Monday, December 9, 2013

Thrillist: Eight Best Dive Bars in New York

Before posting this, I asked myself: is this really worth it?

I am only doing it as sort of a joke, and because it is supposedly the best of these kind of places..

These are the 8 best dive bars in NYC

Published on 12/8/2013

By Andrew Zimmer

New York

169 Bar

As you're probably well aware of by now, December 21st is ~~English pirate Calico Jack's birthday!~~ the longest night of the year -- 15 straight hours of nothing but darkness. We like to call it the Best Night of Your Life, because that's exactly what it's gonna be if you spend it at the city's best Thrillist-approved happy hour spots, cocktail bars, party dinner places, and more. Check out our picks for NYC's best dive bars below, and make sure to fully map out a perfect evening with our itinerary builder, because doing so and tweeting it out to your friends could score you $1000 to spend on the Best Night of Your Life.
169 Bar
Lower East Side
Go-go dancers. Dumplings. A zebra-skinned pool table. Old-ass TVs that play James Bond movies on silent. 169, we freaking salute you.

Flickr/Eden, Janine and Jim

7B
Alphabet City
Also known as Vazacs Horseshoe Bar, this place is perhaps most famous for its role in Crocodile Dundee as the fictional "dive bar", but its tall boys, Buck Hunter, metal jukebox, and permanent fresh paint-smell in the bathroom make it a pretty great one in real life, too.

Botanica
Nolita
Somehow less dirty than it looks (maybe?), this subterranean standby's got a hodgepodge of what looks like old living room furniture, where you can sit and soak in the occasional DJ, Ginger Yum Yum, or cheap beer.

The Levee
Williamsburg
Buck Hunter, table games, a pool table, shot and beer specials -- even with all the activities, this place can get pretty hazy pretty fast... probably because we just called shot and a beer specials "activities".

Planet Rose
East Village
Standing on a zebra skin couch singing Def Leppard while lasers blast all over the room is about as awesomely divey as karaoke gets.

Two-Bit's Retro Arcade
Lower East Side
With wine, nice beer, and video games, this place teeters on the edge of divyness, but it remains solidly there (no, thank you, Colt 45).

Yelp/Ross I.

Doc Holliday's
East Village
Loosely country-themed, this no-frills, wooden-boothed spot is the kind of place where it's easy to get down to business.

Brooklyn Ice House

Brooklyn Ice House
Red Hook
Being almost-impossible to get to is part of the draw at this biker-steezed booze-and-BBQ spot with cheap-ass drinks and better-than-they-need-to-be-or-that-you-would-ever-expect eats.