Image via Complex Original
Written by Brenden Gallagher (@muddycreekU)
Hipsters (or: "Hipsters") are as vilified in fair Gotham as white-collar Wall Street crooks and tourists. From the “Punch the Hipster” iPhone App to the "Look at this Fucking Hipster" Tumblr, much has been accomplished in recent years to denigrate the young and tragically cool. But it's hard to keep them down, especially since hipsters are blissfully ignorant when it comes to self-awareness. It's always a hipster that calls the guy hogging Big Buck Hunter a fucking hipster.
Every week, a quirky bar opens in Brooklyn. But if you can't stand the new photo booth-having, ironically-enjoyed Top 40-playing joint on the block because the one you found in '03 is more real, this one's for you.
These are the 25 Lamest Hipster Bars in New York City. Do with it what you will. Vaya con L-Train.
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25. Lone Wolf
Neighborhood: Bushwick, Brooklyn
Address: 1089 Broadway
Website: n/a
Lone Wolf's lit mostly by candles at night, because seeing what's around you is so early 21st century. Swing by on Sunday for “Morrissey-centric” jams conducive to sitting in the dark and feeling sad that you chose to live in an industrial cancer-pit of a loft just to be near cultural outposts like this one. Location, location, location.
24. Wreck Room
Neighborhood: Bushwick, Brooklyn
Address: 940 Flushing Ave.
Website: n/a
This tats-and-tallboys dive fits in well within the current Bushwick biome (which is just not as pure as 2002 Bushwick, when you could enjoy the factories for their beautiful urban sadness without having to think about people occupying the spaces). Leather bucket-seat booths and old car bumpers attached to the wall, this stripe of theme bar is all the rage. But for budding sociologists, Wreck Room is a rich example of a young hipster bar that—like your favorite Best New Music-rated band—will one day grow up to be lamer, pricier, and less diverse with age. Just like the neighborhood around it.
23. The Commodore
Neighborhood: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Address: 266 Metropolitan Ave.
Website: n/a
Call me Ughshmael. The decor at this dinette/bar has been described as “quasi-nautical.” Seasick yet? Our anchor tattoos are burning with second-hand shame that the place wouldn't embrace the sea completely. The sole indicator of the maritime-slanted interior on the storefront is a chalkboard, shaped like a whale. The flagship food here is chicken, and for those us of us who weren’t raised in nu-Brooklyn, fish on the walls should denote fish on the plates. One hot fish sandwich does not a seafood joint make. If you see the whale on the horizon, turn hard-a-starboard or abandon all hope ye who enter.
22. This N That
Neighborhood: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Address: 106 North 6 St.
Website: facebook.com/ThisNThatBK
Perhaps we're giving this spot too much vestigial credit, as this gay bar was, until recently, a hipster haven called the Cove. That said, the same detached bartenders avoid eye contact as '90s house music floats softly over the gaggles of boys and girls dancing in little circles under colored epilepsy-inducing lighting. Shout out to your bad middle school dance trauma, right down to the La Bouche. And the weird boners you pop when the girl with the Bettie Page haircut looks your way. Crazy how that still happens.
21. duckduck
Neighborhood: Bushwick, Brooklyn
Address: 161 Montrose Ave.
Website: n/a
New York Magazine refers to this spot as “decidedly mallard-themed.” Even worse than the phrase itself is its accuracy, as dozens of rubber ducks line the walls, and duck designs blot the curtains. It's precious, the same way your twice-removed aunt or her Urban Outfitters-shopping daughter is. Save her soul, and avoid at no cost.
20. The Trash Bar
Neighborhood: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Address: 256 Grand St.
Website: thetrashbar.com
While Sunday Night Church Service and the PBR special at Trash are serviceable, weekends can be rough. Hipsters who have put on their tough pants before going out ape punk swagger, all the while swilling cheap whiskey meant to make them feel like Gram Parsons. Fact: They are not Gram Parsons.
19. Home Sweet Home
Neighborhood: Lower East Side
Address: 131 Chrystie St.
Website: homesweethomebar.com
Taxidermy swag? It's a thing, and it's a thing here. Perhaps it's an early-aughts Americana carryover, the genus of which also yields the flannel, the beards, the Son Volt EPs. Regardless, the post-stuffed animal has an unduly high place in this cultural pantheon, on prominent display herein. This, within the musty environs, gives Home Sweet Home the feel of a Miss Havisham’s attic-cum-dance club.
18. Bushwick Country Club
Neighborhood: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Address: 618 Grand St.
Website: bushwickcountryclub.com
That this bar is a decent hike from Bushwick gives you an idea of the hipster posturing going down at the Country Club. PBR tallboys are naturally the order of the day, but (thankfully!) the bar adds the spice of life in the form of cheese puffs in place of traditionally stale popcorn. The tattered mini-golf course out back lends a unique element of scenic flair, while the photo booth serves to remind all that the bar is just another stop on the Girls fan tour of Greater Bushwick… err, East Williamsburg.
Did we mention it’s quirky in here? Real quirky.
17. Barcade
Neighborhood: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Address: 388 Union Ave.
Website: barcadebrooklyn.com
One frequent charge against hipster bars is that they're filled with loud post-pubescent man-children trying loudly and desperately to out-cool each other. Barcade has other Freudian issues at play, literally. Even on the most crowded day, you'll see small groups of pale OKCupid dates gathered around their digital hearth, hoping aging Frogger or Paperboy machines will provide a smooth pathway into flirtatious conversation (or adolescent regression). That said, the couple who plays Tapper—the most under-appreciated of vintage arcade games—has a chance of making it to awkward sex.
16. The Library
Neighborhood: East Village
Address: 7 Ave. A
Website: n/a
Never judge a book by its cover. Unless that book is a bar, and that bar is called the Library. Yes: Books do indeed line the walls of this East Village dive, where you're more likely to hear Motörhead than Fleet Foxes (which makes it really hard to put on a serious face and write poetry in hopes of becoming a future missed connection). Nevertheless, it’s a safe bet that you'll catch a plaid-draped beardo or a tapestry-adorned ingenue, both near unconscious, welcoming you to the curb outside the Library after one too many Genesee Creams. No shared information here, just shared shame.
15. Pine Box Rock Shop
Neighborhood: Bushwick, Brooklyn
Address: 12 Grattan St.
Website: pineboxrockshop.com
Housed in a former casket shop (hence: Pine Box), this bar is Bushwick's go-to halfway house for live music and trivia, yet another way for its devolved denizens to distract themselves from, you know, actually communicating. Admittedly, it's hard to have a real conversation with all these outdated-but-still-very-real social mores suffocating us, you know?
Why talk when you can duck-face with the girls in a photo booth as the lady you've been eyeing all night attempts to recall the "second-to-last" member of the Traveling Wilburys? The place is vegan, but also houses a deer hunting video game. Serenity, now.
14. Trophy Bar
Neighborhood: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Address: 351 Broadway
Website: trophybar.blogspot.com
It seems that—like an acclimating, pre-pubecent middle-schooler—every one of these places needs a quirk with which to make itself stand out among all the other Special Young Things. The feather in Trophy Bar's cap? A wall of trophies, many of which are likely Participation Prizes. Every Monday, old music videos cover the walls, for you and your friends to contribute some Beavis-level analysis to the crowd. On their website, they describe their wine list as “concise.” We prefer short, such is our patience for this spot. Let's just grab a six-pack of the American flag Budweisers and find a rooftop, right?
13. One Last Shag
Neighborhood: Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
Address: 348 Franklin Ave.
Website: onelastshag.com
Bed-Stuy may do-or-die, but like everything else, it's neither safe from nor too sacred for this kind of thing. That thing: Pratt students having fun. Do you have enough drugs with you to be part of that? No, really—do you?
One Last Shag refers to itself as a “mod/tiki/70’s dance floor/local watering hole...[with] face melting parties and relaxing tiki backyard.” If you need any more "face melting" context, we'll be somewhere else.
12. The Diamond
Neighborhood: Greenpoint, Brooklyn
Address: 43 Franklin St.
Website: thediamondbrooklyn.com
A bar with shuffleboard—more likely in Middle America than the middle of Brooklyn, you say? Maybe, but with all the money spent easing the ennui of this community by this community, anything is possible. This beer snob haven even manages to make a great table game a conduit for pretense. We're going to tell our dads, and they will be so pissed.
11. Alligator Lounge
Neighborhood: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Address: 600 Metropolitan Ave.
Website: n/a
This bar famously offers free pizza with your beer, but the universal consensus? You get what you pay for. Even if your innards can handle the ‘za, you’ll be contending with hipsters who, having blown all their extra cash on dime bags of ex-lax or expensive beer bars, are stumbling into Alligator to drown the sorrow of unfulfilled lust with something sometimes resembling mozzarella cheese.
[Pro tip: Bring your own toppings. It's the easiest thing to keep fresh crushed red pepper in the breast pocket of your blazer. We've been doing it for years.]
10. The Gutter
Neighborhood: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Address: 200 North 14th St.
Website: thegutterbrooklyn.com
While some people live in towns without a grocery store, Williamsburgers live in a neighborhood with two stunningly overpriced bowling alleys. More fun: Both alleys offer $45-an-hour bowling and Disneyland-level waits if you want to play with their balls. Significantly smaller than its brother Brooklyn Bowl, the lines become ever worse at the Gutter. Fans of played-out Big Lebowski references, you're home. Don't ever leave.
9. Sycamore Bar & Flower Shop
Neighborhood: Ditmas Park, Brooklyn
Address: 1118 Cortelyou Rd.
Website: sycamorebrooklyn.com
One hallmark of these bars: the urge to be more than just another bar. You’ll see a number of "bars/something incongruous" in New York City, but "bar/flower shop" is objectively the most grating. Rarely will mere mortals encounter anything so smug as a ten-spot beer/bouquet special. Sycamore is ostensibly the kind of grown-up oasis in which one might find refuge outside of bohemian Brooklyn. Just remember: The National live in Ditmas Park. In a house. Together.
8. Cake Shop
Neighborhood: Lower East Side
Address: 152 Ludlow St.
Website: cake-shop.com
Again, with the bar-[insert parlor] construct, but this place (a divey music venue and bakery) arrived long before it was a movement in cool capitalism. And though the crowd may look like the types who prefer paying little cash for their canned beer, they have the good sense to know that one's worth is determined by the amount one spends on the finer things in life (All Artisanal Everything, son), so everyone ponies up good money here despite the slightly ratchet atmosphere. Though we are sympathetic to the bar’s well-documented financial troubles, we offer our sympathies at a distance.
7. Beauty Bar
Neighborhood: East Village
Address: 231 East 14th St.
Website: thebeautybar.com
The Urban Outfitters of American Boozing, this place spawned franchised hipsterdom drinking meccas. Beauty Bar trades in nostalgia for memories bootlegged from two generations prior. The 1960s beauty salon decor—paired to '80s hits Patrick Bateman would soundtrack murders with—amounts to a vague and empty longing for a bygone mutant era. Amidst this, the staff finds the time to give manicures. Actually, this is the best thing about Beauty Bar: huffing those lovely fumes. Kill enough brain cells and anything's fun, or forgettable. Did we mention this is a chain? We did. Twice.
6. Welcome to the Johnsons
Neighborhood: Lower East Side
Address: 123 Rivington St.
Website: n/a
Though the spot's a welcome departure from the overpriced cocktails and craft brews of the Lower East Side, at what cost? The "fun" décor of a suburban home out of 1970s Wisconsin, aligned with the dinginess of a pool-table-and-jukebox dive. It's the kind of place that needs you to know that it isn't trying to be cool. Same goes for the clientele, who are too old (but really: not old enough) to be doing anything else.
5. The Woods
Neighborhood: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Address: 48 South 4th St.
Website: n/a
Urban. Rustic. Two words which have dominated the Williamsburg landscape in recent years as lumberjack-looking freelance graphic designers fill tables and crowd bars from Lodge all the way to the Woods. While the Woods plays country music and offers affordably priced cans of Tecate and Rolling Rock, you're left with the distinct sensation that no one with any real understanding of the cultures being toyed with (including that "street" taco stand in back) had a hand in the decor or the jukebox. We know because of the Hank Williams box set we found in the trash that one time. Such a good find.
4. Pianos
Neighborhood: Lower East Side
Address: 158 Ludlow St.
Website: pianosnyc.com
Some cool music happens on the back of the first floor. Or happened. In 2004. Before you moved here from Ohio and supposedly predated How I Met Your Mother. Live in New York long enough, and you too will have vague memories of a sodden night that ended with a two-piece outfit wailing away, your friend's puke being mopped up on the dance floor upstairs. And yes, that upstairs: a once ironic Top 40 dance party for the slightly cooler of the bridge and tunnel set. Once, because it now fits in perfectly among the contemporary landscape of the Lower East Side.
[Crucial advice: If you don’t have any girls with you on the weekends, you’ll wait in line a long time with slightly sadistic, ever-amused door brutes. That said, if you're waiting in line to get into Pianos, you absolutely deserve whatever abuse is coming.]
3. The Flat
Neighborhood: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Address: 308 Hooper St.
Website: theflatbkny.com
All you really need to know: the owner of the Flat was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “I wanted to build an opulent club for Brooklyn punks.” Punk, indeed. When a bar can't make up its mind about whether it wants to be a fine place to drink or a Victorian drawing room, it/you/we have a problem. One ex-patron spun a story of how—on a night he opted for less-than-trendy garb—he approached the bouncer and was told he wasn't on the list before even giving him his name. Apparently, he lacked clearance for entry despite the fact that he was DJing that night. Straight up: Fuck this place.
2. Project Parlor
Neighborhood: Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
Address: 742 Myrtle Ave.
Website: n/a
At Project Parlor, the décor's as obnoxious as the name (or the Rain Man-esque Pratt students who frequent it): boudoir couches, a Gothic chandelier, a stand-up piano, and an electric fireplace. Quoteth New York mag: "All thrifty finds from antique excursions in Lancaster, Pennsylvania." Because when we think Clinton Hill, we think quaint antiques. It's not fair to the vibrant neighborhood on the whole, but on the half, Project Parlor is representative of the Martin Amis-Fanboy Brooklyn you've grown to love and hate. Project Parlor is theirs, and they can keep it.
1. Union Pool
Neighborhood: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Address: 484 Union Ave.
Website: union-pool.com
HARK! O, Union Pool, standby that you are, petri dish of many a strand of The Herp for too many Williamsburgians to count. Union Pool, which provides all the worst elements of a hipster bar while offering the same kind of drunken, dirty hedonism reminiscent of fratboy rape dens. This former pool store is a moist sweatbox of an alpha-male meat market. Close your eyes, and feel your Chuck Taylors connect with the ungodly essence of this sticky-floor party spot, an unholy abomination. The signs near the bathrooms make it plain that only one person is allowed per stall due to an excess of “debauchery” (read: keybumps and not-unrequited summer camp lust). There's even a bathroom attendant posted up to enforce this. You may think that bars shouldn't be like schools, where hall monitors enforce certain behavior among the youths, but this is what Union Pool has become: a microcosm of a school where that would happen. Though previously a legitimately cool spot where you might see the Rapture perform unannounced, it's now a poor simulacrum of what once was. Look no further than the pulsing heart of the bar: a taco truck—yes, a truck—permanently caged inside the yard's walls like a hipster culture mausoleum. It's a faint assurance of the eventual decline of this culture, or perhaps this civilization.
Decent tacos, though, all things considered.