October 2019 – various locations in Brooklyn and the East Village, New York
I’ve recently just returned from 5 days in New York. I did my standard research and was really excited to find there are about 15 bars that come up when searching for metal bars.
Most of the bars fall into 3 geographic clusters and are really close together within those clusters, so it was pretty easy to hit most of them just for a quick drink at each.
I’m disappointed to report that overall they were all a bit of a letdown. I don’t feel that all of them deserve a record of their own, so I have grouped some together by theme. I will be discussing them from worst to best.
First up, we have the hipster bars. Just throwing this out there, almost all of these New York bars could be classified as hipster bars. But these ones really stood out as being so.
Arlene’s Grocery and Bowery Electric were both on our self guided East Village pub crawl.
Arlene’s was stop number 3. There is a live venue on one side, and a pub on the other. I suspect that the reason this came up in the search is the live venue. Presumably they get metal bands playing there, and this overflows to the pub on those nights. The closest thing we heard to metal was the Red Hot Chili Peppers, so yeah, not close at all.
We didn’t go to the show that was on so I didn’t get a look at the live venue, but there was lots of brick and wood and, my favourite, fairy lights in the pub. I was mostly taking photos of cool graffiti or art, like this little guy below, and forgot to take any of the bar, so I have to use my Untappd photos again. One these days I’ll learn.
One thing I have been remembering to do is to bring my phone to the bathroom. There always seems to be some cool graffiti (especially in New York) or something of interest in there. Strange, but true.
The beer selection however was great, lots of local craft and even a house beer.
Bowery electric was scheduled to be the last stop on the East Village pub crawl. As we walked up to it we heard hip hop and just decided to give it a miss. I peeked in and it looked similar to Arlene’s, so into the hipster category it goes.
Rocka Rolla is in Williamsburg in Brooklyn. At first glance they fall into the dive bar category, but I don’t think they belong there. Everything about it looked cool, but fell short and it just seemed like they were trying too hard.
There had lots of retro beer signs and menu boards. Cool, right? But I’m pretty sure they were all ordered online. That’s hipster, not divey.
The music, while not strictly metal, was pretty good overall. We heard ACDC, Motley Crue, Misfits and also the Smiths. Sadly, I think they would all be considered classic rock these days?
The beer selection was a mix between your basic macros and some craft. The biggest selling feature was the goblet/chalice it is served in. It doesn’t take a lot to entertain me, and they were pretty fun to drink out of.
Overall this bar wasn’t bad and, despite the downsides I’ve listed, we might have stuck around for a second drink, but for one deal breaker. The completely, utterly, absolutely shite service. I can deal with bad service, and it takes a lot to really piss me off. But this was so over the top bad. At one point we had 2 empty beers and 2 bartenders standing directly in front of us talking, while we tried to make eye contact for several minutes. It was so blatantly rude that we thought they were actually trying to get us to leave. Well, we were happy to oblige.
Next up on our New York journey, the Dive Bars!
Fairy Lights and Vines 