Throwback Thursday: Toy Bar

Images via The Real Deal

It seems like every day brings the death of another long-time Park Slope institution. With this new Throwback Thursday column, the old-timer FIPS writers are going to get all fucking nostalgic about some of their favorite places that used to exist here. We'll welcome guest submissions, too, so if you are seriously missing Snooky's or Mooney's and need to write about it, send us an email at effedparkslope at gmail dot com. 

Now that Park Slope’s favorite picturesque dangerously-crumbling eye sore has been sold, and will be converted to “luxury condos” (i.e., gutted from stem to stern), let’s take a few moments to remember part of its storied past.  Well, its storied past that intersects with my less-storied past.

Waaaaay back in the early 90s (still with me, children?), the first floor was home to a bar, of sorts, known affectionately as the Toy Bar. It had some official name, but who knew what it was, or cared. The Toy Bar had the very genuine feel of someone’s dank rec room, filled with, yes, old toys and board games, and a large collection of hats, which the patrons were invited urged to wear, and us patrons did. Why? Because we were wacky! And in our 20s! (and we’d didn’t have kids so knew nothing of lice beyond that one time they checked our hair in 2nd grade, and one girl had it.) This toy- and hat-filled “bar” wasn’t one of those faux-wacky establishments that seem to be outfitted from a kit: Perhaps beat-up tin vintage license plates adorn the walls. Maybe a sprinkling of retro fisher-price toys in mint condition on a bookshelf. An antique cash register in use. No. The Toy Bar really was a true musty dump of a place, run by a true Crazy Lady, and it was un-ironically kitschy, if there’s even such a thing as that.  She had two daughters, and they were part of the landscape. The older daughter, maybe 15, served drinks. The younger, maybe 8, hung around chatting with the patrons, until she eventually put herself to bed in a booth near the back.

The beer was warm and overpriced. The red wine was cold and overpriced. I was once served a dish of pretzels which seemed a little lively for a pile of inanimate snack foods, and proved to be crawling with ants.

I think I first encountered this magical world when a musician friend was performing there for donations. Oliver played the ukulele, an instrument somehow well-suited to the environment. At a break between sets, another friend and I accompanied him up the block to get a slice of pizza, only to have The Crazy Lady come after him admonishing him to return to [his unpaid] work. That’s how wacky it was!

I don’t remember when the place was shuttered. But at least once, it seemed to have reopened briefly, at a point in my life, when walking by, I went, “Oh my god! The Toy Bar is open?! That place was insane,” with nary a thought of ever walking through its doors again, regardless.

True wackiness, and one’s love for it, is fleeting, and only for the young. I fucking hate wacky now.