GQ Still Trying to Prove That They Know All About Brooklyn

Photo via GQ

The horrible parade of criminal injustices visited upon Brooklyn by GQ Magazine continues. First, they posted their Eaters Guide to Brooklyn, which was really more of a "Hot Restaurants Two Years Ago" list. I followed up with my own BK Eaters Guide, which you commenters happily chimed in on.  

And now, we have this. It's a nightlife guide!  And by "nightlife" they mean "bars and lodging." I don't know about you, but if I find a good bar, I don't need lodging that night.  You shouldn't, either.

That being said, here's my guide to drinking in Brooklyn.  

Pick a Bar with an Accelerated Buy-Back.  If you have more than four drinks at a bar on a regular basis (and, let's face it, you wouldn't have read this far if you didn't), you want to know whether your third or fourth drink (or ANY drink) is gonna be comped.  And if you're drinking someplace that doesn't give you a free drink after drink number 5...well, I feel sorry for you.  For me, Excelsior has always been consistent with buy backs--maybe because I'm gay and have a low-grade drinking problem.  If you fall into either of those categories, you should think about drinking there.

Choose Bars with Names that Beg You to Walk in the Door.  Sometimes in Brooklyn, you'll walk past a bar with a name that insists that you drink.  None of those bars, I can assure you, are in Williamsburg  (no matter what GQ says).  If you're planning to get schloshticated, you don't want to spend $10 a pour.  And you don't want those pours to be light, either.  The best way to ensure that you get from Point A to Point Blotto is to pick a bar with a name that connotes "value."  In the Slope, you're drinking at Jackie's Fifth Amendment.  In Windsor Terrace, it'd be Rhythm 'n' Booze.  In Kensington, you're going to Shenanigans (which advertises a "Teacher's Night," which is just, so, um, I don't know a fancy word that means "perfect," so, let's do a dot, dot, dot, here...).

Find a Bar with a Built-In Apology.  Sycamore, in Ditmas Park, has a flower shop in the front, and a bar in the back.  They run a nightly special: a beer and a bouquet for $10.  So, by the time you roll home at 3 a.m., completely loaded, you've got an impressive bouquet of flowers that will make it impossible for your insignificant other to take issue with the fact that you're throwing off ketones like a homeless lady.

Front Load That Shit.  If you're really serious about drinking, you're doing it at home, before you head out to the restaurant or bar that's going to charge you an arm and a leg (diabetically speaking) for a drink.  State law is gonna keep you from buying hootch at the grocery store, but the good people (and they are VERY good) at Costco have solved that problem for you by putting a discount liquor store RIGHT NEXT to their warehouse grocery store.  And you don't have to have a Costco card to shop at "Brooklyn Liquors" (that's what they call the booze store next to Costco). Because they're "Costco-affiliated," everything there is supersized.  They sell Jim Beam in a cube shaped 1.75 liter bottle, and it's cheaper than a fifth of the same whiskey would be anywhere else in the borough.  You can't even find bourbon by the cube most places.  And certainly not at that price.

Try to find a bar that doesh shomething I forget what.  OK, look.  I was out with ninedaves earlier tonight, and we had drinky-drinks and I had a fifth bullet point to write, but I'm kinda loaded right now, so I'm just gonna send this in and maybe by the time it posts, I'll have remembered what the fuck I was going to say, and I can leave it in the comments or something.

OH!  Except we should all be glad that GQ's idea of Brooklyn is all about Williamsburg, because it means that dudes with light beards wearing pashmina scarves, blazers and untucked shirts will be less likely to invade Park Slope.