Drink Your Greens

Habana Outpost

755-757 Fulton St. (South Portland Ave.), Fort Greene, Brooklyn

718-230-8238

Moving to New York City five years ago effectively neutered my green leanings. After all, this is the land of paper bags to carry toilet paper and Styrofoam takeout Chinese containers fluttering through streets like wayward leaves. My save-the-planet mission begins-and ends-with leaving empty beer bottles outside for neighborhood bums to recycle.

However, there is a way to give inebriation an earth-friendlier spin, namely by imbibing at Habana Outpost. Opened in late May, the Fort Greene parking lot-cum-restaurant-cum-bar is the brainchild of Sean Meenan, owner of Soho celeb haunt Café Habana. For his Brooklyn rendition, he's scrapped slumming glitterati and rigged his venture with a green heart: solar power, biodegradable cups, recycled soda bottle swings.

Is this Brooklyn or Berkeley?

"We're trying to make this project as environmentally sustainable as possible," explains Atom (pronounced Adam) Cianfarani, Habana Outpost's green consultant (as well as a designer specializing in clothes fashioned from recycled bike inner tubes). "Our solar cells could be powering your neighbor's fridge," she adds.

To such green touches, I say huzzah. But environmental sustainability does not always equal excitement. Case in point: my college-era keggers, which were invariably thrown by dreadlocked ideologues determined to raise awareness about some woods terminally threatened by burly loggers. Nothing says "buzz kill" like discussing erosion. However, after a summer spent patronizing Habana Outpost, I can now say that environmentalism and alcohol can indeed make fine bedfellows.

Located on a quiet corner in tree-lined, brownstone Brooklyn above the grumbling C train, Habana Outpost is, elementally, a fenced-in parking lot and brick-walled ex-video store. The spare set-up is fleshed out by water fountains, indoor murals (including a reproduction of famed graffiti artist Lee Quinones' 1978 throw-up, "Howard the Duck"), a black-and-white photo booth and a former postal truck rigged with a kitchen and griddle to pump out inexpensive tortas, hot dogs and corn on the cob.

"We wanted to make a place where the whole family could grab an affordable meal," explains Cianfarani.

Sure, early in the evening the stroller set rolls deep (doubly so on the weekends, when the Outpost hosts a daytime bazaar featuring local artisans and up-and-coming designers), but the real action heats up when the sun takes a siesta. A cross-cultural mix of 20- and 30-somethings turn the Outpost into a hip picnic, a more worldly Gowanus Yacht Club.

I love visiting the Outpost on Thursday or Friday night (which is a good thing, for it's only open Thursday through Sunday until midnight) and staking claim to a gigantic blue picnic table. It is here that I begin-and often end-my evening. For what more do I need? Brain-freezing slushie margaritas run a respectable $6.50. Glasses of frosty, keg-pumped Brooklyn Lager are $2.50 (and served inside a biodegradable cup made of corn plastic). Crispy Cubanos ($7), sweet plantains ($3) and Mexican corn ($2, topped with cheese, mayo and spiciness) all merit consumption. Bring a twenty and you can sate yourself like a Roman emperor perched over a vomitorium.

"No, no, just one drink," I'll tell my friends, hopping on my bike and pedaling to the bar with fine intentions. Next thing I know, my pockets are overflowing with black-and-white photo booth pics ($3) and empty corn cups are stacked in a perfect pyramid. It may not be how I envisioned my evening, but I'm not nagged by regret.

Downsides? Long lines can frazzle the bar staff, especially if the keg gets kicked or cold Corona bottles ($4) run out. On busy nights, food can take north of 30 minutes to arrive. There are no waitresses, so you have to order and retrieve food and drink (though this is a positive, as a tip-hungry server never nags you to order another drink). When midnight hits, the Outpost puts the kibosh on the Nina Simone, reggae and suitably tropical tunes-you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. And if every patio tables is filled (not a stretch on a bustling weekend night), well, you better enjoy standing or sitting in the stuffy indoors.

All in all, though, these are minor trifles. It saddens me that the Outpost will close on Halloween for the winter. But it's early September now, which means you still have a couple months to delude yourself with the notion that, with each beer, you're making the world a better place.