Inside MILANO'S
NEW YORK'S QUENTISENTIAL DIVE BAR
Milano’s Bar, 51 Houston, near Mott Street
Milano’s Bar, which opened in 1923, is the most successful of its predecessors. (Bars have been on the site since the 1880s.) Milano’s has been hailed—and no doubt, toasted—as being one of New York’s best old-school dive bars. Walking by the bar on the way home from a friend’s art opening one night, I spied this gentleman smoking a cigarette, looking classically old-school himself. Listening as I asked if I might take his picture, I handed him a small photo I happened to have on me showing a group of NYC police officers I had photographed a few months ago. He nodded, folded the photo twice, and put it in his pocket. Raymond grew up on Lower East Side. Having been drafted into the Vietnam War, he’s been a window washer ever since. He hates how rich people moved into the neighborhood, making all the rents skyrocket. Raymond was very forthright about an extremely uncomfortable situation with his mother-in-law. Suffice it to say that she is no longer his mother-in-law as he is no longer married. “Don’t get me wrong. She was a good-looking woman. But it was a no-win situation.” Apparently everyone always tells him he looks like Jerry Orbach, which drives him nuts. (Humorously, though, he was the one who brought it up to me.) Raymond said that Orbach was originally a song and dance man, that he played in “The Fantastiks” just down the road when he was starting out, and that he requested his eyes be donated when he died. Famous neighbors and happenings within a couple of city blocks of the bar): •Nikola Tesla’s first lab •Harry Connick Jr. • David Bowie (who, it sadly happened, died on the night that this photo was taken) •LL Cool J •Jean-Michel Basquiat •Pivotal baptism scene from “The Godfather” in Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, starring Al Pacino as Michael Corleone •"The Godfather III” scene featuring Joe Mantegna as Joey Zasa, a Cadillac, and the Virgin Mary Signs.
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The BAR
At BLUE & GOLD
BLUE & GOLD BAR ... 79 East 7th Street, East Village, NY NY
Everybody's favorite East Village dive pulls in a regular crowd of college kids, bikers, local senior citizens and random eccentrics—like the long-haired guy whose only sound is a high-pitched shriek. Mixed drinks run for as little as four dollars, but that means the pretty Ukrainian owner will have to head to the fridge in the back room for juice, and you might be out of luck with ice. Stay long enough to play pool on the ratty table and mine the juke's selection of hits from the '60s to the '80s. But if at all possible, use the bathroom elsewhere—don't say we didn't warn you. — Kenneth H. Hyman
ExtraIn addition to black-and-white photographs documenting the bar's history, Blue & Gold's walls are decorated with fading pictures of European men blowing long Alphorns.
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The POOL TABLE at BLUE & GOLD
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BLUE & GOLD
East 7th Street, EAST VILLAGE
NY NY
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Lucy's
Formerly Blanche's
"Hasn't lost any of its former Dive Bar Charm with the Name Change."
LUCY'S 135 Avenue A ... East Village, NY NY
"Still a Classic East Village Dive Bar."
If this East Village mainstay looks like a film-worthy drown-your-sorrows dive, right down to the Miller Lite lamps illuminating the two pool tables, it might be because a few movies have been shot here. Their posters hang on the mahogany walls along with red fluorescent tube lights, round mirrors, porcelain knick knacks, and a Polish flag representing the eponymous owner's home country. Boufanted babushka Lucy has been working the bar ever since the late 70s when Lucy's was Blanche's was still on St. Mark's. Most nights she can still be found cuing up the jukebox and winking and grinning while she pours drinks heavy. The beer selection is larger than the cafeteria tables and the dropped panel ceilings would imply, and somehow the two well-worn pool tables in the back don't draw knuckleheads. (You can thank nearby Doc Holliday's for that.) Toward the end of the week, the place can get packed with weekend warriors drawn by the neon signs but the vibe remains amicable and the jukebox (of old new wave) is never too loud to prevent you from meeting a neighbor.
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LUCY'S on Avenue A
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The HORSESHOE BAR
aka 7B
Corner of East 7th Street and AVenue B in The EAST VILLAGE
"A CLASSIC EAST VILLAGE DIVE BAR, serving Cheap Drinks and $4 BEERS. It's refreshing in this day and age with rediculously priced Cocktails at $16 $17 and up. In places like 7B , BLUE & GOLD BAR, and MILANO'S, you can still go and have 3 Beers with your friends and not have to spend a Small Fortune for the pleasure."
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The Famous HORSESHOE BAR at 7B
Vazac 7B
Where You Can Still get a $4 BEER
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The BIG LEBOWSKI COOKBOOK
ABIDE in IT !
NEW YORK & The $3 PBR Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer
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PABST BLUE RIBBON BEER
New York & The $3 PBR
"IT STILL EXISTS" !!!! 2022
New York and the $3.00 PBR, Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer has been a God-Send to many New Yorkers. As you all know, the US Economy has been in the Shitter for the past 5 years or so.
Many people are out of work, and many who are working, are taking home Half-as-Much Money or more of what they used to make. People have had to buckle down and give up or curb many things they enjoyed previous to the current state of our economy, which is in almost a Depression Era State.
Yes, everybody says that we are not in a Depression, we're in a recession. Those are the Rich and Well-Off, The 1%-ers talking. To many, the state of our Union and their feelings are of Depression.
So, because of the Terrible State of our Economy you have given up eating out 3 times a week, you buy less clothes, spend less on Entertainment and any number of things. You haven't had a vacation in the past two years, maybe more. You've given up a lot. We all have.
Now when it comes to socializing, going out for a few Beers or Cocktails with some friends, you've had to cut back on that too. But hey, you gotta draw a line somewhere, and everyone is entitled to a few drinks to unwind every now and then, and to be with friends. Yes times are bad, people are hurting, you need your friends more than ever. And having a few Beers or Drinks is one of the most common adult ways to do so. It's natural and part of everyday life. You should be able to have two or three drinks or beers and not have to spend a small fortune doing so. You should be able to have 2 beers for about $10 including tip, and about $16 for tow drinks including tip. That's reasonable. That's what most people pay around America, and even less. But we don't live in America, we live in the greatest City in The World, New York, and Cocktails and Beers here can be oh-so-dear.
"Expensive!" Expensive as Hell, "Ridiculously Expensive." It's absurd and outrageous, with many places thinking it's normal and OK to charge $16.00 or more for a measly little Cocktail made by a friggin so-called "Mixologist." Ha!
It's not OK, what's a person to do? So yes, we live in New York, and having a couple cocktails here can be a costly undertaking.. What is a Poor Working Guy or Working Girl to do??? Well Boys and Girls, let's Thank God for that great thing of wonder and the Bars and establishments who so graciously and kindly serve it, The $3.00 PBR, That's right, a $3.oo Beer in The Land of The Over-Priced $16.00 Cocktail, Manhattan, New York, NY..... It's quite Sad, Greedy too, not to mention "Ridiculous Ludicrous and Insane."
Yes, Thank God and let's thank the Kind-Hearted proprietors who serve $3.00 PBR'S or any Beer for just $3 or $4 in a New York Bar. You are doing your fellow man a public service and we thank you for that. Whoever you are, you are to be commended, and Shame-On-You, all those places that serve $14 PLUS Cocktails. "RIP-OFF" !!! Wish the masses would Boycott these places and patronize places like Blue & Gold Bar, 7B, and anyplace who has a heart. Bars that serve 3 and 4 Dollar Beers.
I just have to say, it's great to go to a place like Blue and Gold Bar on East 7th Street and know that you can have 3 or 4 Beers for just $12 to $16, accounting for a Buck a Pop for the Barkeep. Now that's pretty good. I have had the best times hanging at Blue & Gold with some friends. You sit at the Bar or get into a nice comfy booth, drink your Beers ($3 PBR'S), relax, listen to the Music, Chit Chat, and just enjoy, and it's not going to cost you The Shirt Off Your Back.
Yes, you can have 4 Beers, tip included for the price of 1 Rip-Off Drink at one of those Rip-Off Joints. And if you are Dumb enough to have four drinks in one of those places, guess what it's going to cost you? About $75 my friend.
Well, do the Math, and if you can afford $75 for only 4 drinks, God Bless You. And if you can't, you've got an alternative. Right, your local $3.00 PBR Joint. They're a God-Send.
Copyright 2008 Daniel Bellino Zwicke
NEW YORK'S BEST DIVE BARS
DIVE BAR UPDATE - Summer 2022
PLACES To GET A $3.00 PBR in NEW YORK
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SOPHIE'S
505 East 5th Street NY NY
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A talented Playboy staff writer once defined a dive bar as a “church for down-and-outers and those who romanticize them, a rare place where high and low rub elbows—bums and poets, thieves and slumming celebrities. It’s a place that wears its history proudly.”
A truer description of the Lower East Side watering hole Sophie’s could not have been written. On East 5th Street in Alphabet City, Sophie’s is like a shout out to a time now past, back when the Lower East Side was the denizen of punks and artists, before gentrification set in with its high end shops, expensive hairstylists, and upscale wine shops. Though Jeff Bridges and Anthony Bourdain have both been sighted at Sophie’s, you still have to pass a group of junkies spacing out on cardboard planks to get to the joint, which bears no sign.
On SOPHIE'S
Anthony Bourdain put it succinctly when he visited Sophie’s in 2009. “I don’t want no wide screens, high-fiving white guys, no fauxhawks or gel heads or hot chicks with douchebags,” he said. “I don’t want anything on the jukebox that will distract an old gentleman such as myself from drinking the heart right out of the afternoon if I should choose to do so … Where can a guy get a drink when the last gin mill closes down, when there’s nothing left but the fern bar or the lounge, when the barkeep has been replaced by a mixologist?”
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BLUE & GOLD BAR
BLUE & GOLD BAR in the East Village, on East 7th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues. Blue & Gold has long been a favorite of mine ever since I lived in the East Village from 1982 to 1994. It's just a cool ol normal old style bar with a pool table, standard 50's 60's Bar Decor, and Best-of-All $3.oo PBR'S and $6.00 Cocktails. I love it.
7B
aka "HORSESHOE BAR"
7B a.k.a. The Horseshoe Bar, also in the East Village, a bastion of cheap and fare prices in Manhattan and Land of The $3.00 PBR and other $3 and $4 Beers. 7B is located on the corner of Avenue B at 7th Street, hence the name "7B" ... The nickname Horseshoe Bar comes from the shape and dimensions of the bar, "Horseshoe Shaped." The bar has been the setting of numerous movie shoots, including the scene in Godfather II when Frankie Pantangeli (Frankie 5 Angels) goes to this bar for a meeting with the Rosato Brothers, and Danny Aiello raps a Piano-Wire around his neck.
A scene from the movie starring Paul Hogan as Crocodile Dundee and other movieswere shot here as well .... But Best of all, at 7B they serve $3.00 Beers, cheap drinks, and they have a photo and sell Potato Chips and Pretzels which practically no bars in Manhattan ever do any more. And this is a good thing when you get the munchies from the Beer. Glory Hallelujah, thank God for 7B ..
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AMERICA'S FAVORITE FOOD
And SECRET RECIPES
BURGERS TACOS BURRITOS
SOUP SANDWICHES BBQ
And MORE ...
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LUCY
"LUCY'S BAR"
135 AVENUE A NY NY
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Lucy’s Bar is the most aptly named bar in New York. For Lucy—the quiet and small and sweetly proper Polish owner with the well-coifed gray hair and floral blouses—is who you’ll see when you go there, and Lucy is the one who will serve you. If there are other employees, they’ve hidden themselves somewhere in the back.
Though Lucy’s is undeniably a dive (and one of the last in the neighborhood), it feels more like your aunt’s aging rec room, a place where you’d never think of disrespecting the house’s hospitality. It’s also one of the last vestiges of the Polish community that was once made up a significant part of the East Village’s character.
Ludwika “Lucy” Mickevicius moved from Poland to New York in the late 1970s and soon got a job at Blanche’s, a bar on St. Mark’s Place run by another Polish woman. She became such a fixture that people began to think of the bar as Lucy’s, and, when Blanche retired, she sold the place—by then located on Avenue A—to her bartender.
Lucy’s life doesn’t range much further than the twin poles of her joint and Poland, which she visits regularly, shutting up the tavern at a moment’s notice and disappearing for weeks at a time. Most nights, she stations herself at the far end of the bar near the ancient cash register. (It’s cash only here.) One recent evening, the Halloween balloons hadn’t yet been taken down. Then again, assorted Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations were already out. Maybe none of the decorations are ever packed up?
Lucy doesn’t budge much behind the bar, but she keeps herself busy for a woman in her mid-70s. She will draw you a pint or a glass of tequila. And, if she likes you, she might pour you a shot of żubrówka, a Polish bison grass vodka, on the house. When the place gets stuffy, she’ll swing open the door to let some fresh Avenue A air in; just as quickly, she’ll close it if it gets chilly.
The clientele ranges from a less-intense sort of downtown hipster, who exchange a few friendly words with Lucy—who, even all these years later, still speaks in broken, accented English—and then retire to their personal conversations, to old Polish regulars. In fact, on another recent night, a young couple came in to show Lucy their young child. All four spoke entirely in Polish and a delighted Lucy let the little scamp climb atop the pool table. As they left, she handed the kid one of the old Halloween balloons. For those few minutes, Lucy’s was a family bar.
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RUDY'S
Hell’s Kitchen
Rudy’s is an institution, reportedly granted one of the first liquor licenses after Prohibition was repealed in 1933. The All-American special, a shot of Seagram’s whiskey and a pint of Rudy’s Blonde Ale, runs a Lincoln, flat. (The deal formerly known as the Stimulus Package came about in 2008, when a different liquor company was pushing a deal.) Pitchers cost $8 and hot dogs are free. “You could walk in with $10, get a pitcher, which is 4 pints, and get a meal of a couple hot dogs while also tipping your bartender,” says Danny Dee, Rudy’s manager since the ‘90s. “That’s completely impossible at any other bar.”
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169 BAR
Lower East Side
If Clockwork’s happy hour special seems too good to be true, you’ve got a little good old fashioned neighborhood competition to thank. Located right around the corner, 169 has been in operation since 1916. And its 11:30am-7:30pm HH is among the best in the city. $3 will get you an “Old Man Can/Bottle” of beer (PBR, Carling Black Label, Schaefer, Genesee Cream, High Life/Miller Lite) and any well shot. Subtly New Orleanian environs (window shutters look like they’re fresh off a Creole cottage; beads are strung here and there; there’s crawfish on the menu) evoke genuine good times.
2022 and You Can Still GET a $3 PBR
LYS MYYKTA aka "The SLY FOX
142 2nd Avenue, New York NY - The EAST VILLAGE
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LYSMYKTA
Lysmykta, aka "THE SLY FOX" is a Ukranian Bar in a Ukranian neighborhood in
New York's East Village. There's a Ukranian Restaurant in the back, serving delicious Ukranian Food and very reasonable prices. Yes this is thee main neighborhood of Ukranian peoples in New York City. The restaurants great, and any bar that serves $3 PBR Beer is great in my book too.
If you can go some place for drinks (beers), to hang and chit-chat and have 3 Beers, and not have to spend more than $15, that's a place for me. You shouldn't have to pay $40 plus for just 2 drinks (or $60 for 3). People who don't make quite so much money as Lawyers, Wall Street Guys and whoever, should be able to afford to go for 2 or 3 drinks and not spend an "Arm and a Leg" to do it.
The SLY FOX is a place where you can do that, and thank God we have them, and a few other joints that we can do so.
LUCKY'S BAR
168 Avenue "A" New York NY , East Village
Get $3 PBRs at LUCKY'S BAR
168 AVENUE "A" NY NY
EAST VILLAGE
HOTELS
NEW YORK - WORLDWIDE
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JOHNSON'S BAR
168 RIVINGTON STREET, LES NEW YOIRK NY
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$2 PBRs
PABST BLUE RIBBON BEER
Johnson's Bar
NY NY
MORE PLACES to GET $3 PBRs
CATS SPORTS BAR - 96 GREENWICH STREET at RECTOR NY NY $3 PBRs
WALTER'S BAR - 389 8th Avenue Near 32nd Street and MADISON SQUARE GARDEN ..
$3PBR DOC HOLIDAY'S 141 AVENUE "A" East Village NY NY - $2 PBRs
MILANO'S
51 EAST HOUSTON STREET
NEW YORK NY
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One of the last authentic old-school bars in NYC. How old-school? Milano's opened in 1880, and maintains a no-frills comfortably old-fashioned atmosphere.
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The SPRING LOUNGE
aka SHARK BAR
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45 SPRING STREET NEW YORK NY
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The SHARK BAR
SPRING STREET at MOTT
Back in the day, when it was an ITALIAN NEIGHBORHOOD here.
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Where it Got its NICKNAME "SHARK BAR"
Nobody "In The Know" calls it Spring Lounge, only Green Newcomers to Downtown New York would ever call it SPRING LOUNGE. For years it was a neighborhood "Shot & Beer" Joint. It became treny about 20 years ago (1999)
Those "In The Know" like me, only ever call it "The Shark Bar" ... It got this name from
the fake SHARK hanging over the bar, and that's that!
You can't get $3 Beers here, but we incuded it anyway. And although it's a Trendy so-called Hipster Bar, those of us Old Timers who still call it The Shark Bar, it still has a special place in our hearts.
Basta !
GOT ANY KAHLUA ?
The BIG LEBOWSKI COOKBOOK
Daniel Zwicke
AMAZON.com
The KRAMER
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