the pool table hashing over the work day's events; husbands getting beers for their waiting wives. This is a sports bar in several ways. Green Bay Packers fans congregate here on Sundays during the football season. Dart tournaments are held in the back. And some take their pool seriously. While I was there, a stout woman came in and greeted a friend. She didn't attract my interest much until she opened a black case and started screwing together her silver custom pool cue.

The relaxed atmosphere was broken slightly by the clatter of a disabled young man and his service dog, a tall white poodle mix, noisily trying to maneuver his walker down the entryway. No one got up to help him, but no one looked surprised to see him either. I opened the door for the man. "Thank you," he said and made a labored beeline for the back room. A while later, I drew back the red curtain that concealed the room. Darts were off. It was open mike stand-up night. The young man with the walker was doing a bit on green beer. His dog sat in the audience.

—Robert Simonson

A Beer At...BillyMark's West

May I just say how much I dislike the fist bump as a form of greeting? My latest Eater column:

A Beer At....BillyMark's West

The sign on BillyMark's West reads "Since 1956." I've been to a lot of dives in my time, but few that were precious enough to proclaim—or even care about—their birthday. I steeled myself to encounter a kind of faux dive inside, more museum than bar. But, no. BillyMark's is a dive dive. As divey a dive as I've ever been in, with a strictly bottom-shelf array of liquors and beers (no taps) and a class Z clientele to guzzle them down.

John Dory 2.0 to Have Own Six Point Stout

It's almost become a badge of honor among restauranteurs, to have Six Point Ales make you an exclusive brew.

Joining that select circle, which including Frankies Sputino and Bark, is John Dory, the April Bloomfield-Ken Friedman fish restaurant that reopens this week. It's called Six Point Oyster Stout. Oyster stout is stout filtered through oyster shells. I got an early taste of it at the Eater Awards on Monday. It's incredibly dry, with a great, almost metallic aftertaste, and I could see it going splendidly with oysters.

Sasha Petraske is doing the cocktail list and he's paring the drinks with food (not a trend I support, unless you like to get smashed before the entree comes).

The Sipping News

New York cocktails crowd the $20 mark. While this is true at some new places, like the Lambs Club, the article—typical for the sensationalistic Post—is misleading. At most of the bars they mention (PDT, Pegu Club, Milk & Honey, etc.), the average price is still around $14. However, that is an increase from the $13 price tag that was the norm a year ago. [NY Post]

It also now costs more to drink on the Long Island Railroad. [Gothamist]

Another boast from the Post: Sherry is popular again. I wish it were so. [NY Post]

West Village cocktail joint Little Branch will be adding a cafe upstairs (aka street level). [The Villager, via Eater]

Jimmy, a new rooftop cocktail bar in the James Hotel, has opened in SoHo. This, unfortunately, is one of those places that offers $18 cocktails. Since it's partly founded by Hotel Griffou's Johnny Swet and Larry Poston, whose cocktails I've tasted at Griffou, I'm not sure the price is warranted. But I will reserve judgment until I try them. [Eater]

Japanese wineries (huh?) are trying to turn table grape Koshu into world-class wine. [Times]

The Sipping News

Here's a promotion I can get behind. Astor Wine & Spirits, to celebrate the rescue of the miners in Chile, is offering 15% off Chilean wines Oct. 13.

Burger & Barrel, a new pub in SoHo, will feature Red Hook Winery wines on tap. [Eater]

David Wondrich talks punch. [NYT]

Great Beaujolais producer Marcel Lapierre died Oct. 10 at age 60. [NYT]

Smith & Vine, the Carroll Gardens wine shop, has doubled its space. [Pardon Me for Asking]

V-Note, a new "vegan wine bar," opened on the Upper East Side. [Grub Street]

A Beer At...Abilene

My latest "A Beer At..." column from Eater. A place in my neighborhood:

A Beer At...Abilene

Abilene is perfectly positioned to absorb tired Brooklyn commuters as they pour out of the F train's Carroll Street station at 6 PM and head down Court Street to their homes inside the brownstones of Carroll Gardens. Many pass it by, but always with a thirsty glance in the bar's direction. Others dart in and order a Maker's on the rocks, a Jack and Coke or a draft.

The Sipping News

Eben Freeman has become "director of bar operations and innovation" at Michael White's Altamarea group. Nice to see Freeman finally land a new place in New York's bar world. He left his previous perch, Tailor, last year. [TONY via Eater]

Is tequila the new vodka? Or: The "Entourage" Effect. [Washington Post]

New York bars are spiking their milkshakes with liquor. [NYT]

More on the ongoing Tiki bar revival, including news of the coming Hurricane Club in Manhattan. [NYT]

A Beer At...Grassroots Tavern

If Bob Dylan never drank here, I'd be very surprised. I've never been in a bar that reminded me more of the folk music movement of the late '50s-early'60 than Grassroots Tavern. Even the very name seems a reference to that time. My latest from Eater:

A Beer At...Grassroots Tavern

The Grassroots Tavern—one of the only worthwhile businesses on the Bohemian theme park that is St. Marks Place between Second and Third Avenues—has a basement-level, cement bunker of an entrance. One would expect a cramped, cold interior beyond those mismatched double doors (one is weirdly wider than the the other). Instead, it's warm and bizarrely enormous inside. A boisterous group of 13 at one table doesn't begin to cramp the place. Sit at the back, near the three dart boards and the strange series of locked wooden cabinets, and the East Village sidewalk circus seems a million miles away.

Sixpoint Beer, Now Made in Pennsylvania

Sixpoint Ales, the massively popular brewer headquartered in Red Hook, has made a career out of marketing its Brooklyn roots, becoming the darling of Kings County locavores over the past few years. It's well-hone image—not to mention its many excellent beers—have led to soaring demand. So much so that it long outgrew it tiny digs on Van Dyke Street. Since late 2007, many Sixpoint ales have been brewed at the larger Green Point Beerworks, on Waverly Avenue in Clinton Hill, home of Kelly Taylor rival Brooklyn brew-line Kelso. But that was still Brooklyn.

Now, for the first time, some Sixpoint beer will be made outside of the borough. Eater reports that owner Shane Welch has moved a portion of Sixpoint's production to the Lion Brewery in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Welch confirmed the move. "Shane also tells us that they are considering two other options and that there is a 'different and unique project on the horizon' but doesn't reveal any details."

The development is particularly interesting because Sixpoint has often boasted of their utter Brooklynishness, faulting competitor Brooklyn Brewery for not really being a Brooklyn brewery because much of its bottled product has been made by contract in Utica. I suspect Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver is having a good laugh over this.

The Sipping News

Eddie Huang, owner of BaoHaus, had gone pretty wacky with the new drink list at his place Xiao Ye. Johnnie  Walker Bubble Tea, anyone? [Eater]

The new TGI Friday's on Union Square has no prices next to its drink list, because "It's classier that way." [Eater]

For the second time in a month, San Francisco's bar scene has seen a great bartender leave his post for a brand ambassadorship. Erik Castro of Rickhouse has announce he will be the BA for Beefeater and Plymouth gins, which are owned by Pernod Ricard. Recently, Neyah White of NOPA laid down his apron  to rep Yamazaki whiskies. [Alcademics]

Rye once again sold on site of George Washington's Mount Vernon distillery. [Cowdery]

Albert Trummer, of Apotheke, was arrested for doing what he does: igniting liquor on fire. Guess that's the end of the dog-and-pony, firey homemade absinthes. [NY Times]

A Beer At...Tonic East

Yelpers talking of Tonic East say it represents the epitome of what Murray Hill is all about. A whole neighborhood, like this? I had no idea.

Here's the Eater column: