Who Gives A Shit: Does Anyone Go To Beauty Bar?

Beauty Bar when it first opened? Or on a Saturday night?

A few weeks ago, on a Saturday night, I was walking home from a gay bar in the East Village when I passed Beauty Bar on 14th Street. The bar was packed with people - so many so that they spilled outside. The atmosphere inside looked hoppin' - music blasting, people dancing, lots of attractive people mingling. I was like, "Damn, what a super fun bar!"

Then I took the train home to the Slope. And on the walk home, I swung by Beauty Bar on 5th Avenue. The atmosphere was a little... different. There were four people in the bar, and they were all watching some movie that was being projected on the big screen. It was 10:30 on a Saturday night. And no one was there. 

Surely this had to be some sort of fluke. It's the summertime - maybe a lot of people were away for the weekend?

So I started checking back periodically over the following weeks. And wouldn't you know it? No matter what night of the week it was - no matter what time of night - there never seemed to be anyone there.  No music blasting. No dance parties. Everything just seemed... dead. Like, the opposite of fun. 

What's the deal? Does anyone go to Beauty Bar? Is it always that dead? Or does it just get crazy busy like, minutes after I check it out? 

FiPS' Ultimate 5th Ave South Bar Crawl

While not all side effects of the ever-expanding boundaries of Park Slope are desirable, one happy consequence is a wide-range of new drinking establishments. We here at FiPS, ever your companions in boozing-it-up, are super enthusiastic about all the drinking happening on 5th Avenue and, in particular, all of the new watering holes that have opened up in South Slope over the last few years. On any random night it's possible to walk into one of the quality bars on that strip and not find yourself surrounded by a million douchebags. Score!

With this in mind, we -- FiPS' own drinking experts Daniel & Shawn -- have put together a TOTALLY EPIC SOUTH SLOPE BAR CRAWL, starting at 14th Street and working all the way down to 23rd. On this short strip, one can hit at least 10 bars, each with something unique to offer. We attempted the entire crawl on a recent Friday night, but our livers and wallets protested enough that we eventually had to give up. However, we bet some of our readers are ready for the challenge:

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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.

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