13in13's Blog

Dear PDT,

Thank you for finally letting me pass through the phone booth. Although I must admit I was having an alright time watching Olympic snowboarding and fantasizing about hot dogs in the next room. I was as impressed by Shuan White’s moves on the half pipe as I was by the brilliant menu of hot dog varieties. My god. I’ve got to get back there.

The whole speakeasy thing works. People are always lined up to get in that damn phone booth. Funny when there are dozens of bars with open doors nearby. I think really people just like the challenge of getting in. And like to feel special when they get through. It is kind of exciting I must admit. After being rejected and made to wait, it gives you a little rush to see what the mystery is all about. Like opening a Christmas present.

I liked your décor and intimateness, although I think really you are a bar for couples. There’s something romantic about the secretiveness of it, and it would be a lovely place to hole up in a corner for a few hours and exclude the rest of the world.

Our table, on the other hand, spent the last hour of the night talking about the fading of love. Ah, shit. The beginnings are always so much more fun.

Also, what did you put in my Pisco? That drink sent me from mild incoherence to full-blown drunkenness in like five minutes. Although admittedly I was probably right on the precipice upon arrival.  I wouldn’t recommend the Pisco to anyone. In fact, thoughts of it made me queasy the next day. Perhaps it was the fact that it was so sweet.

Hope to see you again sometime. Next time I’ll come with a handsome man, eat a hot dog and stick to beer.

Con amor,

Rachel M.

My internal compass never fails to guide me in the opposite direction of my intended destination. This is particularly true in New York. So, as usual, I spent a good 10 minutes walking down ice-covered sidewalks away from International Bar before looking up and realizing that everything around me was in Chinese.  It does call itself International Bar, I thought. But I knew deep down that I had led myself astray. In some ways my perpetual disorientation has its benefits – I’m so damn cold and pissed off at the city by the time I arrive that it makes the warmth of the bar and the first sip of beer that much more satisfying.

And that first Genesee was good and made better by the fact that it was cheap.

I have to admit that my experience of International Bar was limited in that I was staring at a dimly lit corner and a curious wall decoration resembling the outline of a Christmas tree for the majority of the time. It is a dark and snug place filled with people whose schedules probably allot a significant amount of time to drinking beer as opposed to, say, attending spinning classes.  Which is not to say that they were all bar flies.  There was an ample spattering of intriguing characters – people whose stories I tried to guess at and size up in my mind. But for the most part my attention was turned to my two companions and to studying the strange, tangled holiday-inspired installation on the wall.

It was easy to relax into the darkness and the hum of the chatter. Untidy little bars like this demand the shedding of pretensions and elicit something more truthful and human in everyone. There is nobody to impress. And even if there were, you would look absurd putting on airs in a dark hole like that. It doesn’t fit. And perhaps because of that, you can shed your day’s crap and sink into a slower, easier way of being. Which is precisely what I did. And of course was aided along by some whiskey and a couple more Genesees.

There’s a nice patio out back where we escaped for a bit and imagined how lovely it would be to sit out there on a springtime evening and wear dresses (Hall did not share this desire) and fancy shoes (Hall did share this desire). But there is a time and place for everything, and I must say that being holed up in that scruffy cramped bar drinking whiskey and beer was a nice scene, perhaps even a perfect one, for a mid-February Wednesday night.

Thank You.  I appreciate that you stopped by.  And look at how easy that was, type, press enter, and we let you right in.  Nothing like going to PDT, nothing at all my friend.  We tried twice.  We made reservations right at 3 like you have to, but basically had to turn a trick to get into this bar.  I have have been before, of course.  But the thing is, this isn’t like a celebrity filled bungalow 8 circa that Sex in the City episode everyone loves with the Aussie gay guy and Samantha on X.  Nope, it’s just tiny.  Very, very small.

Speakeasy, speakeasy, speakeasy.  They are creeping all over the city.  BAM! Another one.  But PDT does take it really seriously.  I like that.  I mean sneak in through a phone booth?  GENIUS!  I love love love this feature more every time.   Many people know about my desire to be a spy, pretend I am a spy, lie and tell strangers I am a spy….etc.  Sometimes, by the end of my subway ride, I am sure I am a spy.  Picking up a phone and having the secret door open, this helps the fantasy.

The drinks are EH.  But order a manhattan.  It will be good.  I didn’t like many of the options on the cocktail menu.  The decor is nice, I mean who doesn’t love taxidermy.  I certainly do.  But by the end of this night I kind of had the drunk sads and I am pretty sure I was well into waxing talks of ex’s before I realized I needed to go home.

So after the double header…I absolutely had a huge sausage egg and cheese sandwich at my desk in the morning. OOOOOFff.

Oh and PDT girls: I hate your poofy headbands.  I was lying.

Shit. I am behind. I feel like you start a blog when you aren’t busy, and then you get busy. Commitment is hard to come by in a blog. And I am in a book club too, so I’m pretty busy. I mean, this blog isn’t the only thing in my life; so get off my back, all right!

But don’t worry, I made some time for International Bar.

A friend recently (like ten minutes ago) asked me if I am more of a bar person or a club kind of a guy. I don’t think he knew about this blog so I forgive him, and say definitely a bar guy. But I am nothing like the typical man at International. He is a fixture. These are the guys that hang around and drink Genesse Ale cause its what they drink. Not because it’s kind of ironic because that was the beer we used to buy for that one party every year when we spat Genese all over each other in the middle of the woods. Yea, these guys went to a war and not to a Liberal Arts college. I know the kind. Once my Great Uncle took me to a VFW for a 25 cent beer. It was awesome.

The International is dark and friendly. It is a bar you can walk into at anytime and there will be someone there to talk to. Literally, I mean almost anytime. They open for business at 8 AM. And whoever is there, they probably have a story to tell you. (I really want to say some thing awesome here, like “They can tell you with just their eyes,” But I won’t cause it’s Internatinal Bar and not a Nora Ephron Movie).

I couldn’t take any pictures because there wasn’t enough light. I like that too. Also there were both Christmas and Holloween decorations hanging. Someone had furnished an xmas tree sculpture out of cocktail stirs and glued it to the wall, probably with chewing gum. But it was cool that they left it up. Shows a certain commitment to the customers. Like the good old bars used to have. In the old days. When we lived in the old country.

Wednesday night marked round four, which, because we missed last week (sorry; we’re all extremely busy and important), was a double-header. Remember how Wednesday night at Kenyon was the biggest night of the week? I miss that.

When we arrived at International Bar, around 7:45, most of the patrons looked as though they had been there since 4 o’clock in the afternoon—or 1987. There wasn’t a single open stool at the bar, and all four of the tables in the back were occupied. Fortunately, two pleasant young gentlemen were vacating theirs just as we walked in (they asked if we’d like them to leave us the quarter-full glass of bud light sitting on the table: a gesture I greatly appreciated).

Hall guarded our fortuitously gained camp while I went to the bar and got us some beers (a Guinness and a Brooklyn; tap selection was standard, friendly). The bartendress (who, it should be noted, was wearing a plaid shirt) carded me (a gesture I kind of appreciated; I am old as dirt). The pour on my Guinness was for shit, but I suppose it’s to be expected that anyone who cards me has already written me off as a novice who won’t care. What folly!

Our first beer was spent in all-but-silent observation of our surroundings:*

At the table behind us were two wastey looking girls, drinking miller light or something of that ilk, who probably went to Colby and grew up in some semi-rural town in Connecticut. (They were of a breed with which I am intimately familiar, having only narrowly escaped its ranks myself.)

Across the aisle was a table full of significantly hipper looking kids, three guys and a girl, who were, most likely, film students at The New School.

The table in front of us was occupied by a couple who were unremarkable, but elicited a thought that went something like “I hope one day to be with someone who will meet me at places like this in the evenings and we will talk about books while we drink cheap beer until the wee hours.”

The men perched along the bar clearly regarded drinking as some serious business, to be attended to with a mixture of reverence, gratitude, elbow grease, and dedication.

When Rachel arrived, just as Hall and I finished our first round, we decided to sample the I-Bar special: a shot of whiskey and a can of Genesee Cream Ale for $4. The two trios of beverages were utterly beautiful in their simplicity. For a moment. Then we drank them and they became delicious. Then we drank more of them and we became drunk.

At some point we took a field trip to the back patio for a cigarette, which you could just tell would be ever so pleasant in the springtime. Still, regardless of the objectively welcoming space, it was fucking freezing so we went back inside.

The film students left after a slow chaos of coats and bottles and bathroom visits and scarves. An older couple poached their table then kept pretty well to themselves.

A new, younger couple replaced the one that had been at the table in front of us; she was drinking cocktails while he stuck to the whiskey-beer combo. He was attractive, and it got me thinking about why these quintessentially cocktail-drinking women always land the beer-and-whiskey men (he, incidentally, was also wearing a plaid shirt; she was wearing an outfit).

For me, however, the greatest intrigue was with the wastey girls and the two boys (whose general aesthetic was the perfect male interpretation of the girls’) who had joined them. One of the boys and one of the girls clearly formed a couple, while the other two were friends on either side and unacquainted with each other. It became clear, after a few moments, that this was a setup. There was only a minimal amount of awkwardness, however, as the girl was making it abundantly clear that she was in no way interested in her intended: a burly, red-bearded fellow in an untucked oxford shirt below a pleasantly battered sweater. I, of course, was immediately drawn to the chap, and therefore deemed this girl a total bitch for being so cold to him.

She ignores him heartily for about two beers. “So fine,” he thinks to himself, “it’s taking some time for her to warm up to me, but I’ll stick around and see if maybe something shifts.” Then, out of nowhere, this tall, blond, prince-charming looking dude waltzes into the bar and over to their table. The bitchy girl greets him with the enthusiasm one would show to a long lost love; he greets her with perplexity as they had probably seen each other three hours earlier (when they left the advertising agency where they work together) and didn’t quite understand why it was so fucking urgent that he haul his ass down to the village to meet her at this bar “immediately!” Yes, you’ve got it: this guy was a beard, a decoy, who she had called in to make it crystal clear that our red friend had no shot whatsoever. It was like a dive-bar version of a bad Debra Messing movie as she all but verbally refused to take back her seat next to redbeard, opting instead to perch herself essentially on the lap of prince charming (who, I am almost positive, was gay). I decided that her horrifyingly transparent overreaction marked channel-changing time, brought my attention back to my mates in blog, and drowned my exasperation in another can of Genesee.

After our fourth round it was just about time to go around the corner to PDT, where we had a 10:30 reservation (like I said, it was a double-header), so we packed it in and headed out, drunk and happy.

Stay tuned for part deux.

* The thing about bars like International Bar is they’re just comfortable and unassuming enough—have just the right mix of charm and desolation—that their populations are what make them. It’s not about fancy cocktails and taxidermy, or lush interiors and mood lighting: it’s about a bunch of strangers sitting in a room and drinking. Together. It is precisely what a bar should be.

I got off the train and smoked a cigarette in the freezing cold evening and I wondered if it was worth it.  I mean, I never really finish anything in my life anyway.  Why should this be any different.  Well, I suppose I end things: end but not finish.  Blogs?  Well, this isn’t my first attempt at one.  I am a man of attempts.

Usually I call my friends before wandering into the night, into the reaches of Williamsburg looking for a bar I know little to nothing about but am determined to find.  (Sidebar: I am surprised at how often this seems to be happening and wonder if it speaks to my character?)  So I marched through the winds, through the dark, and I kept myself company on a journey I determined to be personal and therefore important.  I thought about my impending debut at a book club.  I hadn’t finished the book.  Figures.

I had called them, hadn’t I?  Called both ladies knowing they were most likely arriving before me, having both come from farther away.  But only one had arrived so far.  She even thought far ahead enough to get a slice along the way.  This wasn’t going so well for me.  I hate eating pizza alone, I do it far too often and now there was no pizza for me and everyone else was full.  So no pizza.

Another cigarette in my lungs, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how close I was to the warehouse where my agency stores assets.  I mean, really close.  I could go check out some furniture for something, but I wouldn’t have anywhere to take it… so I just trudged on to The Richardson.

Oh.  The Richardson.  Such respite.  Such warmth.  Such calm resonance.  I was so worried I would just end up another snarky fag with a blog.  So judgey and cruel, never to endorse a bar on the list of lists.  Would I have to die my hair crazy colors and get an “interesting” hair cut now?  Could I really be just another dissenter of the public opinion; here to only point fingers and pick scabs?  How would I build on that?  It has been done, and turned into a movie.  So thank you, Bar God, for The Richardson.  This is the bar everyone who is like me wants next door to their apartment.  (Except that means you live pretty far from the subway, which sucks.  Just saying.)(Although I live REALLY close to BARN, and that is a very similar bar.)(Actually, I take it back. I like living near BARN more.  It’s a better bar with a similar aesthetic and the neighborhood is far superior with better subway options.)  (Too many parentheticals?)

Right: The Richardson.  A nicely, dark-lit interior with Big-Bear Bar Tenders with warm smiles; The Richardson made me feel like everything really was OK.   Kind of like Miik Snow does, with his dark crooning.  Like you’ve just been let out onto your own noir bus stop and you have to find your own way from there.   But it’s your own fabulous story so it will work out in the end.  Like the film is just about to burst from sepia to color.  At The Richardson the wallpaper is cheap, but choicefull.  The tables are sturdy, and the drinks obvious.  The food offered is simple.  Comforting platters made up of crusty bread and tuna with olive oil, capers and olives, pretzels and pickles, mustard, cheese and olives.

The Crusty This and Thats

I am pretty sure the bartender kept calling me “Buddy,” and I liked it so much more than how the guy at Starbucks calls me “Mr. Youngprofessional” in the morning.  God I wish he would stop that.  It’s paper thin.  These guys made you feel like they would pick you up from around the waste and carry you off.  But that it was meant to be.  Like, maybe, it was your story unfolding just like it was supposed to and all you had to do was stick around for it; find out what happened here, in this bar, to you.

Sometimes you just want a stiff bourbon, you know?

The Big Red. (Just Like the Bar Keep.)

After a day of hurried movement and interminable class discussions on the value of teamwork, this bar was such a lovely refuge.  Dark, private, slow and easy to sink into.  It is understated, but perfectly crafted.  All of the details – from the meticulous mixing of the drinks to the angle of the wooden blinds framing a lone neon bus stop outside – create a whole that is at once charming and relaxed.

I started with a Jack Rose, a mixture of apple brandy, lime and grenadine, mainly because I liked the name.  But, like Dong,  by far my favorite mouthful was the combination of Old Speckled Hen with a plate of pretzels, pickles, mustard and cheddar.  Brilliant.  My earliest love affairs were with mustard and pickles and cheese.  I wish I had known as a child that this was a possible dinner option.  So many regrets.

The music was spot-on too.  For some time, I stared at a veiled door off to the side behind which you could make out the profile of person.  I pondered what this place was and who this person was.  I decided that it was a DJ.  I announced my conclusion to the group, but they countered that it was likely a make-out/fellatio room.  I stared at the shrouded door and turned this over for a while. You’ll have to go there yourself to see what it actually is.

I loved this place.  The food and drink and setting were executed with precision and thoughtfulness, but without any pretension. It was unusual in that way.  Too many bars pride themselves on fancy cocktails but have an attitude problem to go with it.  Too many people too.

One last thing.  I just remembered that upon leaving the bar I went up to a table of mild-mannered and otherwise engaged young men and – in a display of middle school bravado – dropped a piece of paper that said “boys or girls?”  And then made a quick move for the door.

Hot.

It has been one week since our visit to The Richardson, and I still cannot stop thinking about the Beer Drinker’s Plate. If we were playing Tournament of Champions, and you put the beer drinker’s plate up against almost any snack, it would be a clear winner (figure 1 TK). Five or six perfectly crunchy, perfectly salty Dutch pretzels; a wedge of the most savory cheddar cheese I have ever laid buds upon; a ramekin filled with creamy, tart mustard; another filled with crisp, garlicky pickles: perfection.

But I digress—this journey is about cocktails.

My first drink was a Treebeard. Now, I am not one for the fancy cocktail: give me a glass of cold Hendrick’s or warm Jameson and I’m a happy camper. But this place was screaming for it (not in the obnoxious tantrum-y way that Pegu was screaming for it, but more of an “I’m so intriguing and full of life don’t you just want to push me up against this wall and do me” kind of way), so I bit.

It took about five minutes for one of the burly, sexy, tattooed, moustachioed bartenders to craft my beverage; he was the perfect mix, however, of attentive and surly, so I didn’t mind (plus the bar provided a nice point of vantage from which to survey the joint, and I felt kind of important standing near it). Then, after he had poured the concoction into my glass, as I got ready to grab it in my eager little hand, there was a gesture: “wait.” What ho? There’s more? The clinking, tipping, stirring, tipping, shaking, clinking, stirring wasn’t enough? He grabbed a grapefruit—a grapefruit, I tell you—from beneath the bar, along with some wood-handled rinding tool, and actually cut a thick piece of peel off of this pristine fruit while I stood and watched. For me? All this? You shouldn’t have. But please, do go on… And then, I kid you not, he gingerly—ever so gingerly—twisted the peel—just so—over the glass, releasing its essence into my Austrian pine liqueur in tiny little bursts. He then rubbed it lovingly around the rim of the glass before daintily dropping it into its little pool of perfection.

It was hot. And the drink wasn’t bad, either. Which is not to say I will ever make one (or any cocktail with more than one ingredient) for myself, but certainly the effort that was expended in its creation was not in vain. It also managed, despite the slice I ate on my walk from the train, to get me kind of drunk.

After a trip outside to smoke, and watch the traffic on the BQE almost immediately overhead, I switched over to Old Speckled Hen. This is a beer with which I am quite familiar, but I have never seen a pour like the one(s; I had three) I got at the Richardson: a slight convexity of head above the rim of the glass, never spilling over, the creamy tan fading gradually and seamlessly into translucent orangey amber.

The entire experience was one not easily rivaled. It was relaxing, easy, fulfilling; there was excitement without disappointment, anticipation without pressure; good company, good lighting. I even kind of liked the wallpaper. Kind of.

If you ever want to have sex with me, take me to this bar first.
You’ll have a better shot.