B-Side
204 Ave. B (betw. 12th & 13th Sts.)
212-475-4600
There is an evil that lurks from Williamsburg's dark warehouse bars to Park Slope's bourgeois saloons to the dank dens of the Lower East Side. The evil glistens. It taunts. It begs to be gulped with greedy abandon, not unlike the sweet white goo in 1985 B-movie The Stuff.
The "stuff" bubbled from an underground reservoir, thick, white, mysterious-and undeniably delicious. Entrepreneurs sold it as the latest dessert craze. The public lapped it up, unaware of one teensy snafu: the "stuff" turned sweet-tooth addicts into zombies, almost spelling mankind's doom. The zombifying effect can be recreated after a night spent ingesting B-Side Tavern's nefarious "stuff": a shot of radiator whiskey paired with a cold Rheingold can. Ouch.
This is how the pain began:
Until January 2003, the East Village's B-Side was a Laundromat located on the northern stretch of, duh, Ave. B. The space was a ruin. Where washing machines once sat were gaping holes, as if the concrete floor were poured around the machines. The owners, Kelly Comstock (a Welcome to the Johnsons veteran) and Sivan Harlap (a drummer for rock trio Demander) had a vision: create a classic rock dive.
They enlisted a minor army of friends and began reinventing the narrow, run-down washeteria. When the dust cleared five months later, they'd hung a pressed-tin ceiling, fashioned a separate pool room, installed a tabletop Pac-Man and lit the she-bang with dim, sexy-making red light.
This could explain why, at first, some people treated B-Side as a true red-light district. Unscrupulous and uninvited drug dealers sold their special stuff inside the bar. That situation was smoothed over, and now B-Side dedicates itself to retailing legal poison. For my girlfriend Adrianne, legal does not mean better.
"You always turn into the Robot at B-Side," Adrianne says.
I will explain in due time.
A night at B-Side features two distinct stages. First, you visit for their killer happy hour: half-off until 8 p.m. means $2 Brooklyn Lager bottles and whiskeys. While the jukebox broadcasts Flaming Lips, Fugazi and Def Leppard, squatter types, musicians, an NYU smattering and a shaggy-haired coterie drink themselves into a penny-pinching buzz.
And unlike similar establishments such as Cherry Tavern, you need not Greco-Roman wrestle for a seat. Better yet, the nabe's new condo owners have so far avoided B-Side. Perhaps that's because the bar's tv is often tuned to soothing fare. Like Dawn of the Dead. Nothing beats watching a bloody zombie baby squeeze out of a zombie vagina after a hard day's work.
Post-11 p.m., the bar shifts debauched gears. The crowd, by now a bit lighter in the wallet, is reluctant to buy a Brooklyn Lager for a still-reasonable four bucks. Everyone starts double-fisting eight-ounce Budweiser cans ($3 for two) or strolls down what my friend Dan dubs Bad-Idea Lane: the five-dollar whiskey-and-Rheingold deal.
It seems innocuous enough, offered on a diner placard that could be altered to advertise cheeseburgers. Early in the night, the deal is easily avoided. After all, who dreams of drinking Jim Beam's poorer cousin, Bellows? It doubles as a carburetor degreaser.
Yet soon enough, Bad-Idea Lane seems like a popular place to call home-Harlap estimates that 60 percent of the patrons down the shot-and-beer special.
I always stumble into B-Side around 2 a.m., when the prospect of wasting my last $10 on whiskey is right up there with Crystal Pepsi-good in theory, bad in execution. I slap a sweaty five on the bar. The bartender rewards me with liquid masochism. I accept it like a good boy and, if the money permits, repeat. That's when I become the Robot.
Instead of my limbs going loosey-goosey, they tighten up. My movements condense and contract, becoming angular, not fluid.
"It's like some mad, hiphop-loving scientist has programmed you," Adrianne says. Demonstrating, she chops her arms like she's either C-3PO or a C-level kung fu actor. "Nothing good happens at B-Side after midnight."
I love B-Side for that very reason. It welcomes you when you're feeling fuck-all, when the girlfriend has ditched you and the boyfriend's a bastard, and the only thing certain is that, after downing one more shot, you're going to feel something, for better or, likely, worse.