Williamsburg Nightlife

by Sarah Sundberg

Once Upon a Time, a night out in Williamsburg meant you had a miserably small amount of choices in the bar department. Then there was Galapagos, the Diner and a handful of other places. Now we’re so gentrified that we have enough “real” bars to not only serve the community but a good portion of the rest of the City. These days Manhattanites and other unfortunates have good reason take the L train out east to party with Williamsburgs finest. Despite this, Williamsburg nights are still - at least in my experience – slightly less expensive and a lot more prone to get all strange and out of control in a good way. They will leave you in weird places with unexpected people. Pleasantly dazed, confused and with your mouth coated with grease from those late night fries at Kellogg’s Diner you whish you never ate. One of the perks of doing your Friday and Saturday barhopping in Williamsburg is that you run a lower risk of being accosted by the Jersey guys and under-aged NYU types that roam the streets of Manhattan on Weekends. Also, the way home is shorter and less painful. If you are anywhere close to being as lazy and snobbish as the author of this article those are the only reasons you need for all but abandoning Manhattan establishments forever. In short, for those of us who prefer to drink, dance and get wasted in our own neighborhood there are plenty of options. So many, in fact that this is in no way intended to be a complete guide. Just a few helpful directions to navigate by.

Black Betty
366 Metropolitan Avenue

Black Betty is a rare place. It is a bar where you can actually party most nights of the week. Like the house party you wish one of your friends was having but with different people. In fact, this bar is so much like a house party that each and every one of their powerful cocktails has it’s own unique flavor. This makes drinking here interesting; you never quite know just how your Mojito will taste. Located on the corner of Metropolitan and Havemeyer, Black Betty is just far enough from Bedford Avenue for comfort but close enough to everything else for convenience. What with Stingers and Yabby down Grand Street and Union Pools and The BQE Lounge right across the street, this is a great place to begin and end a night of quality barcrawling. Things don’t really get going here until midnight, so don’t come too early, unless you want dinner. (Their food by the way is excellent.) Black Betty features live bands most nights and when the musicians get off stage the dancefloor fills up with good and bad dancers all enthusiastically shaking it to an eclectic mix of highly danceable music.



Stingers
241 Grand Street

At Stingers the lights are dim, the music loud and the narrow bar area crowded. The first time I came here, my friend and I shared a table with a man trying to kiss his eighteen year-old roommate after getting her drunk. It’s that kind of place. I also know a guy who got his arm broken in a fight at Stingers, it’s that kind of place too. On weekends, the back of the room becomes the best dance floor in Williamsburg. On other nights you might find a band on stage or catch guests or staff on the mic, cheered on by loud girls at the bar. For a cross-section of Williamsburg residents and good danceable music Stingers is the place to go. It is the missing link between bars frequented by the Hispanic guys in du-rags and those favored by the artsier crowd. Williamsburg would be a better place if more bars were like Stingers.



Galapagos
70 North 6th Street

Galapagos, has been a fixture in Williamsburg nightlife since it opened back in the day. It is also the most artsy bar in a neighborhood renowned for it’s artsyness. This means throngs of people in black clothes and interesting haircuts. It also means a large variety of acts and performances of varying quality. The Pontani Sisters and The Wau Wau sisters are among the more entertaining, and make the Wednesday night cabaret here well worth its while. For those with an appetite for movies there are the Ocularis film screenings on Sundays.

Yabby
265 Bedford Avenue

The first night I ever spent at Yabby, shortly after the place opened turned out to be one of my stranger nights that year. I will not go in to details, but it ended with half the members of my party (most of whom I’d never met prior to that night) being escorted out of Yabby by an amused police officer. Disappointingly, that night did not set the pattern for nights at Yabby to come. When in search of weirdness, random bar fights, or just a good old-fashioned party there are more happening places, however Yabby is the perfect place to go for drinks after dinner, to pass an evening you don’t feel like spending at home or to just hang out with friends. It is one of very few places where there is enough room for everyone who wants to sit outdoors. And a good spot for watching people go up and down Bedford Avenue while sipping cocktails in comfy chairs. When the urge to work off some of those alcohol calories sets in there is always the pool table.



Sweetwater Tavern
105 N 6th Street

For more hardcore pool players or just more hardcore people, there is the Sweetwater Tavern. If you squint it almost looks like one of those “seedy joints” featured in seventies movies. This probably delights the clientele, which consists of about one fifth actual old-school Brooklyn tough guys with tattoos and four fifths of their not so tough and more recently tattooed counterparts. This makes Sweetwater Tavern a very refreshing change after an hour or so at nearby Galapagos. It is also a suitable antidote for the chicness of the other bar next door. Sweetwater is about as no frills as bars come. There are TV-screens for staring at. A pool table for shooting pool at and a bar for drinking at. Beware of the bathrooms though. But then Sweetwater Tavern is very nearly a perfect ten dive bar and bad plumbing is part of that whole experience.



Union Pool
484 Union Avenue

I used to think Union Pool was a poolhall. It’s not. It’s a place that used to sell stuff for the other kind of pool, those you swim in. Union Pool in its present incarnation is a spacious bar with an equally large back yard. It still maintains a fresh Clorox-type pool feel, which stands in sharp contrast to the rest of the bars in this corner of Williamsburg. As far as I can tell they always have a DJ. On a good night it’s a DJ that inspires the guests to dance. Other nights there is just a big empty floor and a DJ, no dancing.



Blu Lounge
197 N 6th Street

Ok, so the Blu Lounge is quiet and occasionally full of guys in shirts and chinos, but people don’t come here to party. There are other places for that, some of which are located just round the corner. The Blu Lounge is a comforting and pleasant bar for the nights you don’t want your conversation to drown in music and drunken laughter. If you pick the right night – or the wrong one – depending on how you feel about these things, you might even catch a bit of karaoke in the backroom. The Blu Lounge also features an Asian style bar menu for those of us with late night sushi cravings.