These Establishments Make me Glad I Live in Greenpoint
For any who don’t know, Greenpoint is NE of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. I’ve lived there a few years. My ladyfriend and I live in a crumbling apartment on the sixth floor in a building with no elevator and a broken buzzer. The hood is served only by the G train, which runs through no affluent neighborhoods and doesn’t go near Manhattan, so it is the slowest and most neglected and smelliest of the subway lines. The neighborhood is mostly Polish and largely Puerto Rican. For no discernable reason, there are many Thai restaurants. The neighborhood is very safe, though you may have to dodge some staggering drunk Polish bums. The Puerto Ricans have many small dogs, and thankfully they tend to clean up after them. The shitheads with pitbulls and other large dogs, do not.
I love Greenpoint. First of all, it’s a great mix of people. It has not been overgentrified and so remains, to a large extent, a family neighborhood. And while a few years back youngish artists began to move to Greenpoint as Williamsburg grew overpopulated and expensive and cheesy, Greenpoint’s influx has not seemed to have the same effect. It seems as if many of the young folks were older than the young folks in the WB; many are now married with young kids. Rather than being replaced by more younger folk, this population seems to have attracted more newcomers in the 30ish range. This demographic suits me fine, as the slightly older artists tend to be folks who have worked a while and are serious about it, whereas it is much more often a passing fad, or fashion style for early 20s folk. What is means is that these people look like adults but still dress bummy, they have actual work to do but like to enjoy themselves, they like to sit in a pleasant bar and drink rather than stand in a loud shitty bar and scream. Hey, these people sound kind of like me, just maybe not as sexy. Also, lots of them tend to have babies and/or dogs, of which I have neither. If any of you are, like me, from San Francisco, you might say Greenpoint is like Noe Valley, but with cool people. Just kidding. Two of my favorite people live in Noe Valley and I just found out they are coming out here to visit, and I will take them to some of the following places (first I should add that Noe Valley, unlike Greenpoint, does not have, in addition to its young couples/babies/dogs demographic, a huge mass of Polish people):
1) Pencil Factory – The best bar I know of, in the world. On the corner of Greenpoint and Franklin, two blocks from me. Often less than two blocks from me, because often I am sitting inside of it, or just outside it, as they recently added outdoor tables on the sidewalk. Opened by a young, but adult, couple, who I think have a baby. Opened by nice people with good and unpretentious taste. The bar is beautiful; dark, warm wood all around, even the floor is long smooth wood boards. Big wood tables, wood chairs, all comfy and solid. Nice bar. Good beer for $4 a pint. Recently raised price of wine to $5, but I will live. Good cocktails. Nice glasses. Not a huge amount of standing room because it’s not the type of place that tries to pack in 800 people on a Friday, though in recent months I have never seen it empty any evening or night because the locals love it. It’s a great place to bring dogs, babies, or other nice beings. Nice big windows, great light in the early evening. It’s been open, what, a year? I can’t remember. I remember the first time I went there after it opened, I almost cried. At last, a good bar in the ‘hood. I used to have to walk to Enid’s, about 12 minutes away, which was okay but seemed to have a maximum age limit of 22, and terrible service. (I used to curse the sloppy service of a young woman there who currently models her mediocre bartending skills, average looks and sub-par personality at the dreaded Rocco’s of The Restaurant fame. At Enid’s she displayed a self-published volume of her poetry; I never read it, but her bartending technique was the antithesis of poetry. Sloppy, uneven drinks. Wearing a flimsy undershirt and calling everyone “sweety” was the full extent of her charisma, she never looked anyone in the eye) Back to the PF, which also has, among other things, a little side-room with space for one tiny table. The room has a name, something to do with Milton. A great place if you are there with a couple people and need to talk turkey or do business. (No funny business, though, the room has a wee doorway but no door) Once a friend and I read a script in there, in was perfect.
The bartenders are charming. The crowd is nice and varied and peaceable. A great place to hang out with friends, bring a date, or sit by yourself with a book or a notepad and a beer for as long as you like.
2) Splendid – A bar on Greenpoint between Franklin and Manhattan. I like Splendid primarily as a foil beside which the Pencil Factory shines.
See, when the PF opened, it was instantly popular. People in the neighborhood were thrilled to find a great bar down the street, the kind of place they’d like to hang around.
Splendid opened about a year earlier; before that there were only Polish bars, so Splendid was the first bar on my side of Greenpoint aimed at the newer population. Though it seems more recently to have developed some sort of following I can’t identify, for a long, long time, nobody went there. Or they went there once. Because it sucks.
Why does it suck? No particular reason. There’s just nothing good about it. Most bars have some reason you go, a pleasant ambience, good drinks, cheap drinks, cool bartenders. There are reasons people go to shitty dive bars and swank lounges. Now Splendid is just mediocre on all counts. A few beers, all in bottles, your basic drinks, a few whatever wines. Okay, kind of creaky tables and chairs, some oddly constructed lumpy booths. Art that might as well not exist. A shitty jukebox. A boring bartender. But none of these things are terrible in the least; it’s just nothing is good. So nobody went there for a long time. And when the PF opened, everybody went there right away. Which proves, and entrepreneurs take note: You can’t just open any bar. You figure, newly hip neighborhood, untapped pool of young drinkers, throw up a random joint and they will go. They didn’t, and for that I am proud of Greenpoint. We waited for the Pencil Factory.
That's it for Greenpoint bars, soon I will write about restaurants, and the cafe.
~Monty
5:01:35 PM 
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