Category Archives: Bar Scrawl

Supporting Bar Scrawl

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Hi folks! As the comic says, I’m asking for a little help! If you want to support Bar Scrawl, you can do so by clicking through to my Patreon page! It’s like a voluntary subscription service: the comic is always going to be free, but if you sign up for a small monthly donation, you can help it going! Anyone who signs up for $6 a month or more (the cost of a pint of beer!) also gets behind-the-scenes extras – unused sketches, process drawings, and things that I couldn’t fit into the strip.

If you can’t afford it, don’t worry! But if you know someone who might like Bar Scrawl as much as you do, please let them know about it!

More details over here at www.patreon.com/barscrawl. Check it out! Thanks!

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The Adirondack

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The Adirondack. 1241 Prospect Ave. at Reeve Place in Windsor Terrace. F/G train to Fort Hamilton Parkway. (718) 871–0100. Open Mon–Thu, 3 pm–2 am; Fri, 3 pm–4 am; Sat, noon–4 am; Sun, noon–2 am.

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Brookvin

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Brookvin. 381 Seventh Ave. between 11th and 12th streets in Park Slope. F/G train to Seventh Ave. (718) 768–9463. www.brookvin.com. Open Mon–Thu, 5 pm–midnight; Fri, 5 pm–1 am; Sat, noon–1 am; Sun, noon–midnight.

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Croxley Abbey

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Croxley Abbey. 63 Grand St. between Kent and Wythe avenues in Williamsburg. (718) 387–4290. www.croxley.com/brooklyn.html. Open daily, 11 am–2 am.

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Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club

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Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club. 514 Union St. between Nevins Street and Third Avenue in Gowanus. R train to Union, or F/G train to Carroll. (347) 223–4410. www.royalpalmsshuffle.com. Open Monday–Wednesday, 6 pm–midnight; Thursday and Friday, 6 pm–2 am; Saturday, noon–2 am; Sunday, noon–midnight.

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Brooklyn Night Bazaar

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Brooklyn Night Bazaar. 165 Banker St. at Norman Avenue in Greenpoint. G train to Nassau. www.bkbazaar.com. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 pm–1 am.

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MCC2014: I’ll Take Manhattans

My first event of the 2014 Manhattan Cocktail Classic was Dale DeGroff‘s lecture on the history of bitters, titled “I’ll Take Manhattans!” at the Macao Trading Company in Tribeca.

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Bitters were essential to the invention of cocktails. The first reference to the term, in a newspaper article from 1806, explained: “A cock tail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters.” So without bitters, we don’t have cocktails!

Other tidbits from Dale’s talk:

  • Bitters were patented as a as a digestive aid in 1690.
  • They were sold as medicine, mostly because taxes were cheaper that way, but they also got sold as snake oil cure-alls.
  • Angostura bitters are named after the town in Venezuela, not after the angostura tree.

And at each table there were five different kinds of aromatic bitters: mcc2014-bitters2

So we tasted each of them! Some notes:

  • Angostura has a lot of baking spices – allspice and cinnamon notes
  • Abbott’s is even more bitter, but with some hints of orange
  • Bitter Truth has a licorice flavor
  • Pimento is super-bitter! DeGroff joked that one bartender is using just a single drop of it in his Manhattans
  • Fee Brothers had a sweet, cinnamon flavor, like a Red Hot candy

And then everybody got a full-sized Manhattan, each made with the bitters of their choice.

But really, my favorite part may have just been DeGroff telling stories about his life as a bartender. If you don’t know – he’s the founder of the craft cocktail movement. Basically, he was the first guy in the modern era to think “Hey – maybe cocktails should actually taste good!”  But his vision of a bartender isn’t just a guy who knows drink recipes:

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Featherweight

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Featherweight. 135 Graham Ave. between Johnson Avenue and Boerum Street in Bushwick. L train to Montrose. (347) 763–0872. www.featherweightbk.com. Open Sun, Tue–Wed, 7 pm–2 am; Thu–Sat, 7 pm–3 am.

(there’s also a door inside Sweet Science that connects to Featherweight).

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Glorietta Baldy

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Glorietta Baldy. 502 Franklin Ave. between Fulton Street and Jefferson Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant. C train/Shuttle to Franklin Ave. (718) 389–3904, www.502franklinbar.com. Open Mon–Thu, 4 pm–4 am; Sat–Sun, 2 pm–4 am.

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Happy Fun Hideaway

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Happy Fun Hideaway. 1211 Myrtle Ave. between Bushwick and Willoughby avenues in Bushwick. J/M/Z train to Myrtle Ave. No phone. www.facebook.com/HappyfunHideaway. Open daily, 4 pm–4 am.

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