Great Lakes
284 Fifth Avenue (1st St.)
718-499-3710
My pimply years were spent in southwestern Ohio (aka A-hia), where I killed Midwestern ennui by shotgunning Busch Light and listening to Elliott Smith. Old habits cross state boundaries. Ten years later, I'm still drinking myself into a domestic-beer personality, awkwardly rocking out to forlorn songs sung by lily-livered men.
In other words, a case-study Great Lakes experience.
The Midwestern cachet of Park Slope's Great Lakes is minimal: a map of those monstrous lagoons does not a theme make. Instead, Lakes' calling card is its jukebox, otherwise known as HOLY SHIT, I'M LISTENING TO MY CHILDHOOD.
Last Saturday night was a trip down Angst Lane.
I step inside the tin-ceilinged bar, order a three-dollar Rheingold bottle and accompany the jukebox's chorus: "Say it ain't soooooooooooooooo. Your drug is a heartbreaker?" Weezer. A seventeen-years-old flashback: I'm in Jason Law's carpeted living room, drinking his dad's Budweiser out of a baby-sized mug and pogoing about with a teen's there's-no-tomorrow energy.
I could learn to love these Lakes.
No one else loves my strangled Chihuahua voice. After turning two heads too many, I shut up and take a seat. I wait for tardy friends by examining the candle-lit room: the standing- room-only crowd consists of lesbians and half-hearted hipsters, some modeling enough facial scruff to approximate an East Village mise en scène. Yet this is a local crowd; most of the shit-faced stumble home sans cab or train. But not before spending all their crumpled dollars on the jukebox's sing-along anthems.
Now, jukes are partly powered by serendipity. You're cycling through the Bananarama sea when-SHAZAM!-your song pops up like a lighthouse, eager to illuminate the evening. That's the money shot. As I start examining Great Lakes' collection, I see enough money shots to fill a snuff film.
Jawbreaker. Liz Phair. Elastica. That Dog. The Descendents. It's my 1996 musical menu. Lest you think the selection is the province of wrinkling indie rockers, 2005 is accounted for with current CMJ zeitgeist Arcade Fire. Options even include homemade mix CDs with titles like "American Ear Cancer" and "I Will Push You Down a Beautiful Flight of Stairs." What a killer name for a band. Or a homicidal romantic.
"Don't you ever stop counting?" my girlfriend Adrianne says, sneaking up behind me and interrupting my Rimbaud slasher fantasies. She grabs my wrist and shakes her head.
I'm plagued by a minor case of OCD. This usually manifests itself in 2 a.m. toilet-scrubbing missions. In the musical context, I turn my fingers into a beat-counting metronome. The Postal Service is currently getting a two-digit air tap.
"It's better than option B," I say, reminding Adrianne of my other tick: pumping my pelvis in time to saccharine teen pop.
She shakes her head and sends me to the bar to grab a four-dollar Sierra Nevada pint. Soon after, the rest of our friends pile inside. We commandeer a rear table, near the unisex bathrooms. Beers disappear. More are ordered. Blasé NYC conversation about jobs and rent is replaced by musical one-upsmanship.
"Is this Papa M?" José asks, nursing a Brooklyn Lager.
"No," Dan says, crooking his ear toward the ceiling speakers, "that's?" He pauses like a man judging the wind with a wet finger. "That's Blonde Redhead."
José nods sagely while I count the beat beneath the table. The evening progresses like bar evenings do: more booze, louder conversation. Just more of it.
The night's soundtrack blares at a volume two notches below ear-bleeding. This forces customers to shout a teensy bit to hammer home points about, say, an Album Leaf song, but not so loud where throats turn hoarse and conversation becomes untenable.
"It's exactly what we did at my restaurant," my friend Sara says, chiming in. "When we'd turn the music up extra loud, people thought they were having a great time. People bought more drinks."
By now, the clock reads 2 a.m. The room is still packed like a bag of popcorn. Most fists remain filled with beer. Massive Attack's trip-hop bass line begins. It's languid and libidinous, a counterpoint to someone's Tom Waits downers. Sexy music. I'm well lubricated, enough so that I stand up and start thrusting my hips. Adrianne starts to say something but, for once, it won't be about my compulsions matching the wrong beat.