12 X 2 = Oblivion
Bar 4
444 Seventh Ave. (15th St.)
Park Slope
718-832-9800
Let me tell you about my big throat: It's not notorious in Chelsea, but it is infamous for an Olympic ability to guzzle liquid. Water, orange juice, alcohol-you name it, I chug it. To prove my penis to guys of greater height and chest fur (not a stretch, considering I barely top the cutoff to ride the Cyclone), I kick back a pint of beer faster than a finger snap.
Crude and base, yes, but in America massive consumption equals manhood. Take last week's Nathan's Famous hot-dog-eating contest. To the hooting glee of thousands, grass-thin shortie Takeru Kobayashi consumed 49 wieners, taking his fifth-straight Mustard Belt. Second place was Sonya Thomas, a 105-pound Burger King manager who devoured 37 dogs. Short of height, big of stomach: It's the new black.
In the spirit of little-guy gluttony and easy-glide gullets, I visit south Park Slope's Bar 4. It is the brainchild of veterans of lesbian stalwart Henrietta Hudson and several Bay Ridge and Bronx bars you'll never visit. Bar 4 is a cozy little boudoir. Merlot-colored walls jibe with the black ceiling, shabby-chic vintage furniture and lamps with red light bulbs. It's dark and vaguely erotic, a joint in which to smoke opium and smooch on the couches for hours.
Sunday through Thursday, Bar 4 offers the college-boy special: $15 buys all-you-can-drink PBR and Yuengling. It is a one-way ticket to blurry eyes and bad decisions, the first one of which is handing the bartender a $20 bill and agreeing to submerge my liver in watery swill. Greg the bartender is a friendly chap with knitting needle?thin sideburns and messy band hair. He hands me my change, which I let ride for tip money, and gives me a green wristband. My drinking companion receives the same. It's like entering a boozy Six Flags.
Each week, Greg says, passing us our first two PBR, about 35 people enjoy the offer. He likes it because "I know people are digging in for the long haul." For the bar, the deal is hardly a loss leader. PBR usually goes for two bucks, while pints of Yuengling register at $4. Besides, enough people drink the $6 glasses of wine, $5 pints of Brooklyn Lager and Harpoon IPA and pleasantly priced martinis to negate bottomless lushes.
Now some math: To make the $15 special worthwhile, I would have to drink, conservatively, 12 PBR. The last time I drank a dozen PBR I power-vomited out my third-floor bedroom window. I crack my can and down six ounces in a single gulp. My throat gurgles appreciatively.
I'm long past the age where I'm enamored with simply drinking a beer. Preferably, I'd shoot some pool. However, Bar 4 is too tiny for a table. There's a Galaga-PacMan machine, but it sits unplugged because an acid-jazz quartet is unleashing noise reserved for torturing leaders of genocidal coups. (Bands, DJs and open-mic nights fill out the entertainment schedule.) Luckily, there is a foosball table manned by men with backward-baseball hats and names ending in "y". My friend and I, on our third PBR, play several games, losing summarily. Like my teenage years, I can't put anything in the opposing team's hole.
But at least defeat is softened by beer. We switch to Yuenglings, which, at four bucks per, pad our pretend tab. Kind of like gorging on shrimp, not spaghetti, at a buffet. Anyway, around us, the crowd is cute and preppy. Men with polo shirts. Toothsome women you can take home to mom. Token Park Slope lesbians. A couple bearded hippies. Most bargoers greet each other with complicated handshakes and cheek kisses, signs of any decent neighborhood bar. Yet this neighborhood bar is at odds with itself. Its setting says wine sipping, yet the beer special and foosball say frat boy. It's a Parisian flophouse meets Down the Hatch, minus excited men shouting "woo."
By now, my eyes are as shiny as a freshly waxed Porsche. I'm swallowing my eighth beer, jacking my tab to a hypothetical, respectable and altogether idiotic $26. If I visited Bar 4 under normal pretenses, I would've downed two, maybe three drinks then skedaddled. Bar 4 is ideal for a cozy rendezvous, not an all-night besotting. Yet I'm cramming liquid down my gullet like a goose being fattened up for foie gras. I guess the result is the same: a swollen liver and the nagging thought that something is not quite right.