Night 17: Absolutely 4th, Riviera Cafe, Cubbyhole, Art Bar

Tonight we were joined by a very special guest, Little Frankie, who had been involved in similar research when he lived in Munich. He joined Willie Wonka, Orbital, Cricket, Fahrd and I as we moved our exploration further west past 7th Avenue. The first place we happened upon was Absolutely 4th on West 4th St. This bar made me an excellent vodka tonic for $8, with Absolut vodka, hence the name. The space has a nice feel with cool lamps and wall decorations, but unfortunately, at least on weekends, attracts a pretty lame upper east side-ish crowd. You know the type, pretty girls but oh so boring.

We next wandered over to the Riviera Cafe, also on West 4th. This is your typical sports bar, out of place in the West Village, but standard just about everywhere else. My $6 vodka tonic was drinkable, but the bartender Ted was very friendly and down to earth. He offered up the best joke of the evening: "How do you castrate a redneck? Kick his sister in the mouth". We also ordered some buffalo wings that seemed to go over pretty well. The crowd, however, was square and unremarkable and the fact that the music was the sound of a sportscaster's voice means you'd better be going here for the sports or the jokes.

The hidden gem of the evening was definitely our next stop at the Cubbyhole. This lesbian bar is the most welcoming to male patrons of any lesbian scene I've ever encountered. To give an idea of how friendly the crowd was, I had my jacket petted and my cheek pinched and Orbital and Cricket were both felt up. It's no wonder the Cubbyhole attracts a great scene though, my $6 vodka tonic was nice and strong, the music was great 80's, the roof was decorated with fish hanging from the ceiling, and bartenders got the job done if they seemed somewhat preoccupied while doing it. It you want to be surrounded by a crowd of attractive lesbian women and don't mind the occasional guy or two in the mix, then I don't think any place can beat the Cubbyhole.

Our last stop of the night was the Art Bar on 8th Ave. The Art Bar is a very nice space with booth seating and a bar in the front and then a back room with art on the walls, couches and a general decadent atmosphere. The Art Bar looks like the kind of place you might expect to see an Andy Warhol crowd, that is the elusive mix of artist and heroin addicts. Unfortunately, the crowd at the Art Bar doesn't really measure up to its decor. I'm not sure if that's because the drinks are just okay, Orbital's watermelon martini tasted like a jolly rancher, the music isn't very good, or because the waitstaff look more like they should be working at the Riviera Cafe then modeling for junkies. If they spiked the punch then the Art Bar could be a truly beautiful scene.

Night 16: Fiddlesticks, Greewhich Treehouse, Woogie's, Julius, Pisces

Cricket, Orbital, and I start the night just above 4th Street on 6th Ave deciding to explore the area above our last outing. We make our way up 6th Ave, looking for bars and finding nothing. Since this makes no sense, we continue on 14th and then back down 7th Ave. Unbelievably, we don't find a single bar anywhere in this area. I officially designate this entire section of the neighborhood as no longer part of the village. Almost giving up hope, we turn on to Greenwich. Finally, we are graced with Fiddlesticks, a wanna-be English bar. Cricket immediately pegs the place as a typical Boston bar: frat boys and sorority girls out to get drunk and hook up with one another. The typical frat party music mix only reinforces this perception. They were passing out free beer samples though, which is a very positive trait for a bar, even if they hadn't intended for me to have three. My $7 vodka tonic was good, but not very strong and it took way too long for me to actually get it. All in all, a good location to see bland Americans in a nice English setting.

Next, continuing down the street, we came to the Greewhich Treehouse. This nice bar had just recently opened and had not established a clientele yet, but we were very impressed by its promise. Their liquor license hadn't gone though yet so it was just beer and wine for now, but their beer selection was pretty good at $5 and our super friendly bartender provided good conversation and service. The decor was real homey with a giant glass window overlooking the street and a Jim Jarmusch movie playing on the wall. This is the perfect place to chill with a beer and a movie while watching the snowfall on the street outside.

Continuing on Greenwich, which had been treating us right, we came to Woogie's, a Philladelphia bar. I had not known that there were Philladelphia bars, but apparently serving cheesesteak and showing Eagles and Sixer's games makes one a Philladelphia bar. Anyway, Woogie's smells like old grease, there wasn't much of a crowd that night, and the music was lame classic rock. The bartender was moderately helpful, but not too chatty after providing our drinks, and my $6 vodka tonic was flat.

For our next stop we were joined by Diva and Anastasia, two lovely girls in the modeling business. Appropriately we therefore wandered into Julius, a bar for older gay men. That being the case, I was poured a stiff vodka tonic for a reasonable price from a not particularly friendly older gay bartender. The music was gay boy dance music and the decor was still Halloween even though it was two weeks after the holiday. Orbital made a new friend in the men's room and the ladies with us were the first to have entered the establishment in a very long time. Really a classic piece of west village culture.

Diva and Anastasia left us after this and we stumbled into our final bar of the night Pisces on the corner of Beck St. and Christopher St. Pisces is a twenty-something gay bar. The decor is pink. Besides Cricket, there was only one other female in the bar, but she was pretty hot. The music was good gay bar dance music and the young good looking gay crowd was dancing it up. My $8 vodka tonic was excellent and the bartenders were very friendly. A good place for getting drunk and dancing with the gay boys.

Night 15: Slaughtered Lamb, Barrow St. Ale House, Duplex

Having had such a successful evening exploring the bars of West 4th St. I meet up again with Cricket, Orbital, and Hoos to continue on from where we had left off. The next establishment on the street is The Slaughtered Lamb, which pretty much has the feel of what you would get if Disney decided to open a bar in the Village. It is decorated with little thematic displays like the head of a wolfman and is unclear as to what kind of crowd that is trying to attract, which may have explained why there was hardly anyone there. My sub-par $6 vodka tonic and the bad eighties music outweighed the charm of the friendly and cute staff. The Slaughtered Lamb stands out as the place to go to if your boss is making you entertain out of town guests and you want to make sure you aren't given that privilege again.

Turning off on Barrow St., we next come to the Barrow St. Ale House, which has the look of an old English pub, particularly on the outside with a wooden sign of a horse's head. Inside, a long chalkboard of drinks on the wall and the video game deer hunter complete the look. My $5 vodka tonic was good as was the collection of classic rock tunes being played. The staff was nice if unexceptional and the crowd had that former frat boys and sorority girls now working in finance feel, which if
you were looking for, you could have just stayed in midtown.

Next we wander out and make our way to The Duplex on the corner of Christopher St. and 7th Ave. The Duplex is a piano bar, which is kind of like a karaoke bar, except that the waitstaff play the piano and sing, and the musical selection is dominated by Broadway show tunes. I'm not sure if the music attracts the gay men, or if the gay men determine the music selection, but either way the two come together. I'm often amazed at the Duplex at how many songs I can never have hear of, but apparently everyone else in the room knows all the words to. All that being said about the ambiance, my $6 vodka tonic was very good. The space at the Duplex is pretty cool and the gay showtune singing crowd is friendly as is the waitstaff. The one thing I can definitely say about the Duplex is that I'd rather hear these tunes here then on Broadway.

Night 14: Mr. Dennehy's, Grey Dog, IFC, Karavas, Four Faced Liar, Down the Hatch

Cricket and Orbital call me up and tell me we should start exploring our new neighboorhood west of 6th St. I need to get some food, so I tell them to start exploring and when they find a bar I will come and meet them with my midle eastern plate to go. The first place they find is Mr. Dennehy's on Carmine near Houston. This place is styled to be an Irish bar, but the decor is not impressive nor is the crowd. Our drinks are actually terrible and I'm forced to finish off Cricket's $6 vodka tonic as a matter of principle. Our waitress, Carrie Pepper, is quite friendly, though I believe she mistakes my inquiries about the bar for chatting her up. In sum, the best thing about this bar is the view out the window.

Our next stop, farther up Carmine, is Grey Dog Coffee which is really a cafe, but they are serving beer and wine to a crowd at night, and I want to wash the taste of Mr. Dennehy's out of my mouth. I've been to Grey Dog Coffee before and I know it as a great place to have a bite and read something from the anti-imperlist bookstore across the street, but I've never approaced it as a bar before. As a bar it has a lot to offer, the space is intimate and interestingly decorated. My $8 wine was good, as were the chill tunes they were playing, and the service was lovely, friendly and interesting. Grey Dog Coffee is a great place to have a pleasant drink and conversation on a weekend night in the Village.

As we leave we are joined by our man Two swords Al as we continue on to the IFC bar. We had high hopes of the IFC bar as it is the bar attached to the theatre. It is a nice space, kind of futuristic, and they show a film on a screen - for us it was some 1940's classic - which should make for a chill place to hang out. But the crowd was not there because everyone in the bar was just waiting to see a movie. This ruined the atmosphere because, while we wanted to hang out, everyone else was just passing through.

At this point Two swords Al left us to have dinner with some friends and the three of us proceeded on to our next stop Karavas on West 4th. Karavas is a greek gyro place, not the obvious location for a bar. However, they have a bar on the side that draws a good sized crowd. As I walked in, someone mentioned the bar downstairs, so I went down to check it out. Whoa! Suddenly, I was transported to a disco lounge from the summer of 1977, complete with a dancing cage, shag carpet chairs and a left over summer of love paint job. There were few people in this space including a couple of large attractive ladies who looked like they were prostitutes, possibly male prostitutes. Our bartender was a cute film student from India who poured me a good vodka tonic for $8. This little head trip was a great discovery, but we had to move on and see what other gems were out there.

Next we went to the Four Faced Liar on West 4th and Two swords Al joined us again having finished his social obligations. The Liar is a nice traditional pub-feeling place. The kind of place with board games so that if you've been drinking with the same friends for days and have nothing interesting left to say, you still have something to do while you continue drinking. Our bartender poured a mean vodka tonic for $6. The Liar's unpretentioussness is only matched by its good drinks and good crowd.

At this point our drinking was starting to take a toll on us, my notes started to look like tick-tack-toe games and our ability to judge anything had become seriously impaired. Nonetheless, we decided to be brave and try one more bar. That choice was Down-the-Hatch, an establishment specializing in frat boys, drunk college girls, and drinking enough to puke. We got our drinks, which were cheap both in quality and in taste. The high point of this bar is a bench swing that we managed to snag and there pontificate on the inadequacies of the crowd and the cheesiness of the music. However, in our druken stupor, we fit in with the rest of the crowd just fine.