LGBTQ bars have had a tough run lately. Shuttering in concerning numbers, many have been struggling with soaring rents and an increasingly challenging business model (not to mention dating apps, which make it easy to flirt from the couch). But happily, and against all odds, many of our go-to LGBTQ spaces are still standing—thriving, even. What’s more, they need your business more than ever in light of discriminatory anti-transgender legislation and distressing Don’t Say Gay laws. To that end, here’s a pared-down list of our favorite queer bars, restaurants, and clubs in major cities across America. Drop in for a drag show, catch a late-night DJ set, or simply pull up a stool at the bar. No matter your gender or orientation, you’re in for a good time.  

The Stonewall Inn, New York City

“We really are like the gay Church,” said co-owner Kurt Kelly. Mecca for America’s gay liberation movement, Stonewall is the site where a dayslong protest for LGBTQ rights ensued in 1969 after police violently raided the establishment. In 2019, an estimated 5 million people made the pilgrimage to Greenwich Village to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the pivotal event. Today, Stonewall is more than its brick-and-mortar location; behind the scenes, the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative is taking the “Stonewall Inn legacy to the most marginalized in our community and in the toughest places to still be LGBTQ+,” said Stacy Lentz, Stonewall’s co-owner and CEO of the nonprofit.    

Round-Up Saloon, Dallas

Next time you’re in Dallas, lasso up your friends and take them to this kitsch Oak Lawn dance hall where queer culture meets line dancing and twangy country music. Thursdays are the best nights to go for the uninitiated; that’s when instructors give free lessons on, say, how to do-si-do your partner and dance the “Hoedown Throwdown.” Nobody goes for the gastronomy (the menu is basically burgers, fries, and wings)—though it helps to have something to nibble on to mitigate the dangerously generous pours.

Cheer Up Charlies, Austin

Austin’s LGBTQ residents are up in arms: It may be too late to protect three emblematic Fourth Street queer bars from the wrecking ball as they’re slated to be replaced with luxury highrises. That makes Cheer Up Charlies—which is safe, for now—all the more important to support. With a well-furnished outdoor patio, bubbly staff, and a vegan food truck always parked outside (sweet potato fries! blood orange hard cider!), this bar is our favorite spot for partying in Texas’ blissfully “weird” capital. 

Atlantic House, Provincetown, Massachusetts

The “A-House,” as locals call it, is so old that its original owner was a mounted postman who died of cholera. Opened in 1798 as a stagecoach inn, it became a hub of Bohemian life at the turn of the 20th century as artists and writers fled gritty, industrial Boston for a freer and more solitary life. As early as the 1950s, the A-House was an openly gay establishment, a badge it wears proudly to the present day.   

Big Chicks, Chicago

The first thing you notice when you walk into Big Chicks in Chicago’s Far North Side is the diverse clientele: a wonderfully motley mix representing virtually all ages, races, physiques, and gender identities. Translation? Everybody feels seen at Big Chicks. Consider starting your evening with updated diner fare at Tweet (the sister restaurant) next door, before unbuttoning your shirt and heading over to the dancefloor. 

Akbar, Los Angeles

Akbar is all “good vibes and pretty guys,” according to Los Angeles-based music and travel writer Taylor Henderson. But it nearly shuttered due to the pandemic, when it was running up debt to the tune of $10,000 per month. In a do-or-die plea for aid, the owners created a GoFundMe page that, to their surprise, met its goal within 24 hours. Such is the commitment of this cozy watering hole’s clientele, which doubles as a community space and open mic venue.

Slammers, Columbus, Ohio

Here’s a not-so-fun fact: There are only 33 lesbian bars left in the entire country. And Slammers, fortunately, is one of them. A downtown Columbus standby since 1993, this indoor-outdoor establishment serves pizza and jalapeño poppers and strong drinks against the backdrop of live performances. There’s also karaoke, darts, and pool for those who like some friendly competition. 

Jolene’s, San Francisco

A relative newcomer on the Mission District scene (est. 2018), Jolene’s is a casual queer bar whose Insta-famous neon sign says it all: “You are safe here.” At a time when lesbian bars are closing at an alarming pace, Jolene’s is bucking the trend as a non-male-centric space that doesn’t feel exclusive. The bar food punches well above its weight with dishes like craggy fried chicken served with mashed potatoes and succotash, and cheese-cloaked sliders served alongside thick-cut fries. 

Pony, Seattle

Whenever Mark Stoner wears his Pony hat in another city, he can’t believe how many people stop him to say, “I love that bar!” The owner of this Seattle institution housed in a defunct 1930s gas station loves the compliments, but to Stoner, what “feels even better” is “when marginalized people in our own LGBTQIA+ community tell me that it’s one of the only spaces where they truly feel safe and relaxed,” he said.

The post 9 Amazing American LGBTQ Bars, Clubs, and Restaurants appeared first on Saveur.

Chewy on the inside and crisp on the outside, these gluten- and dairy-free bar cookies are the ultimate macaron. Los Angeles Times cooking columnist Ben Mims calls for coconut extract, oil, and flour for layered coconut flavors. For more, check out our 50 best old-school cookie recipes.

Featured in: “Love Coconut? Bake These Better-Than-Macaroon Bar Cookies.”

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Following the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, Spain experienced a cultural as well as culinary revolution. The country was released from its shackles, and octopus, sardines, tuna pies, and other regional dishes and ingredients hitched a ride on the wave of country-wide migration. Destination: Madrid.

The 1970s and ‘80s saw the biggest movement of workers in Spain’s history. Hundreds of thousands of migrants from all corners of the country packed their bags, left their families behind, and bought one-way tickets to the capital—and with them, brought their culture, hard-work ethic, and family recipes. When their train pulled into Atocha station, most were swept up by the winds of the construction boom, some went into hospitality, opening up hundreds of small, no-frills bars that served their new neighbors a taste of another home.

Half a century later, both modernity and nostalgia have caught up with these humble watering holes. The tides are shifting, and in an attempt to keep up with the times, their regional roots are growing harder to detect. But learn how to decode their menus and eccentric décor, and the story of those boom years will unravel before your eyes.

Here are six no-frills bars that once washed up on the cobbled shores of Madrid, and whose doors are still portals to all of Spain’s culinary nooks and crannies.

Cervecería Río Sol – León

Cervecería Río Sol is one of those places you walk past on your way to your well-researched dinner reservation and think, “That place looks cute—next time,” and there’s never a next time. In the middle of an area teeming with tourists and nightlife revelers, Fernando Lario’s little bar is an overlooked gem that quite happily lets the passer-by pass by.

The silent and seemingly stern owner stands in the doorway with both arms behind his back—a stance broken only when he spots someone he knows. He yells their name, shakes hands, maybe even hugs, and then returns back to the doorway, resuming his slightly intimidating guise toward the uninitiated. Only once you’ve decoded this secret filter used by every no-frills bar owner in Madrid are you ready to enter and be received as warmly as the locals.

Step into Río Sol or take a seat on the terrace overlooking the marvelous nearby Basilica. Order the tortilla española, made by Lario’s wife but, be warned: it contains a few controversial ingredients. Most Madrileños are embroiled an eye-watering dispute about whether or not a tortilla should contain onion, and, at times, it can be as dividing as teabag-in or teabag-out. But throw in chorizo or green peppers and it’s fine! How? Because that’s what they do in León, and all of Spain respects that (unless Jamie Oliver does it).

Bar Sidrería Aviseo – Asturias

Antonio García Pérez is an hour late opening his bar. “Come back in 20 minutes, I’ll be open then!” He shouts to me through the window. Bar Aviseo is worth going for a stroll around the block for, but give him more than 20 minutes—it is Spain, afterall, and the stereotype dies hard in the no-frills end of the hospitality industry.

I return, not at all to Pérez’s surprise, and he tells me that the octopus is very good today, pointing at his millennial son tucking into a media ración of it further along the bar—and he’s right.

Served sliced on a wooden plate, the pulpo is doused in olive oil and sprinkled liberally with pimentón and sea salt. Be sure to scoop up a good amount of the pimentón-infused oil with each bite of the octopus, and use the bread to mop up the rest.

Hanging on the wall of Bar Aviseo, you might spot a photo of the tiny Asturian village of Cangas de Narceo, where Pérez is from. “We were just seven families,” he begins, and then points to a photo of a man down a mine shaft. “My brothers were miners. If I’d stayed, I probably would have been a miner. But I left for Madrid and opened my bar. I don’t really know why I came, I just did, like everyone else was doing at the time.”

Bar Santurce – The Coast

Despite the Mediterranean Sea being about 300 miles away, sardines have become a Madrid classic, according to Raúl Lázaro, owner of Bar Santurce, and a man of few words.

Raúl was born the same year that Franco died and, just two years later, his father Felix Lázaro would open Bar Santurce in the regional fusion style of the time. The bar is named after a town in the Basque country, the seafood served was caught off the Mediterranean shores of Castellón, and, of course, the bar in the heart of Madrid’s most Castizo neighbourhood, La Latina.

Forty-two years later, Bar Santurce has stood the test of time, and it wears its wear and tear as badges of honor. The aluminium bar, the well-trodden terrazzo tiles, and the fish-scented walls and furnishings have seen everything but the Mediterranean Sea.

A dozen orders of sardines hiss on the grill, projecting fish-scale ballistics around the room. Cutlery isn’t done here so roll up your sleeves and grasp a sardine firmly in both hands. Chomp through the salt-studded skin into the salty-sweet meat like no one ’s watching. Bones are optional, as is squeeze of lemon but, fine, go for it – you are now, of course, on the Mediterranean coast.

Bar a Miña Gaita – Galicia

By now, you’ve mastered the steely bar owner filter and are brave enough to walk straight in. Play this game with María del Carmen Rocha’s husband and he shall step aside for you, welcoming you into his shrine to Galicia, the region from which he and his wife came.

The Gallego couple arrived in Madrid separately in the 1980s, waiting bars for their earlier working years. In 2003, they opened up Bar A Miña Gaita together.

“We can’t compete with the franchises that are opening up everywhere around us,” says Rocha. “They offer fast food at cheap prices. People don’t seem to care about quality anymore”, and her concern is justified. Madrid real estate prices have skyrocketed in recent years due to gentrification and speculation. Bar A Miña Gaita is situated on a quiet backstreet, just around the corner from the city’s thronging Gran Vía artery. It is a prime location, but the narrow, winding streets off Gran Vía don’t receive as much footfall as you might expect. You’ve got to know about this place to go here, and if you do, you’ll be rewarded with a charmingly ramshackle glimpse of Galicia.

Mesón Valle del Jerte – Extremadura

“¿Que os pongo, chicos?” (What can I get you, guys?) asks the woman behind the bar, in a thick Extremaduran accent. The region from which she hails sits west of Madrid, sandwiched between Toledo and Portugal. You may know Extremadura for its famed seasonal spectacle, when vast groves of cherry trees in the Valle de Jerte—the bar’s namesake—blossom all at once.

The menu at Mesón Valle del Jerte is almost indistinguishable from any other in Madrid, except for a few regional touches. Picadillo Extremeño, for example, looks just like any chopped salad in Madrid, but the Extremaduran version is more finely diced; a more notable standout is the bar’s Licor de Cereza, a sweet liqueur flavored with cherries from the Valle del Jerte.

Valle del Jerte is just across the road from El Rastro, the bustling 400-year-old flea market yet, remarkably, few market goers decide to cross over; the pleasant terrace at Valle del Jerte remains quiet, hidden in plain sight.

Bar Los Caracoles – Madrid

The migration boom may have brought many Spaniards to the capital, but plenty of Madrid residents were, of course, already there. Bar Los Caracoles is a local institution, whose landlocked food is popular with the locals and, despite having no connection to the sea, there’s a curious tidal rhythm to the place.

The ebbs and flows of Madrid’s no-frills bars are a phenomenon that takes years to master. Beyond breakfast, elevenses, lunch, and dinner, there’s also the hour of vermouth, the café con leche y churros slot, and the quick shot of hard liquor before the commute home. But the most subtle phenomenon of the Madrid bar is one carried by the city’s eldest generation: snail rush hour.

Between 8 and 9 PM, just before the enduring Spanish sun bids adiós for another day, abuelas and abuelos head to their nearest snail bar for a media ración de caracoles. This isn’t a fine-dining, sit-down experience, but rather a stand-up-at-the-bar gastronomic ritual upheld by solo, most often elderly punters. This deeply Castizo dish is a staple for a disappearing older generation. The chewy, highly nutritious morsels have a mussel-like texture and they taste of the chorizo they’re cooked alongside.

The post Dive-Bar Food Is Madrid’s Best-Kept Secret appeared first on Saveur.

If the holidays are already feeling less like The Most Wonderful Time of the Year and more like open season on Big Capital, here’s a way to reclaim some Christmas cheer: drinking it. That’s the idea behind Miracle on Ninth Street, the annual Christmas-Hannukah pop-up devised by Greg Boehm, Joanna Spiegel, and bartender Nico de Soto of New York City bar Mace—with Christmas lights, costumed bartenders, and all. In its fourth annual iteration, Miracle on Ninth and its tiki-themed sister Sippin’ Santa’s Surf Shack are expanding to over 50 bars and restaurants around the world.

That means you can drink the very same drinks from the very same menu whether you’re in Raleigh, North Carolina at The Haymaker, Paris at Glass, or Hong Kong at Lily & Bloom. Those universally available cocktails include the Snowball Old-Fashioned, stirring gingerbread bourbon with wormwood bitters, the gin-and-sage–based How The Gimlet Stole Christmas, and the Run Run Rudolph made with tequila, coffee liqueur, iced hot chocolate, and Mexican spices.

On an individual level, some of the bars are offering additional celebratory elements to show off local flavor: Miracle at Mystic Station in Malden, MA is hosting a “Dean Martin, Get Nogged, Ugly Sweater, Christmas Karaoke Holiday Extravaganza” party on December 9th, and the Miracle at Highland Brass Co. in Waterbury, CT will open early on Christmas Eve morning and do a “Kegs N’ Eggs” event where they accept toy donations for local underprivileged youth.

Ready for festive drinks served in Santa head mugs, Christmas coconuts, Miracle coupe glasses, and more? From now until Christmas Eve, visit a Miracle or Sippin’ Santa near you to drink your holiday cheer (list to be updated as final bars are confirmed):

1. Asheville, NC – Miracle on Wall Street (at MG Road)
2. Athens, Greece – Hosted at The Trap
3. Atlanta, GA – Miracle on Monroe (by Big Citizen)
4. Atlanta, GA – Miracle Two (by Big Citizen)
5. Austin, TX – Miracle on 5 th Street at The Eleanor (by The Roosevelt Room)
6. Baltimore, MD – Miracle on Magothy Beach (at Mutiny Pirate Bar & Island Grille)
7. Cambridge, MA – Miracle at Kimpton Marlowe (Lobby Bar)
8. Charleston, SC – Miracle on East Bay Street (at The Gin Joint)
9. Chicago, IL – Sippin’ Santa (at Lost Lake)*
10. Cincinnati, OH – Miracle at The Overlook Lodge
11. Cleveland, OH – Miracle at The Spotted Owl
12. Delray Beach, FL – Miracle on Delray Beach (at Death or Glory)
13. Denver, CO – Miracle on Little Raven (at Wayward)
14. Detroit, MI – Miracle at The Skip
15. Fort Worth, TX – Miracle in Cowtown (at Proper)
16. Hong Kong – Hosted at The Lily & Bloom
17. Los Angeles, CA – Miracle on Sante Fe (at Westbound)
18. Louisville, KY – Hosted at Rye
19. Madison, WI – Miracle on King Street (at Lucille)
20. Malden, MA – Miracle at Mystic Station
21. Milwaukee, WI – Miracle at The Outsider
22. Minneapolis, MN – Miracle at Lawless
23. Montreal, Canada – Hosted at Nexus Bar
24. Montreal, Canada – (Deluxe version)
25. New Orleans, LA – Sippin’ Santa (at Latitude 29)*
26. New York, NY – Sippin’ Santa (at Boilermaker)*
27. New York, NY – Miracle on 9 th Street (at Mace)
28. New York, NY – Miracle on the Harbor (at Pier A Harbor House)
29. Orlando, FL – Miracle on Orange (at The Courtesy Bar)
30. Panama City, Panama – Miracle on aMano
31. Paris, France – Hosted at Glass
32. Philadelphia, PA – Miracle at In The Valley (ITV)
33. Pittsburgh, PA – Miracle on Market (at The Original Oyster House)
34. Portland, OR – Miracle PDX (at Function)
35. Quebec, Canada – TBD
36. Raleigh, NC – Miracle at The Haymaker
37. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – TBD
38. Sacramento, CA – Miracle on 21 st Street (at The Red Rabbit Kitchen and Bar)
39. San Diego, CA – Hosted at Polite Provisions
40. San Francisco, CA – Miracle PCH
41. Sao Paulo, Brazil – TBD
42. Seattle, WA – Miracle on 2nd (at Rob Roy)
43. Sherbooke, Canada – TBD
44. Springfield, MO – Miracle on Walnut (at Missouri Spirits)
45. South Bend, IN – Miracle at The General (by Render Kitchen & Bar)
46. St. Louis, MO – Miracle STL
47. Tucson, AZ – Hosted at Elvira’s
48. Washington, D.C. – Hosted at Mockingbird Hill
49. Waterbury, CT – Miracle at Highland Brass Co.
50. Winston-Salem, NC – Hosted at Bar Pina
51. Worcester, MA – Miracle at The Citizen

**Denotes a Sippin’ Santa pop-up*

The post Here Are All 51 Locations of the Holiday Cocktail Bar Pop-Up Taking Over the World in December appeared first on Saveur.

700 miles north of Seattle, buildings become scarce and the water gets choppy. For king salmon, halibut, and black cod, this is prime real estate, but few people dare to live this far north.

This is where you find Sitka, Alaska.

Every Alaskan fishing town has a local fisherman’s bar that’s so much more than a bar. In Sitka, it’s the Pioneer.

It’s 1983, and the night that began with a few innocent arm wrestling matches evolves into tables turned over, rowdy fights, and a decent amount of bloodshed at Pioneer Bar, or P Bar as it’s commonly called. Fishermen crush six-packs at the pace one typically finishes a single beer. Then someone rings the great big bell above the bar, and the crowd roars. This is the code for a round of drinks for everyone, courtesy of the proud ringer, who typically is a fisherman that’s just had a seriously successful catch and is ready to cover the three- or four-figure bill.

Except Charlie Bower III, a Florida native who took the Greyhound north in search of a better life as a fisherman, has just rung the bell without knowing what it means. When he sees the tab, he’s forced to hand his gold chain over as collateral until he can pay off the debt.

Now it’s 2017 and Charlie is puffing on a cigarette while gazing out the P Bar’s window on a sunny afternoon. I sit across from him in a retro tan-and-turquoise diner booth patched with duct tape to cover decades of scars.

“Oh it’s nothing like what it was in the 80’s, but I still come here, just about every day,” Charlie explains. Not much has changed in the decor since that fateful night. Dollar bills pinned to the ceiling were recently taken down for a new paint job, but the framed archival photos of ships that have made their way into the harbor are still on display, acting as a maritime historical collection. The bell still hangs proudly, waiting to be rung.

Charlie props his cigarette carefully in the ashtray and takes a long sip of his bright pink non-alcoholic beverage. He isn’t drinking this afternoon, but still appreciates the social refuge P Bar offers in a town as remote and lonesome at Sitka. When you’re this far from most people, and your neighbors are loners by nature, common spaces like P Bar keep community alive.

In the booth behind me, a mother and son from the local Tlingit tribe sip on some coffee. “I gave up drinking 40 years ago and have never felt better,” she tells me proudly. Her son doesn’t drink either. Most people who come to P Bar certainly do, but the place has softened over the decades. Weekend nights still draw a crowd, but there are fewer rowdy brawls, and for every rough-around-the-edges Icelandic fisherman stumbling in, you’ll find a young twenty-something dressed up looking for a fun night out with her girlfriends.

“It’s a struggle here. But there’s no place like it,” Charlie goes on. “You go and you leave this town because it’s shitty and rainy, but all of a sudden you realize how much you miss it, and think, ‘man, I wish I was back in Sitka.’ I don’t know how to explain it. It’s magic.”

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President Donald Trump is famously known to shun booze altogether, but that’s not the only reason you won’t see 45 having a drink at this New York City cocktail bar. Set to open on April 14, Coup in NYC’s East Village will be donating every single cent of its profits to nonprofit organizations whose efforts are threatened by the Trump administration.

The brainchild of prolific restaurateur Ravi DeRossi—proprietor of the lauded cocktail bar Death & Co. and tiki gastropub Mother of Pearl, among others—along with his longtime cohorts Sother Teague and Maxwell Green of Amor y Amargo, the bar will open by raising funds for the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood. Upon ordering a cocktail, guests will receive a token which they can place in the jar designated to their cause of choice.

DeRossi, the first-generation son of Indian immigrants, says he fell into a state of depression following the election, which he felt was an assault on equality in America. “I didn’t expect it to hit me so hard,” he tells SAVEUR. “The despair of not being able to do anything was really overwhelming.”

Luckily, DeRossi is no stranger to using business as vehicles for change—last year, he converted all of his businesses into vegan, meat-free operations, with proceeds going towards animal rights causes. So naturally, when a restaurant deal fell through, leaving an empty space for a new project, he saw an opportunity to affect real change. “Sother and Max and I had been sitting around at Amor y Amargo every night talking politics until 4 in the morning,” says DeRossi. “When we got this space, it was going to be just a pop-up, but then we said, ‘Why don’t we just do this as long as the current regime is in power?’”

A small army of the country’s best bartenders and cocktail luminaries have signed on to work guest shifts at the bar, from Seattle bar pioneer Jamie Boudreau of Canon and Ryan Gannon of New Orleans’ Cure to historian (and SAVEUR contributor) David Wondrich and food personality Alton Brown. Each participant will have the opportunity to promote their own cause during their shift, and provide input on the charitable direction of the bar.

Suffolk Arms owner Giuseppe González, who plans to split donations from his shift to the ACLU as well as a deeply personal cause, the Foundation for Alcoholism Research, says Coup presents an opportunity for people to practice what they preach by getting more physically involved. “It’s more a moral obligation than a political one,” says González.

Meaghan Dorman, bartender and partner of Dear Irving, Raines Law Room, and The Bennett, believes the hospitality community at large is rallying around social justice causes because they represent a range of populations that are more vulnerable than ever. “We work in an at-risk community with limited access to health insurance—and so many of my co-workers are immigrants, minorities, and LGBT,” says Dorman. “I don’t want to see them suffer, and I’m extremely upset about the increase in hate crimes and speech because people feel it’s been normalized.” Dorman, who wants a portion of her shift profits to go towards Planned Parenthood, adds that Coup is a shining example of how citizens can step in to fill a void created by the government. “Being thoughtful about how and where we spend our money is essential right now,” explains Dorman. “I think private donations will be a big factor in sustaining programs threatened by the new administration.”

In order to maximize the amount earned and contributed each night, DeRossi and co. won’t be taking one cent from the profits of the bar, which will operate entirely tip-free. They also plan to collaborate with various liquor brands that are interested in donating product or sponsoring entire nights.

While revelry-as-resistance is a fun and buzzy way to get attention, DeRossi says he knows it’s only the beginning of the fight. He and his team plan to work with the local chapters of various nonprofits and use the space as an informal home base for those who share the same values. “We are developing a database of like-minded people, whether it’s for future events or rallies,” says DeRossi. “We want to create a community of love and acceptance.”

The post This New Cocktail Bar Will Donate 100% of Profits to Causes Under Attack by Trump appeared first on Saveur.

It’s not hard to spot a correlation between literary genius and a love for booze. From Socrates to Lord Byron and Hemingway, many of history’s greatest wordsmiths have been known to turn to the bottle for inspiration, consolation, and catastrophe. So there’s no shortage of world-class prose glorifying the splendors of drink-fueled revelry. As F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “Here’s to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.”

This month, the book-loving bartenders at Pouring Ribbons, a cocktail institution of New York City’s East Village, are reversing that flow with a “moody author”-inspired menu that pays homage to the likes of the Penny Dreadful serials, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and even the wistful lyrics of Smiths frontman Morrissey. The third installment of their thematic menu series (previously: California’s famed Route 66 and the Silk Road) was spearheaded by partner and head bartender Joaquín Simó and brought to life through a collective effort among the bar’s staff. The goal, according to partner Jason Cott, was to show how a cocktail can function like a piece of writing with a narrative arc.

“Interpreting a literary work is similar to breaking down a good cocktail,” explains Cott. “They both require an interesting hook to draw the attention of the participant, but the main body should be of a highly substantive quality to ensure the sustained enjoyment of the guest for repeat sessions.”

The menu’s 19 drinks include a nod to the original Grimms’ fairy tale “Little Snow White,” while the Iron Slippers cocktail by bartender Shannon Tebay layers a Laird’s apple brandy Manhattan with Pierre Ferand dry curaçao and Don Ciccio & Figli Nocino, a dark walnut liqueur. The garnish, a fan of smoking apple slices, represents the evil queen’s red-hot iron shoes.

Then there’s Lovage Will Tear Us Apart, a savory take on the Queens Park Swizzle that offsets El Tesoro Platinum tequila with celery-like lovage, floral riesling syrup, and vanilla-laced Galliano. The drink derives its name, in all its punny glory, from the Joy Division song “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” which was also inscribed on singer-lyricist Ian Curtis’ tombstone following his untimely suicide.

Perhaps the moodiest of all is the Heart of Darkness, an allusion to the 1899 Joseph Conrad novella of the same name, which combines blanco tequila with mezcal, lime, raspberry, and a splash of activated charcoal to turn the drink an ominous inky black.

Themed cocktail menus like Pouring Ribbons’ have been getting more common and creative of late, both in terms of drinks and the paper-and-ink menus on which they’re presented. In New York City, The Dead Rabbit has won acclaim for its series of graphic novel presentations, while menu pages at Nitecap offer cute crossword puzzles and games. Design is just as involved at San Francisco’s Trick Dog, where the list of drinks has taken on forms ranging from Pantone paint swatches to Zodiac horoscope wheels, and at Chicago’s The Drifter, where cocktails are offered on individual tarot-inspired cards. For Pouring Ribbons’ physical menu, Amanda Elder replicated the weathered textures and illustrations found in various antique books, which are interspersed with notable quotes from the various authors.

Check out more photos below and head to Pouring Ribbons to sip on some moody cocktails.

The post Raise a Glass to Your Favorite Moody Authors at this NYC Cocktail Bar appeared first on Saveur.

The scene at Warsaw’s Bar Pod Barbakanem is distinctly not-of-this-era. A local’s joint in the midst of a tourist hub, it occupies the city’s storybook fifteenth-century New Town. Lace curtains keep the grey winter light from spilling in from the street, and from the ceiling hang dim electric chandeliers and a dusty disco ball. Middle-aged women with loose hair and bare arms stand over a stove that slumps to one side, dishing up pierogi and borscht, cabbage and eggs, and plenty of milk and meat. It’s Polish soul food, comforting and cozy—the dishes your babcia (grandma) would make—confident in their simplicity and hearty enough to sustain a chilly day of sightseeing in the city. And at the equivalent of a dollar or two per dish, it’s Polish fare that almost any Pole can afford.

Pod Barbakanem is a bar mleczny or “milk bar,” one of a dying breed of state-subsidized cafeterias in Poland’s urban centers. So named for the inexpensive dairy-based meals that were served in lieu of meat during times of rationing, milk bars first appeared in the late nineteenth century and have become emblematic of Poland’s communist past. At incomparably lean prices, they offer quick, stick-to-your-rib staples like soups, stewed meats, and cabbage and root vegetable salads. But these institutions, relics of a political and economic landscape the country has outgrown in the years since communism fell in 1989, are now in danger of extinction.

Poland boasts the most robust economy of the former Soviet Bloc and was the sole EU member state to see economic growth in the heat of the financial crisis in 2009. Over the past quarter-century, an onslaught of new, independently owned restaurants and international fast food joints has tilted the scales for eateries offering inexpensive food to wide audiences. According to the Telegraph, more than 350 of the 500 milk bars across the country had closed by 2011. And at the end of 2015, Poland’s newly appointed Law and Justice Party leveled another challenge for proprietors of the bars, slashing their public funding by 25%.

While Poland’s Ministry of Finance asserts that demand for the bars has not been high enough that the cuts should warrant alarm, many Poles take the dramatic reduction as evidence that the milk bar is an endangered species. For patrons of the cafeterias and those who grew up eating there, the end of the milk bars would mean not only the loss of a treasured piece of Polish culture, but also of one of the few places pensioners, university students, and other low-income individuals can still turn for a hot meal.

Karolina Manka, a pianist who ate regularly at her local milk bar as a music conservatory student in Krakow, recalled that the bars were a “kind of life-saving” alternative to the fast-food joints that began to proliferate after the fall of communism. “In the center [of the city], you’d have quite expensive restaurants.” Manka said. A milk bar, by contrast, “had this kind of home-cooked-meal atmosphere—and it was quick.”

As the landscape for dining out has evolved in Poland and subsidies for the cafeterias have dwindled, many Polish citizens have responded with protest. Even before the most recent round of budget cuts, the battle to protect the milk bars reached a fever pitch when the Ministry of Finance announced last year that food prepared with spices other than salt, sugar, and vinegar would no longer receive ministerial grants—a back-door way to all but eliminate subsidized meals on milk bar menus, which rely on spices like marjoram, bay leaf, and paprika. Those new regulations sparked widespread controversy, and after four months, the government finally quelled public outrage by lifting the restrictions.

“Fighting for the milk bars was the first time I realized what fighting for the right of the city means,” said Joanna Erbel, an urban activist and the Green Party candidate for Warsaw’s 2014 mayoral elections. To Erbel and her contemporaries, the battle to keep milk bars up and running is part of a larger crusade to retain the country’s democratic public spaces. “Milk bars are probably the most egalitarian places in Poland,” Erbel said. A shared love of pierogi and kotlet schwabowy—Poland’s answer to Wiener Schnitzel—brings Poles together from all walks of life, she explained. “At a milk bar in the city center, you can see the guys who have a lot of money and work at corporations…just next to the guy who is homeless, or really, really poor elderly people,” Erbel said.

Erbel was a participant in the populist campaign to reopen Prasowy, a bar in Warsaw’s Śródmieście district that closed in 2011. She and fellow demonstrators—predominantly squatters, academics, and members of the city’s leftist middle class—occupied the shuttered cafeteria on a December afternoon with red-checkered tablecloths and vases of artificial flowers to serve milk-bar fare to over 200 people in just two hours. Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reported that as police surrounded the scene, the crowd of demonstrators chanted “Raz, dwa, trzy”—one, two, three—”pieee-ro-gi!” Prasowy’s is a rare success story: less than two years later, the refurbished bar opened to the public with a renewed commitment to serving the individuals who fought for its future.

Prasowy’s renovated interior betrays Poland’s nostalgia for the diminishing cafeterias: a bright, Bauhaus-inspired space that gives a cheeky nod to the milk bar’s better days. Like the popular chain Mleczarnia Jerozolimska (with whom it now shares an owner, Kamil Hagemajer), Prasowy gestures cheerfully toward the future of a democratic Poland, even in the unfavorable hands of the ultra-right-wing Law and Justice Party. But to find the milk bar that captures the transitive spirit of the bars’ and Poland’s history, go to Bar Pod Barbakanem—dimly lit, delightfully unmodern, and situated in the heart of the city’s (not-so) New Town.

On a weekday at lunchtime at Pod Barbakanem, turnover is high, and the milk bars’ contentious politics go largely unnoticed. Its menu is still brimming with Polish favorites: clear lima bean borscht has a vinegar bite, while the Ukrainian variety is bulked up with meat, and fuchsia chłodnik soup, also beet-based, is thickened with yogurt. Pierogi, straight out the boiling pot, are garnished with lard renderings that crackle and melt in the mouth like pop rocks. In the way of Polish staples, there’s little left to be desired. And whether you’re a native, an exchange student, or an American tourist, it’s a slice of local life that just about anyone can take part in. “Many other social activities are more exclusive to different groups [or] interests or tastes,” said Michał Kielan, an artist in Wrocław. “This is one of the most inclusive places you can imagine. Because everybody has to eat.”

Bar Pod Barbakanem
Mostowa 27, Warsaw

Morgan Childs is an American writer based in Prague.

The post The Fight to Save Poland’s Milk Bars appeared first on Saveur.

I know very little about biker culture, except that it has a style I wish I could more easily embrace: Being leather-clad, having beefy forearms, revving my engine without feeling like a fraud. Motorcycle-life feels both dangerous and liberating, somewhere between kicking down a door a la Walker, Texas Ranger and running away from my problems in fairly badass capacity.

The closest I’ve ever come to being a motorcycle-enthusiast is when I bought a tangerine-colored moped on a whim last year after a series of fairly heavy disappointing life-blows. It wasn’t even a Vespa—it was a knockoff version that could barely hit 40 miles per hour—but in that moment, it felt like a crucial (if slow) move toward autonomy. My family did not approve.

When the moped was stolen five nights later from in front of my house in New Orleans, I was phased, but not surprised. Instead, I took it as a sign and bought a pair of roller skates on Craigslist.

Despite that fact both thieves and family members have conspired against it, my interest in the quasi-Hell’s Angels way of life has remained, though now in a form where I fit more naturally: perched at a biker-friendly bar.

Pound-for-pound, one of the best biker bars in the country is Stonehouse Bar in Detroit, where a multifaceted legacy—General store! Brothel! Mob clubhouse!—makes it a perfectly storied haunt.

Founded in the 1860s as a sundries shop, the building’s rocky, alabaster-hued exterior lends the bar its name: It is, quite literally, a two-story farmhouse made out of stone. (Depending on the season, it’s highly likely a carpeting of vines might be blanketing one side of the house like a leafy fur coat.) Rows of slick chrome choppers stand at attention out front, their owners nursing whiskey under the watchful eye of the bar’s resident stuffed buffalo head inside. The space and people feel heavy with stories, and bikers come to gather and swap them from miles around.

“It classifies as an independent biker bar in here, but really it’s more than that,” says Amanda Lee, a bartender who conducts history tours of the space. “Bikers come and sit at the rail right next to a businessman and listen to a band play blues on the weekend. Different bike clubs usually don’t get along, but they do in here.”

Most famously, Stonehouse once served as a hideout for the Purple Gang, a band of hardnosed, Prohibition-era bootleggers and hijackers. According to lore, the group got their name because a shopkeeper once said that they were, “rotten and purple, like the color of bad meat.” Al Capone relied on them to strong arm all of his boozy, Michigan-based needs.

“We were walking around the upstairs at the bar recently, and we found all these holes in the floor of the place that ran down through to the basement,” Lee recalls. “We talked to some folks about it, and figured out it was probably how the Purple Gang dropped money—and other things—they didn’t want the cops to find from there to the basement during raids.”

In the days since gangsters (and accompanying ladies of the night) have vacated the premises, the bar has become well-known for the kind of welcoming atmosphere that makes newcomers feel like old timers and old timers feel like they might just have been born in the place.

Lee was not immune from the draw. “When I walked in for the bar first time, it just felt like, ‘Honey, I’m home.’ As I started to work here, I realized it is one big dysfunctional family. It really is a collection of odd souls.”

This commitment to the strange and familial extends to the bar’s 1990s-throwback website, where animated Clipart of Homer Simpson popping out of a beer mug sits next to an in memoriam dedication. A quirky section entitled “The Stonehouse Dictionary” explains some of the bar’s key terms, including the definition of cheedle—the dust left on one’s fingers after consuming a bag of Cheetos.

“There’s such a legacy. We’re good to people here, and people are good to each other. I think that’s why we still stand. We have a generous pour. I call the regulars and make sure they get home safe. It’s just the kind of place we are.”

The bar’s dogged rejection of pretense is simply a reflection of a larger, deeply ingrained Detroit attitude. In a city built on motors, muscle, and good music, it’s the relationships built over a round (or three) of drinks that matter more than the drinks themselves.

Stonehouse also serves as a hub of neighborhood activity in an area that has seen drastic ebbs and flows since the shuttering of the nearby Michigan State Fair site in 2009.

“We really try to look out for the neighborhood. At Christmas time, we open our doors to hand out toys to kids and eat cupcakes and color pictures with them. On Thanksgiving, we serve a dinner for people who need a place to go. It’s a place for people to stop in and ask, ‘Hey, can I get a jump for my car?’”

An old biker joke goes that when that when a chopper drips oil, it’s not leaking, it’s “marking territory.” Perhaps the sign of an amazing bar is that various groups—all different, all eccentric—try to mark it as territory for decades, creating sedimentary layers of myth and lore that help a dive like Stonehouse stay rock solid through the ages.

The Stonehouse Bar
19803 Ralston Street, Detroit, MI 48203
(313) 891-3333

The post The Legend of Detroit’s Quintessential Biker Bar appeared first on Saveur.

Editor’s note: Tim Sultan has literally written the book on Sunny’s, the Brooklyn dive bar with a storied connection to Red Hook’s longshoreman past. With reviews coming in, we wanted to dig deeper into the story behind the story behind the bar. Here, journalist and author Mark Adams speaks with Sultan about New York romance (past and present) and why this bar has such a magnetic pull. Buy Sunny’s Nights: Lost and Found at a Bar on the Edge of the World.

When did you start to think that Sunny and Sunny’s might be a good subject for a book, and why? What was the process from idea to execution like?

I think any writer—any artist for that matter—has the same impulse within several minutes of meeting Sunny and quite a few have tried to portray him. I say “tried” because in all instances, whether it be news or magazine stories, photographs or documentaries (Anthony Bourdain even showed up for a very entertaining two-minute clip), I consider all these sketches. Not only does Sunny have a terribly charismatic personality to go with a striking face—my editor calls his features “monolithic”—but he has led a correspondingly varied life. He is not a lettered man and so one has to rely on his slow imparting of his own history. It really took me 20 years of keeping his company, sharing adventures, misadventures and many meals, all the while collecting his stories, his memories, my impressions to turn out this portrait. To figure out what to retain and what to chisel away. It’s a very subjective portrait but I hope it’s one with true depth.

At one point in the book, after Sunny has given a long account of a childhood experience, he says, “You need the time between the experience and the time of remembrance. It’s like wine that needs to ferment. Wine has to have the time in order to give birth to something really beautiful. And experience is the same way. It takes a lot of time to go from life to art but if you wait long enough, it’ll give birth to poetry. I wouldn’t want to remember what I did yesterday because it hasn’t fermented properly. It’d be cheap wine!” Always more eloquent than myself, Sunny gives probably the best explanation as to why this book was eight years overdue when it arrived on my editor’s desk. I have a very patient publisher…

There are three main characters in the book: Sunny, yourself, and Brooklyn—Red Hook in particular. If you were sitting down for a drink with someone 20 years younger, how would you explain Brooklyn then versus now?

A weighty question about a storied place. Brooklyn in 1995 was 19th century. Enclaves within enclaves, some so distinct that crossing the borough was something like crossing a continent in miniature. It was low buildings, big sky. It was stately, tribal, vast, in pockets pastoral, in swaths unkempt and disregarded. In the evening, a green, cool refuge from the city. And as a somewhat recent arrival to the city, I was green as well. Brooklyn was unexplored territory, overlooked and unlit. It is, of course, all these things still, though considerably less so. Just as the world has, Brooklyn has contracted as well. The arrival of the internet has made it very hard to have secluded getaways and, most notably, to discover places for oneself.

To this day, I prefer traveling to other neighborhoods in the evening, socializing with other cultures. It may sound precious but there is a certain pleasure to venture elsewhere. And so, apart from a local Japanese restaurant where few are more regular than I am, my preferred dinner destination lately is a Turkish fish restaurant waterside in Sheepshead Bay, on the furthest other side of the borough. And my preferred bar is a Russian spot, sublimely frozen in time, where many of the men and some of the women bear no small resemblance to Brezhnev—and probably hold his views, as well. Jungle paths—off-the-beaten-track routes, that is—still exist in Brooklyn. I count myself lucky to have a private swimming spot where I go many late afternoons till early November to swim. No people in sight—and no clothes, naturally. And no, I’m not telling you where that is.

I think it’s fair to say you’re both familiar with bars and something of a New York nostalgist. What are the elements that make a great bar? What do you think Sunny’s (the bar’s) place is in the pantheon of NYC watering holes?

There used to be a customer named Harvey. He was a real gentleman. Always impeccably dressed as if he had stepped out of a magnificent clothing store window. A flower in his lapel, never slouched, never crossed his legs, never creased his pants. His wife would wear beautiful hats as if she was going to the Easter Parade. Harvey drank scotch and water but he’d walk out like he’d never had one. He had been deputy fire commissioner under William O’Dwyer and later had run a supper club. Anyway, Harvey loved Sunny’s. He would say, “This reminds me of the bars I used to hang out in when I was a kid. This reminds me of the bars I used to hang out in during the Second World War. This reminds me of all the things I loved in life.” Sunny’s had that quality of reminding people of the past, some of whom hadn’t even experienced the past. In that view, I would say that a great bar transports. (And drinking doesn’t have to play a role in this.)  A great bar has a culture distinctive to that bar alone, which is dependent on regulars. I am certainly that—“a regular.”

Everything else—the décor, the cocktails, the lighting, the atmosphere is very much incidental. The only exception is music. The music one hears in a great bar isn’t music one hears frequently in daily life. The music is in accord with the time of night, with the mood of the room, with the size of the crowd. Sometimes that means no music. Few bars understand this.

Sunny’s was at the summit of that pantheon. I say this without reservation, so often did I hear it. I know of two nuns and at least one member of the Five Families who would corroborate this and one wouldn’t want to debate the matter with any of them. Sunny’s renown came about through no effort on Sunny’s part. He had a real hostility towards any sort of self-promotion. Now that he has withdrawn from the actual operations, the years catching up to him—well, I will only say that his absence now is as powerful as his presence once was.

In the book you mention attending the long-ago funeral of Joseph Mitchell, the great New Yorker writer who, like yourself, had a fondness for the characters of New York’s waterfront. How did his work influence your own writing and this book in particular?

Bringing up the name Joe Mitchell in one’s book is a perilous thing to do. I make no comparison—I don’t have his ear, his patience, his art—other than this: He was the chronicler of the anonymous. The unsung. And I, too, have always made it a habit to get to know the overlooked. On the outskirts of the cafeteria, of town, or occasionally, of polite society. Some became writing subjects, some became friends, some are in this book.

One could read his portrait of a bar’s decline, Obituary of a Gin Mill, after the owner decides to spruce up the place as a companion piece to Sunny’s Nights. The parallels are somewhat uncanny, if coincidental.

Are there still places in the city—neighborhoods, blocks—where one can still capture that feeling of “anything could happen here tonight” even in the age of Yelp and TripAdvisor?

As long as there exists a variety of ethnicities and classes (and I don’t just mean the criminal class), there will always be a parallel city. Several parallel cities. With unmapped, unsurveyed, unrevealed places. I may sound like an ideologue, but I very rarely look at Yelp, TripAdvisor, and the like. They have their place but in some ways, they are the dark side of the internet. You know the Louis Armstrong expression, “If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know?” One might say that if you have to consult Yelp or TripAdvisor, you’ll never find the places you’re really searching for.

I don’t have any special entry to hidden New York. But I would fairly say that I have made it a lifelong habit to put myself out there to have certain experiences. It’s true that much takes place at night and I have had plenty of ‘while-the-city-sleeps’ moments. For instance, if I didn’t make it a point to occasionally stop for an ocean swim on my way home, I wouldn’t know that full-immersion baptisms take place in the middle of the night in the Coney Island surf when no one is about.

I had an experience not too long ago. I drove to East New York—the easternmost neighborhood of Brooklyn. An unknown part of town for me. A friend, known in a certain circle as the James Brown of New York, was doing musical battle with someone billed as the ‘James Brown of the Caribbean.’ This skirmish took place in an enormous, rudimentary music hall. Hundreds could fit. Naively, I’d arrived early—before midnight—only to learn that the show wasn’t likely to begin till 2 a.m. So I took a drive in my Ford Fairlane to pass the time, taking random turns in an unfamiliar neighborhood as I once had in Red Hook when I first came upon Sunny’s. Suddenly, I passed a street sign for “Bradford Street.” I stopped, backed up. I had never been here before but it jogged a memory. My father was born and raised on Bradford. 245 Bradford. I turned the car around and I found the building and I got out and took a long look, trying to imagine what it had been like back then. In 1918. In the 1920’s. For me, the experience of anything could happen, did happen that night.

You identify your current vocation as “urban gardener.” This isn’t a common day job for writers. What do you do and how does that work inform your writing?

I don’t think there is such a thing as a common day job for writers. For me, gardening is an antidote to a former life of mine. For a while, I worked in a magazine office in Manhattan and I confess, I spent considerable time looking at the street below and daydreaming of working out of doors. An ordinary dream. Now that I’m living it, I dream of…well, never mind that.

A friend of mine is the real gardener. I’m labor. I agitate quite a bit. Gardening is not my life’s calling—no more than working in a bar once a week was—but it has its rewards. The work has a certain variety and as our clients are cut from various sections of New York’s tapestry, one sees the city from many perspectives—geographically (the humble brownstone backyard to the penthouse with Central Park views) and socially. In some ways, one feels more connected to city life, more attuned to its currents. Simply said, it’s stimulating to a writer.

I take it Sunny’s is no longer a part of your life. Is Sunny himself?

No, truthfully I don’t go to Sunny’s much. And only on rare occasion does Sunny, himself, though he lives upstairs. I’ve been back perhaps a dozen times in the past four years but I’ve never felt quite at ease again. Though all the physical elements are nearly unchanged, it’s a very different place or I’m a very different person. Perhaps it’s the classic idea of infatuation, maturation, and eventual departure. Sunny’s is an institution, a truly splendid bar, and it has a whole new generation of devotees but it is run like a conventional business nowadays. A law-abiding sort-of-place, frankly, which really means Sunny’s influence has faded. He never had much use for codes or regulations, however little he was aware of them. Without trying, Sunny was an astute businessman in that he realized the less available something is, the more valuable it becomes. He opened his bar one night a week. Going to Sunny’s was an experience. Today, Sunny’s is open for business nearly every day and therefore, has a somewhat passing-through patronage. Younger faces, too. Many of these changes can’t be helped. The neighborhood, as I once knew it, has largely disappeared and the bar has adjusted. I had my time there and the Sunny’s that I depict is the Sunny’s of that period, not the Sunny’s of today. Someone else will chronicle that and I really believe that will be a beautiful story in its own right.

Sunny, the man, is very much part of my life. Weeks may pass without a phone call but never more than a few days without a thought, I am sure. His domain has gotten smaller since he’s largely withdrawn from the day-to-day of his bar. He lives in an apartment above where he spends the better part of his days painting, drawing, pasting. Making friendship with art, as he would say. He receives few visitors, but he’s happy in his realm and his skin.

The post Behind the Sunny’s Connection appeared first on Saveur.

The bar counter was charred in places where cigarettes had been stubbed out. A painting of a horse hung on one wall in a spot where over time just enough sunlight must have fallen to bleach the head out: a headless horse in a nameless bar. A hook, which looked as though it once served as someone’s prosthetic hand, dangled from a chain of Christmas lights. And high above the bar sat several model ships in glass cases. There were no pinball chimes, no televisions turned to hockey, no machines at all (other than the projector and the stereo tucked somewhere behind the counter on which Julie London was now singing). The letters AVENUE P pointed the way to the bathroom, but there was no signage that would give away the year or the decade we were in. Only the clothes of the customers revealed the era, and then only fitfully. The bar looked old and worn but not in the overly careful manner of certain New York saloons where amber beer seems to take on a whole new meaning.

My eyes came to rest on the barkeep. He was laughing, chatting, smoking as he made his way along his side of the bar with my next Rheingold. From a distance, he looked vaguely Native American, like Chief Dan George of Little Big Man fame. But he also resembled Tony Bennett, if Tony Bennett had last seen a barber in 1957. Up close, I decided that if one took Tiny Tim’s hair and put it on Gertrude Stein’s face, one would get a very good likeness of this man. From what little I had heard of his voice, he sounded kind of Irish, but when my beer arrived and I introduced myself, he said, “My real name is Antonio. Antonio Raffaele Balzano. But please. Call me Sunny.” He gripped my hand in both of his and leaned across the bar.

He was tall and very slim but the features on his face were large and rounded as a ship’s weathered figurehead. His eyebrows were two silver caterpillars that had come to a halt while walking Indian file across his brow. His fingers were as thick as a stout woman’s wrists. In the shadows, he had appeared a little otherworldly and a little epicene—less the ghost of the Ancient Mariner than that of the Mariner’s sister. But now he grasped my hand with the vigor and enthusiasm and curiosity of a man coming upon a compatriot after months lost in the jungle. It was a greeting startling in its sincerity and intensity, and one that I would come to see made to others many times. It expressed: “You belong.” To say that he exuded charisma would be like saying Mussolini liked to hear himself talk.

Antonio—Sunny—eventually continued on, stopping to speak with each person or party seated at the bar. I watched him and I watched how everyone else kept an eye on him, as if awaiting a turn to be in his company. He kept a cigarette continuously lit and often tilted his head back to blow plumes of smoke in the air. He sipped whiskey out of shot glasses that looked like thimbles in his hands while telling stories about rats he had slain at various times in his life. Though I only heard snatches, I assumed he meant the kind with whiskers and tails. He recited several lines of what I took to be Shakespeare. He pronounced words in a way I had never heard before. He might say, “I ate a plate of ersters and then I slipped on some erl on my way to the terlet.” He used strange words rarely heard in casual conversation, like “verbiage” and “personage.” And he used words strangely, saying for instance, “Within the framework that it is that it is that we’re existing in.”

I was certain that I had never encountered a more arresting presence.

I soon learned that this bar of Sunny’s, the bar with no name and therefore no listing in the phone book, had been in his family since the beginning and he himself had practically been born there. I also learned that it was only open every seventh day, like a roadhouse in the Old Testament. This struck me as less than sound business practice, but the business of running a bar did not appear to be the business that Sunny was in. I couldn’t remember ever meeting someone so free of worry about making money, about rules, about doing things in the accustomed way. I noticed that Sunny carried a remarkably spare stock—a few staples, Romanian vodka, peach and blackberry brandies. Wino liquor. He served wine from cartons, strongly reminiscent of communion wine (though any priest serving Holy Communion with this stuff would quickly have a dwindling parish on his hands). Although there were vestiges of taps, there was no actual draft beer to be had; Sunny explained that he opened too infrequently to keep it fresh. If one was nevertheless dead set on having a beer, he leisurely reached behind him into a wooden cooler built into the back counter, not overly concerned whether it was Budweiser, Rheingold, Heineken, or Schlitz that he fished out. All beers—all drinks, for that matter—were three dollars at Sunny’s. He showed even less concern if a customer, impatient for service, came around the bar and simply helped himself.

Sunny’s Bar in Red Hook; Brooklyn, New York

Sunny was not in the least proprietary, at least not overtly. If a person expressed admiration or fidelity to his bar, he would say, “My bar? This isn’t my bar any more than it’s anyone else’s bar. It don’t belong to me. It belongs to each of you who have come here and have served to make it what it is that it is. It’s our bar, aye?” He appeared to mean this in the most sincere way. It was an outlook that emboldened customers to make whatever contribution to the humanities they wished. There weren’t always obscure films being projected or ingenious songs being sung, though a bakery-truck driver with a guitar and a Maine accent thicker than Edmund Muskie’s usually got up once a Friday and sang of his Long Island route, “You can have it all / Any way you like / You can have it all / On the Jericho Turnpike!”—perhaps the most hopeful sentiment about a stretch of road since Nat King Cole first crooned, “You can get your kicks / On Route 66.”

There was a sense that one was off the leash here. The culture that I came upon at Sunny’s was a distinct and self-generated one, as you might expect to find on an island far from any shore. If a stocky biker named Ross wanted to stand in the middle of the room and play two trumpets simultaneously, sounding less like Rahsaan Roland Kirk than a subway car’s brakes thirsting for oil, Sunny was unperturbed. If a chauffeur wanted to noisily recite Harold Pinter (“You have a wonderful casserole … I mean wife”), Sunny was appreciative. If the rare woman patron, and an adult entertainer no less, wanted to perform an interpretive dance of Aphrodite’s birth wearing something less than pasties, Sunny was understanding. And if a tugboat captain, addressed as Captain Ritchie both on and off the water, decided abruptly to yodel, and yodel very ably at that, Sunny loved it. He loved it because he seemed to love people in an absolutist manner that I had rarely seen. His affection for them, his curiosity about their histories, and his appreciation for their customs and eccentricities were apparent in the way he engaged his patrons and in his habit of extolling their virtues and their vices. He particularly loved vices. He always seemed to be exalting people, whether to their faces, behind their backs, or, as he often did, indirectly while telling a story.

Now, what can I get you, Timmy?” Sunny asked when he finally made his way back to my end of the bar. I had yet to be served but I felt no impatience. No one at Sunny’s, on either side of the bar, was ever in a hurry.

Though usually a beer drinker of undiscriminating taste, impulsively I decided to ask for something different tonight. I ordered the first cocktail that came to mind. “You would like a Manhattan?” Sunny frowned. “Isn’t that like going to Pittsburgh and ordering a Philly cheesesteak? We’re in Brooklyn, Timmy.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way. Well, what do you think I should have?”

“I’m only bustin’ your balls. You know I’m not a real bartender by any stretch of the imagination and the truth of the matter is that I don’t have the knowledge as how to make a Manhattan. But … why don’t you have a berlermaker?”

“A berlermaker?”

“Yes. A pour of whiskey into a beer. It’s what the men working longshore used to drink.”

“A boilermaker?”

“That’s what I said, Timmy. A berlermaker,” Sunny said with a grin. “Let me get that for you.”

As I watched Sunny make my boilermaker, pouring Four Roses whiskey into a collins glass and topping it off with Budweiser at a devastating ratio of one-to-one—a drink that would become “my drink” in the same way that I had begun to think of Sunny’s as “my bar”—I thought to myself, not for the last time, that there was something timeless about him. He seemed to be a spirit sentenced to presiding over this bar for perpetuity. A kindlier version of Lloyd, eternity’s bartender in The Shining.

I should have known better than to try and order a Manhattan. Sunny made conversation, not cocktails. He was, in fact, singularly inexpert at bartending. When one night someone asked whether they could have a martini, Sunny replied, “Yes, you may … but you’re going to have to come around the bar and make it yourself!” So they did.

When he wasn’t outright surrendering the bartending duties to customers, he was improvising as he went along. A wise guy’s mistress once asked whether Sunny had any garnish for the Sex on the Beach she had ordered (God knows what he had put in it). “Certainly,” he replied, without missing a beat and taking one of her bronzed hands into his. “Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs,” he said. “Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes. Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers’ tears.” He paused and gave her a meaningful look. “What is it else? A madness most discreet,” and handed her the glass. Somewhere, a maraschino cherry gave notice that night.

Sunny was staunchly impractical as a proprietor as well. Rather than install an ice machine, a bar fixture as essential as a Solomon Burke record, he emptied and refilled standard ice cube trays all week long until, by Friday, enough had accumulated to supply his one night of business. He kept the ice in a cooler below the bar, groping around with his hands when a drink required rocks. Although the digital age had arrived in America some years ago, Sunny continued to play beaten-up cassettes on a monophonic stereo. When there weren’t fiddlers or accordionists communing in a booth, he would open a drawer and search through his modest selection: The Songs of Audie Murphy. Marilyn Monroe. Billie Holiday. Julie London. Nat King Cole. Jimmy Durante, on whom Sunny must have modeled himself during his formative years. He usually put on his most prized recording, Chet Baker’s It Could Happen to You, several times a night. No one seemed to mind.

Excerpted from the book Sunny’s Nights, by Tim Sultan (Random House, 2016). All rights reserved.

More Sunny’s: Read our interview with author Tim Sultan for the story behind the story behind this great dive bar.

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