the underbelly

Check out my article in today’s New York Post!  It’s about drinking undercover in parks… you know, real hard hitting journalism….

Maybe this will.

Some Belgians have come up with a video game system-type-thing controlled by players hitting censors with their urine.  Yep.  It’s called “The Place to Pee” (because apparently Belgians aren’t the most creative of namers) and if I controlled the world it’d be coming to a bar near you.

Werner Dupont and Bart Geraets thought up the idea over trappist beers one night.

“This thing had to be invented by Belgian people and that’s what we are,” they said.

I don’t really know what that quote means exactly.  Why did it have to be invented by Belgians?  I can just as easily see a drunk American, even a Canadian, coming up with the concept.  In fact I’m pretty sure that if you a person who drinks on a regular basis to the point of intoxication you have thought of this idea yourself.  You’re at the bar, you’ve had a few, you go to relieve yourself…I’m bored, you think to yourself as you watch the ice melt in the trough or read the angry, man-hating poetry carved into the stall door…and then it hits you!  If only my pee made a man on skis navigate down a slope!  It’s brilliant!  Genius!!  You run back to your buddies, start yelling your business plan at them like you’re telling them which wire to cut on a bomb but then another round arrives.  You take a swig and some one mentions how awesome nachos would be right about now…yeah, you think, nachos…..

Anyway.  The Belgians don’t have nachos.  So now they’re going to make millions with their peeing game.  I guess they win.

Since coming to New York I have enjoyed many spoils of the city: 4 am closing times for bars, second happy hours at 3 am, 24 hr Korean delis…the list goes on and yes, mostly involves things that happen after midnight. What can I say? I burn easily. I have to be nocturnal. But I do miss some things from my past life in the Northeast: stars, basements, etc. (see previous post). But mostly I miss affordable beer. Back in the NH you could get a 12 pack of Blue Moon for $13! Here you’re lucky to get a six pack under tend dollars.

The upside to that is that it means getting a draft beer at a bar for $5 is more worthwhile than splurging on a 6 pack. Incentive to actually go out in public. Well, it was until one day at Trader Joe’s while lurking in a corner, waiting for samples of mushroom risotto to be ready, I looked around and found myself in the beer corner. There were the over priced 6 packs, the ridiculously overpriced large format bottles of beer and - - could it be? reasonably priced 6 packs of Trader Joe’s own brand of beer!

For around $6 a 6 pack this was a relief to find. I could live in the city happily. After checking out the merchandise I decided on the Hofbrau - a golden, German brew meaning “the brew of royalty” - because, if I’m being honest, at 7 percent alcohol it was the best bang for my buck. And as I’m on a graduate student budget, my bucks are precious.

It’s been a staple for me ever since that first fateful day. Lightly hoppy but full in body with just a touch of sweetness, it’s a great bottle for a just an evening sun-downer or a nice pairing with a light dinner if I don’t feel like opening up a bottle of wine.

So thank you, Trader Joe’s, for giving me affordable beer. Now if you could just get to work on ending the constant construction outside my door things would really start looking up.

Over the weekend I had a chance to return to the ol’ alma mater - Dartmouth - for Green Key. Green Key is my favorite Dartmouth party weekend because it doesn’t pretend to be something it isn’t. Winter Carnival purports to center itself around ski races, homecoming around a football game…but Green Key just celebrates free beer and maybe good weather.

It was a nice break from the city - the air was clean, you could actually see stars (I literally forgot they were up there, it was a bit of a shock), no constant construction (hooray for the gentrification of billyburg centering directly outside my window), and best of all, there was free beer.

Upon arrival I excitedly leaped down the beer and i-don’t-want-to-know-what stained stairs into the basement of sorority. Smelled like home. We started up a game of pong (real pong, with paddles and beer in shrub formation, none of your beirut). All was going well, I was even hitting cups. Then one of my cups was hit. Great, I thought, my first taste of the keystone - Dartmouth’s own baptismal holy water.

It was awful.

I mean, I knew it was awful before. I have often likened the taste to a tepid combination of dirt, bread and urine. But this was worse than I remembered. Gag inducingly awful. There was a distinct meaty after taste that was new to me. And it wasn’t even good meat - it was like those pre-made frozen hamburger patties. Fatty. A touch of kerosene. But I choked it down. Of course. I’m a Dartmouth girl, it’s what we do.

But I do believe it marks the true end to my keystone years. Ah well. It had to happen eventually.

This year marks the 45th anniversary of Disney’s tiki room “ride.” A ride which is actually more of an experience that is near and dear to my heart and childhood. What can I say, I’m a sucker for animatronics (somehow robots don’t scare me when they’re making puns and singing songs). Also, my parents are going to Hawaii without me. So because I can’t celebrate the tiki spirit neither in Annaheim nor in the islands that inspired it, I did the next best thing: went to two tiki bars.

The New York tiki bar is a weird concept. Tiki bars are colorful, tacky, they draw attention to themselves. On a recent visit to our fair city, a friend from California remarked that New Yorkers “all look the same” in that we all dress in black. When she asked why I answered that it was because we didn’t want to stand out…I believe my exact words were, “that’s how you get mugged.” So it is in keeping with that sensibility that our most popular bars are speakeasies, hidden away, unnoticed, secretive, just like we like to be.

So, against my instincts, I went to the noticeable bars.

I tried to go to Waikiki Wally’s, a teal blue monstrosity on the corner of 1st and 2nd. The door was unlocked but when I went in it was creepily deserted - chairs were still up on tables, the lights were bright, the storage door was open, but no one was around. So i let that idea go.

I went instead to Otto’s Shrunken Head on 14th between A and B. Otto’s = irony. At its heart it’s a punk bar. Hard music plays through the speakers. The patrons, all 7 of them, were wearing leather (black, of course). They were drinking beer. But the bar looked like it was trying, or had been trying years ago, to be tiki. There were masks, grass thatching, palm trees painted on the wall, skulls, blowfish lights…but it imparted no joy. I ordered a mai tai because I figured that’s what you’re supposed to order and the bartender served it to me in a brown ceramic frowning tiki mug. A blue paper umbrella perched on the rim and a straw with purple, shiny streamers stuck out the top. It tasted like a …well…like a long island ice tea - that is to say it tasted like alcohol and sour mix.  But now I know where to go if I ever just feel like a night of punk rock irony.

So I traveled back across the bridge to my home neighborhood of hipster heavy Williamsburg where I ducked into Surf Bar on North 6th and Bedford.  What a difference a couple of stops down the L makes.  When you first step into Surf Bar you’ll notice that you’re not stepping on anything typical for New York - wood, concrete, rats.  You’re on sand.  Yep, the whole bar/restaurant is covered in sand.  This is cute.  But kind of annoying.  I’m still finding sand in my wardrobe from my vacation a couple of weeks ago, I don’t need to be carrying any more of it home.  This time I ordered another traditional tiki fav: a zombie.  It was served to me in a plastic model of a bikini-clad woman’s torso.  yum.  It was strong, so I sipped slowly while enjoying the warblings of Sinatra that floated through the small shack.  It felt almost authentically tiki….fish in tanks, bright colors, retro music…but the bartender brought me back down to Brooklyn - head to toe black sporting the latest hipster trend of a snidely wiplash ’stache…

WOO! Spring break! Cruise! Caribbean!

This is one of the many cruise ship specials that Carnival offered daily, nightly, and any other times they could get to you with a tray in hand. This one is a bit different than some of the others as it comes in a fairly non-remarkable cup.  Some came in things like monkeys or a model of the ship’s exhaust pipe….delicious?  If I remember correctly, that one was like a pina colada on steroids. Yum. That means cut down on the juice and just add a couple more rums.

(Side note: while I was sad to come back and put on a jacket again, I was happy to see this article in the Times. Hooray tiki drinks! It’ll be like I never left the islands.)

Of course I didn’t stray too much from the old standbys:

A delicious bloody mary….nom nom nom….if I may quote lolcats….The best part was that they let you alter it as you want. I like extra Tabasco. It’s like an alcoholic baked potato bar. Awesome. More bartenders should be as unassuming…now if some one would just let me do the same thing with something like a long island ice tea…hmmm…

But it wasn’t just all drinking and sun..and burns…and bioluminescent lagoon kayaking excursions (I like to learn when I travel). No, no. For some, there was work to be done:

Ah, flashing lights and people losing money.

The best part of the night was coming home to the creatures:

I’m getting old, okay! I like towel animals! And sipping good drinks (favorite on the ship: the double mojito…until they ran out of mint half way through the trip…sad face). I can’t be out getting all crazy. No, instead I went to the room and took pictures of towel animals.

Spring break 2008, woo!

That, my technology loving friends, is what has come to be known as the “bumbot.” Developed by a bum-hating man named Rufus Terrill, owner of the Atlanta bar O’Terrill’s. Its a meat smoker, which comes equip with a spotlight, an infrared camera, a loudspeaker and a water canon. Now, I can respect a remote control meat smoker with a water canon, because you have to respect something like that, otherwise you’ll get hit with a hard spray of water. But robots should not be bouncers!! I won’t go through the whole “I, Robot” thing again…but seriously. Stop giving robots human jobs! Especially when booze is involved! Can you imagine stumbling out of a pub, happily fizzing with a thick beer buzz and running into a meat smoker that promptly shines a spotlight on you and hoses you down? What a way to ruin a perfectly good night.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Terrill insists he’s not a kook, that he’s serious about using his robot to fight crime.” You can’t say that you’re not a kook and then follow that up by saying you want your robot to fight crime. You can’t.

I’ve searched and I’ve searched and I still can’t find why Hoboken has its annual St. Patrick’s Day festivities two weeks before the actual holiday. But as girl of some Irish decent and a great lover of all things Guinness, I’m not one to complain about two opportunities to celebrate the great Saint who chased away the snakes.

I was too overwhelmed at the parade to take pictures, but here’s a little sensory sketch: fratty dudes, green-wigged girls, very, very drunk people ready to collapse at noon (no, I wasn’t one of them parents), lots of men in kilts playing the bagpipes (isn’t that a Scottish thing?) and lines around the block of people wearing green beads who are trying to get into an already overcrowded Irish pub.

No green beer. That I saw, that is. Which I’m okay with. I don’t think beer should be green. It’s not natural. Though there was a woman on a corner selling corned beef and cabbage sandwiches out of a cart. I had already eaten but if I hadn’t I would have taken care of that. My Irish heritage has given me three things: the inability to be in direct sunlight, a pretty respectable alcohol tolerance, and a great love of cooked cabbage. Yum. Especially when paired with beef, shade and a Guinness.

When I recovered from the shock of seeing the afternoon debauchery I was able to get a couple of shots of Gotham from the pier while waiting for the ferry:

The approaching storm:

There’s home!….inviting.

I don’t know about you, but after a night out the town I wake up and revel in the aromatherapudic nature of the clothing I was wearing. Mmmm beer and smoke and sweat. I take deep breaths in and think of Fraternity basements of past years….remember the good old days when stale beer was as good as an aphrodisiac. If only my room could smell like that all the time! Thank god it can with the Beer Candle from Hotwicks.com! Mmmmm hot, waxy, beer.

The site also offers scents to remind you of those good old days in the strip club as well as those wonderful times hangin’ out by the ol’ urinal.