Читать книгу New York City's Best Dive Bars - Ben Westhoff - Страница 15

B Side

204 Avenue B (12th & 13th Sts.) Transit: L to 1st Ave

(212) 475-4600

Some people call B Side a punk dive, but I find it to be more of a dyke dive. There’s red mood lighting, pin-up girls painted on metal canvases, and a steel bar. There’s also a bartender with a shark fin hairdo, who was staring at my wife Anna when we were there. Another of the bartenders, Amy, sells her own brand of trail mix on the premises. It’s called “Best Snack Ever,” and the original variation features candied pecans, pistachios, roasted and seasoned walnuts, dark chocolate covered raisins, and peanut butter chips. A cut above your average GORP, for sure.

Despite the ovarian vibe, the place is ballsy. They either don’t have air-conditioning or else opt not to run it, perhaps for the thrill of seeing people sweat. The music tends toward slowcore when it’s not punk, and their most popular drink special is a can of PBR and a shot of well whisky for $5. That’s the quintessential New York dive bar special, actually, and it says a lot about a place—namely that it’s not sponsored by any big liquor companies and its clientele is not snobbish about what it dumps down its gullet.

Unlike some dives, B Side is not crawling with grizzled, thickly-bearded, toothless men. There was only one person like that when we were there, and he was bragging about having scored a free pint from an anonymous stranger bragging that “he didn’t trust anyone who didn’t drink.”

A sweaty room full of mostly women drinking cheap booze and eating GORP, that’s pretty much B Side in a nutshell. There are worse places to spend your time.

Dive Bar Rating