Thursday, January 20, 2011

Black Door

127 W. 26th Street (btw 6th & 7th Aves)
New York, NY 10001
(212) 645-0215

Bathroom situation
- 3 unisex in the main room and 2 unisex in the backroom. As evidenced by the photo above, Visceralist was going straight HAM in one of the backroom room-room's the other night. The bathroom bouncer saw the Heineken in our hand and was like, "Ooohhhh, from the commercial, right!?" with a big Odie grin on his face.
Takes credit cards? - sheeeeiiittt, they didn't stop taking Visceralist's credit card info!
Crowded on weekends? - crowded NYC bars are crowded.
Seating - the Black Door doesn't take reservations, so it's first come, first served. Yo, save us a spot!
Neighborhood - Visceralist had to go to the Home Depot on 23rd street to get a replacement toilet seat for Visceralist.com HQ a yearish ago. That was the first time we'd been in the Flatiron district proper. The recent trip to the Black Door was the 2nd. Unless the LES somehow folds over the city like that Paris scene in Inception, there will not be a third.
Pretentious/assholes - this ain't your daddy's average Flatiron dive bar. No, ma'am (shouts out to The King's Speech). It's more like your childhood best friend's older brother's. The one who used to chuck those Nerf footballs at you at top speed [ed. fuck that foam shit, those can still hurt] when you just came over to play some Grand Theft Auto 3 in the basement...then he still expected you to hide his 12-pack of Miller under that one blanket until their mom left. Fuck, and that's why you still won't get near any Playstation. Still.
Cost of Stella - Visceralist took one look at the bartender's ironed-shirt & bow-tie combo and figured we wouldn't be able to afford it, so we stuck with the previously aforementioned Heineken. Shit was still like $7 tho...on the strempf.
What time people start showing up - Visceralist hasn't showed up at a bar before 12am since Cheney was peppering his buddies' faces with buckshot like his first name was Cayenne. Just being honest and keeping it real. Cuz that's a virtue 100% of the time.
Bartender efficiency - they know the score and they're serving for the match, bitch. Vamos Rafa!
Official Website - they don't got one but Visceralist is thinking about a redesign to make this shit a bit more HTML 5-y. Thoughts, commentariot?
Food? How late - if variety is the spice of life, they have a lot of salt & pepper here. [ed. Ok, that metaphor almost just folded in over itself like that one Paris scene in Inception...and that is not a compliment.]
TVs? What's on - Visceralist thinks we can all agree now that The Big Lebowski has been wildly overrated, but we'll be cot-damned if J. Bridges didn't murk the fuck out of True Grit. The Academy loves (loves, loves!) actors who play real people though, so he really should've played John Wayne playing that sheriff if he wanted that gold eunuch. He shot a damn snake in the face tho, so fuck it.
Guy:girl ratio - prolly equivalent to that Star Trek reboot (counting extras).
Toys - and while we're talking about J.J. Abrams, can we finally all agree that the LOST finale DVD extra postscript was just straight triflin, unnecessary bullshit?
Age of clientele - things learned from the Sex and the City oeuvre: Sex and the City's success bankrolled so many quality HBO series (looking at you, The Wire & The Comeback) that if they wanna act like 40 is the new 20, just fuckin let them have their fuckin fun.
Space for dancing? - Visceralist has recently been learning the Dougie (that's some crispy new hot shit, so don't worry, you'll prolly hear about it in the next 6 months or so) and had the opportunity to show it off here recently. Blown minds were blown.
Music medium, style & volume - loud and Top 40'd to the Tippecanoe and Tyler too!
Specials or most popular drink - they'll pour your stupid ass a drink, so either get your ass in or get your ass on.

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