east village idiot

Boozin at… The Place with the New Bar Smell

December 7, 2007 – 12:13 pm

Just a few months ago, 12th Street Ale House (12th St. at 2nd Ave.) was an old gay bar that played porn on TV screens that you could actually see through the windows… it was a friendly neighborhood place, I’m sure. These days, the only thing playing on their five TV screens are any and every sport imaginable. Given the place’s history, the owners really wanted to strip it down and start from scratch. In a matter of a couple of weeks, they brought in a new bar, new furniture, and a new hardwood floor. They turned the place around really quickly.

When I walked in on Wednesday night, I experienced something I had never experienced before at a bar: new bar smell. The bar smelled like fresh sawdust - a bit like a lumber yard. In fact, it actually smelled a lot like Home Depot. I was expecting the bartenders to be wearing orange aprons and directing me to the tool department.

Actually, they’re supposed to be bringing a beer pong table into the place soon, so come the start of NYU’s spring semester, the bar will have a “tool department.” Once that thing’s in and pitchers of beer are flowing to the frat-set, the new bar smell will fade away quickly. But if you go this weekend, you can enjoy new bar smell while it lasts, as well as their selection of 12 beers on draft - a solid list, mostly European imports, but nothing too exciting or extraordinary.

A side note: when did $6 for beer become the gold standard in the East Village? It’s not just the new bars doing it, but the older bars’ prices are creeping up, too. I can buy a cheap 6-pack at a bodega for the same price, take it home, and not deal with the Bridge-and-Tunnel crowd that invades this neighborhood every weekend.

Review, in haiku:
Now: a decent place
for beer. Next month: probably
Mobbed with Douchebags. Sad.

(12th Street and 2nd Avenue, Northwest Corner)