So the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is supposedly the biggest drinking night of the year. Where is all this drinking happening? In people's hometowns? At awkward parties hosted by some dude who was on the football team in high school? In airports?
Well, I'm not going anywhere for Thanksgiving. I'm lucky enough to have an aunt and uncle who live on Broadway, right on NYU's campus. So, instead of battling an airport and staying on a couch somewhere, I just wake up around noon and take the L train to Union Square. This allows me to stay in Brooklyn for the majority of the weekend, which is pretty much ideal for me. I love Brooklyn over holiday weekends. Most people are gone and there's this weird sense of solidarity among the people who are still around.
But anyway, last night I got home from work and really had no idea what to do. Sure, I have plenty of plans for actual Thanksgiving (my aunt and uncle's house, NoiseGiving at Theresa's place) but I had no idea where the fun was last night.
I did what I always do in those situations: text blast. It seemed that most people were as clueless as I was... or out of town... losers. But, as he often does, my buddy Kip (from the awesome band The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart) came through and let me know about the night's haps.
Now let me start off by saying that if I was better at reading the Internet I would have been well aware that this party was happening... but I didn't, so that's my bad. The party in question was the Pitchfork 500 release party at The Gutter. Once I did a little research on said shindig, I texted Theresa and assured her that this was the obvious choice for our night.
The Gutter is on N 14th St between Berry and Wythe and is a bar with an actual bowling alley inside. I had never been there.
The Gutter was cool. It has lots of seating but there's also a lot of room to stand and flirt. They have a pool table and hockey-foosball type table and weird Union Pool style bathrooms. The bartender was tall and adorable and had really great clear plastic frames. I love love love dudes with glasses.
What I didn't like: It has a bit of a Barcade-type beer list. All the beers were like microbrews or some shit and they didn't have any dirt cheap can or bottle option. Now, I understand that bars like to be classy and hip and people like nice beers, but there are also people like me who just want to chill with a fucking Bud Light. The good news is, they offer pitchers, which is a rare thing around here, and last night I was more in the mood for whiskey anyway. Well drinks are $6, which is fine, I guess, though The Gutter's surely not a bargain bar.
But I had fun. The DJ was playing selections from the Pitchfork 500. Translation: The 500 songs that Pitchfork decided were the best songs "from punk to present". This claim gave everyone something to talk about. Before I went to the party I promised myself "I will NOT talk about music while I'm there and be a pretentious asshole", but of course that was a lofty goal. It didn't take long before I was rolling my eyes and bitching about a song that was obviously not one of the best.
But that's what we do in Brooklyn, right?
