17th
“You’re just a bunch of drug addicts / screwing up what we call fun”
I went to the new “pub” tonight that just opened by my house— not naming names in case the owners google it and come after me— and sadly left feeling like I don’t really want to go back. I’ll allow that part of this was because I read a post about it on a local “neighborhood blog” before I left the house and didn’t like what I saw there. But there was also more to it than that. For one thing, it was full of people who looked like they’d been waiting forever for a new bar to open up in the neighborhood so they could get in on the ground floor and become regulars there.
That blog post: it was partly just a rundown of the specs (“They’ll have 16 beers on tap, including their own brew,” “If you look closely at some of the walls, you can just make out the text of old newspapers that papered the walls at some point during the building’s history”) and partly an interview with the owners, and it was the interview that bothered me. Specifically, the part where they say that the food they’ll be serving will be, “Comfort food; no pretense, just good home style cooking.” Also: “Straightforward appetizers.” In this I hear a very grating note of superiority, since the idea is basically: “straightforward and comfortable things are good and it’s bad to be pretentious and life was so much better when we all lived at home with our mothers who cooked for us.”
Most of the comments that followed the original post were inoffensive if a little bizarre (I’m used to commenters being perplexing crazy people but these ones in particular live in my neighborhood!), but one regrettably stuck in my mind and possibly went some way towards poisoning my impression of the place:
I am so freaking stoked about a regular bar being in the area. I’ve lived here for a year now and have always had to travel to other areas of Bklyn to have a beer in a ‘pub’. Our area is great but all we have is shi-shi places to drink […] Thank you [REDACTED] for helping the area out with a ‘bar’ bar and not a faux bar.
That was what I thought about as I looked around at the deliberately faded wooden sign above the bar, the cinematically jovial and friendly bartender, and the fidgety owner standing around ambiently and imploring one of the skinny waitresses to “Come on just eat a burger, what’s it gonna do kill ya?”
I don’t know what it is I’m preemptively bristling at. Maybe just the idea of someone walking into this place and deciding happily that it’s exactly the kind of authentic, no-bullshit joint our “nabe” needs. Because, who the fuck made that person boss? Yuppies have feelings too, real talk.
