Last week, Park Slope Stoop gave us all the heads up that Anchorman 2 would be filming on Third Street today. Like an asshole, I walked up and down the block a few times, but sadly, no Paul Rudd sightings. Just that lame shot of a few old-timey taxis. Anyone out there have better luck? Maybe Will Ferrell will stop by The Gate later for some scotchy, scotch, scotch. Either way, stay classy, Park Slope.
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Isn't that love bug just the cutest? He also looks sloshed but I'm sure he's not right? RIGHT?
My first memory is grabbing a bottle of Amaretto off of our putrid yellow kitchen counter circa 1981ish. My second memory is mixing my grandfather a vodka martini circa 1982ish. The third is sitting on top of the bar in some shit hole in Hackensack, NJ on what I'm pretty sure was a Saturday morning with the grandfather from the second memory. This makes alcohol a building block to so many of my formative moments. That may explain a lot about me now. But enough about me, what about babies in bars? Some of us think it's annoying, some of us think it's essential to parenting, others could give a shit. Personally I think the whole thing is very 2009.
We here at FIPS have covered the topic QUITE A BIT. It's been talked to death in other places as well like blah, blah, blah. Comments get furious. Parents get defensive. Self-righteous singles want to call ACS. And just when we thought it was all over and people just got used to it or forgot all about it, the Village Voice (who voted us Best Neighborhood Blog this year) went and brought it all up in our business again. This time has an informative list of the 10 best bars "not yet ruined by babies."
Let's see what made their list and a snippet of what they have to say:
1. Jackie's Fifth Amendment: "Bring your kids here if they happen to love octogenarians on oxygen tanks and listening to Bob Seger on repeat.... The frill-less watering hole features wood paneled walls from a bygone era of Brooklyn that little of Park Slope seems to resemble these days. Even the bar's namesake is an allusion to its alleged former association to certain groups that were both organized and illegal."
2. Smith's Tavern: "Just down 5th Avenue from Jackie's, Smith's Tavern has been pouring cold domestic mugs of beers since well before your grandfather shipped off to Europe to kill Nazis. They've spruced the place up a bit since then with an internet jukebox and even scrubbed the tobacco stains off the walls."
3. Lucky 13 Saloon: "In a neighborhood inundated with organic cocktails, where discussing the kale you picked up from the Prospect Park farmers market gets many a local all atwitter, Lucky 13 is the stuff nightmares are made of. If someone has a child here, it's probably because they stole it."
4. Freddy's Bar: "Freddy's is without a doubt, one of the last great places in Park Slope where a bartender might know you by name for both the right and wrong reasons. They might even remember your poison of choice if they haven't had too much drink themselves.... It all still feels like home and if you see kids, it's only because their grandpa is probably buying them their first beer ever."
5. High Dive: "A well loved neighborhood haunt, High Dive is the place local parents go when they're avoiding their own children or drinking because of them. A clean refuge where the predominately thirty-something crowd could order PBR, but rarely do."
6. Ginger's Bar: "If you park your stroller inside the door of Ginger's, there's a really good chance that a drag queen will incorporate it as a stage prop during karaoke. The bar is stocked with an inviting cast of generally easy-going neighborhood locals."
7. The Owl Farm: "The same beer nerds responsible for Bar Great Harry and Mission Delores opened this hop-lovers environment almost a year ago on 9th Street. After saddling up at the bar, you have to spend some quality time reading the tap list that changes on a daily basis."
8. South: "Slightly more decadent than other Southern Park Slope haunts, South boasts an array of craft beers, whiskeys and even pickle backs.... The sunny patio in back and an early afternoon opening make day drinking here very inviting. Leave the kids in school."
9. Buttermilk: "A fleet of friendly bartenders and what tends to be a liberal pour, it's hard to dislike this South Slope oasis from the same owners of Boat. Cheap drinks and an even cheaper happy hour keep your pint glasses full, though Miller High Life seems to be the general drink of choice."
10. Commonwealth: "Commonwealth provides a nice and mellow atmosphere for those looking to swill alcohol in some amount of peace. It's a middle ground bar, a place where you won't run into too many degenerates or Wall Street types. Indie rock tends to own the jukebox, but with nary a milquetoast hipster in view."
So FIPS'ters what do we think about this list? True? False? Has the phenomena of babies in bars also jumped the shark like making fun of the Food Coop. Sound off.
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Oh, GoogaMooga. Thou hath been dubbed "Great" & thou hath been highly-anticipated for two years running now & thou hath now twice befuddled those expecting to be wowed by your bounty of food & music. Should we hate you? Should we love you? Should we think of you as that one crazy friend who we have that crazy night out with once every year but who we definitely don't need to hang out with any other weekend?
Last year, your inaugural edition started off as an absolute shitshow, with a first day that saw vendors running out of food and festival-goers bereft of working ATMs & cell-phone service and a general air of anger & incivility. After that much-maligned first day, you worked through most of your first-day hiccups, er...belches & things ran smoother on the second day. Sure two full days with tens of thousands of oft-drunken people trampling across the Prospect Park grounds left a definite impact but, in the end, you gave ticket holders a refund & in doing so, acknowledged your awfulness. Since money makes the world go round, 'twas a very grown-up step for such a young festival.
This year, for your second go-around, you made a bunch of changes. You boosted cell service so that, in 2013, people could figure out how to contact one another when they got separated. You limited food vendors to one item, eliminating the roadblock that was drunk people waiting 'til they got to the front of the line to decide on what to eat. More importantly, you expanded to three days, spreading out the chaos a bit.
In the end, you mostly succeeded.
Friday: A few minutes after 4:30pm on Friday evening, I arrived at Prospect Park with my gluttonous companion, Jessica. After a short walk up the path toward the Nethermead, with GoogaMooga volunteers along the way holding signs & shouting out half-hearted info about our distance from the venue, we arrived at the back of the line just as the first musical act of the evening, The Darkness, was taking the stage. As their ironic metal anthems floated across the park to reach us, we inched slowly forward, noticing the first row of vendor booths, all of which were surprisingly line-free.
We waited. The girl in front of us in line was freaking out because she left her phone in a cab & I let her borrow mine because I figured we're all in this possible shitshow together, right?
By the time we made it into the venue, the Darkness had just finished up their set. I wasn't that broken up about not seeing them though. I mean, I like irony & falsetto & hard rock as much as the next guy but c'mon now. With some time to kill before The Flaming Lips, we made our way to grab some food & drink. Jessica started with the Half-Split Grilled Lobster ($15) from The Lobster Place.
Basically, it tasted like lobster & didn't suck. I'd eaten an emergency lunch a few hours earlier, so I just started off with an $8 Captain Lawrence Liquid Gold in a tiny ass cup. I would've preferred an Empire IPA but for whatever reason, the particular booth I visited was already out.
After a bit of wandering around the grounds & people watching, we ended up at Hamageddon, the pork-themed area of GoogaMooga adorned with a giant, bronze statue. Because GODDAMN FAT SWEET-CRUSTED PIG RULES, we split the Grilled Maple Bacon Skewers ($10) from Landhaus.
With three skewers of pig, it was definitely a lot of pig for the price & did a great job, with its saltiness, of quickly driving us back to the beverage booths for more libations.
At 6:30pm sharp, with a nice breeze in the air & the sun shining down, The Flaming Lips took the stage and roared into "Look...The Sun is Rising," the first track off their new album.
We threw down a blanket & settled down WAY far from the stage, behind rows & rows of people who'd been motivated enough to claim a space earlier in the day. While their set was pretty good overall, it suffered from less-than-optimal sound quality and sight lines that were only acceptable in that lead singer Wayne Coyne was elevated on a pedestal above the rest of the band. To boot, The Flaming Lips' light show & antics were pretty much wiped out by the fact that they were playing in broad daylight...an ideal laying on a blanket & people watching atmosphere though.
Once the Lips were done, we picked up a few treats to pass the time.
Jessica got the Maple Cotton Candy on a Pretzel Stick ($5) from Liddabit Sweets. She basically declared it the best cotton candy she'd ever had. Personally, cotton candy makes me barf.
We also split the Car Bomb Parfait ($8) from Robicelli's. DEAR FRIGGIN GOD. It was just the sort of indulgent (in a good way) treat I needed to set the tone before watching the indulgent (in a bad way) Yeah Yeah Yeahs play.
While the sun set & we waited for the YYY's to come out, I wandered around checking out the vibe of the crowd. People actually seemed to be enjoying themselves. I didn't see a single person grab a random bébé & eat it out of desperation. Nobody got shanked. I saw Lip from Shameless hanging out (working?) at one of the beverage tents. I overheard one guy say to another "Maggie Gyllenhaal is over there." She was. Every few feet, I'd catch a hearty whiff of weed. I can only assume that everyone snuck all that weed in by not carrying a bag but going in with a friend who went through the bag check line, altogether avoiding the frisking that went on in the other lines.
As for the YYY's set, Jesus Christ I could care less. When they first burst on the scene over a decade ago & were tearing up stages with Nick Zinner's crushing riffs & Karen O's ridiculous antics, I cared. Not so much any more. The act's grown quite tired & in a large, open venue, where it was often impossible to see the stage, it had no relevance to anything. Karen O did give a shout-out to David Pajo & there was a bit of a dance party during "Heads Will Roll" but otherwise...meh.
Saturday: A bit hungover from Friday, Saturday turned out to be a much more subdued day. Other than Matt & Kim headlining, I had no interest in the music. Doors opened at 11am & we showed up just after 4pm to find hearty crowds of people milling about but a lot of people already filing out of the venue. For the second day in a row, we didn't wait in a single line for food.
Jessica picked up the Pulled Pork Sandwich from Dinosaur Bar-B-Que ($11) and the Duck Corn Dog ($7) from James.
I went with the Tacos al Pastor from Salvation Taco ($10) and, as a taco aficionado, was damn impressed. While the portions were a bit on the small size, the single tortilla held up well & the pork had a salty crispiness to it that mixed perfectly with the pineapple. As the early evening rain continued to turn the event into one big mist tent, we decided that we didn't really need to stay for Matt & Kim. After all, I saw them play at a house party years ago, so I'm too cool to see them in a festival setting anyhow.
Sunday: In the late morning, mere minutes after I received an email from Googamoga letting me know that there were still tickets available for Sunday's events, I got an alert through the GoogaMooga app that the NYC Parks Dept. had cancelled Sunday's events altogether. There'd been a slow, shitty rain for almost a day straight. Prospect Park was pretty damn trod-upon after Googamooga 2012, so I can only imagine how it would've been after Sunday evening, once all those rabid Kool & The Gang fans had completed the third day of festivities & run roughshod over the grass. GoogaMooga announced VIP refunds. People sorta bitched on Twitter. Life went on.
Pros: No lines. One sunny day of festivities. Amazing people watching, A Lip sighting after a Lips sighting.
Cons: Bands suffering from muddy sound & visual quality. $10 price points for every dish. That whole day-three cancellation thing.
All in all, other than the possible damage to the park, I found GoogaMooga to be relatively satisfying. There wasn't a single moment where I felt like I was stuck on a disease-ridden cruise ship. In fact, if both they & I make it to next year (which I at least assume they will), I'm 90% certain I'll be there.
Read way more from Shawn at eatdrinksnack.com and eatdrinktaco.com.
NYC Parks Dept, Prospect Park Alliance & #Googamooga have canceled today's event in the interest of safety & prevention of damage to park
— Great GoogaMooga (@GoogaMooga) May 19, 2013
No Googa Mooga today [Sad Trombone].
Man, is someone out there sticking pins into a Googa Mooga vodoo doll or what? Seems like this festival just can't catch a break.
You can follow their Twitter feed for continued updates. I see that they are fully refunding all VIP tix for today, though I don't see any mention of what's up for regular ticket holders? There's also some bitching that only an hour before they canceled the whole shebang, they were still trying to sell tix:
@googamooga yet you still emailed people to sell more tickets for today only an hour before cancelation? Not cool. twitter.com/chrispetescia/…
— Chris Petescia (@chrispetescia) May 19, 2013
Bummer all around, I guess. On a scale of 1-10, how pissed are all you guys?
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In case you spent this week mourning the news that Bill Hader is leaving SNLj (RIP Stefon!), here's a wrap-up of juicy FIPS news that graced the pages of our blog this week:
Image via Park Slope Lens
WHAT YOU SHOULD ORDER AT... is a recurring column designed in kind for your opinionated asses and our lazy asses. We're going to pick one Park Slope resto a month and recommend our favorite dish at each. Are we right? Are we wrong? YOU KNOW YOU WANNA WEIGH IN.
There are ton of sushi restaurants in Park Slope, but none of them hold a candle to Geido. Nope, not even Taro or, may she rest in peace, Blue Ribbon Sushi. How many restaurants can you name that opened in 1985, and still have a line out the door and a minimum half hour wait on Friday and Saturday nights? So, yeah, technically it's on the Prospect Heights side of Flatbush, between Park and Prospect, but whatever, it's borderline. I'm claiming it for the Slope. The atmosphere is casual, with crazy graffiti on one wall.
All of the sushi is Ahhhhh-mazing, but it wasn't until recently that my mind was totally blown. Usually, when I go out for sushi, I don't even glance at the appetizers, and just order some rolls and some pieces, maybe some edamame, and go on my merry way. Luckily, I took a friend and she suggested the "Yellowtail Jalapeno Sashimi with thin slices jalapeno ceviche ponzu." There are also ultra-thin slices of red onion on top and cucumber underneath. Seriously? I took one bite and nearly died right there from the awesomeness.
Just looking at the photo makes me want to go back ASAP. Oh, and the other Ahhhhh-mazing thing about Geido? It's not ridiculously expensive. Plus, it attracts the odd celebrity. And, yes, I do mean odd. I once saw Tanya from the Real World Chicago there.
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The return of The Great GoogaMooga, Brooklyn’s 21st century version of Woodstock, is upon us. As we mentioned back in March, the organizers have promised a ton of improvements so that they won't have a repeat of the multiple clusterfucks that went down last year: It's three days instead of two, there will be more vegan/vegetarian/gluten-free food options, more than twice the cast registers, only one food item at each vendor (because making decisions slows people down?), extra cell phone towers so you can tweet and instagram to your fucking heart's delight.
Go for the music, stay for the food. Or vice versa. It doesn’t really matter when you find yourself eating Do or Dine foie gras sliders, drinking an Ommegang, and listening to some cool band with a name I’m too old to understand. Well, unless you're there Sunday night, in which case you'll be listening to Kool and The Gang. Celebrate good times, come on!
Give us a shout on Facebook and/or Twitter, so that those of us not going can live vicariously through you (or feel smug for being smart enough not to even try this time around). Shawn (a.k.a. Parowpyro) will be giving us his recap early next week.
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Time for a semi-regular FIPS check-in to see how #parkslope is faring in the Twitter-verse. It never fails to entertain.
1. Bet her dog's name is Justin.
2. It would be weird to ask how she got there, right?
3. Quick! Someone roll over his foot with a stroller! Or thwack his ankle with a razor scooter!
4. Was he saying, "Ay oh, way oh, aayyyy oh, way ohhh?"
5. We do our best to live up to the hype.
6. Summer Squash Sisters?
Well, it's nearly here. The second coming of the Googa. It's such a big event that hearing about it can kind of become annoying. But it is a big-ass event, and it's right here in the park that lends our fair neighborhood half of its name. The Friday concert looks pretty killer actually, and then comes the food. And I can't WAIT to hear everyone's reviews of what waiting in the lines was like. But wait! There are still other things to do in Brooklyn. So, strap on your feedbag, fuel up, and try to fit 'em all in. Welcome to Whassup: More Than Mooga Edition:
* Saturday, May 18: BK Lit Crawl, All Over Brooklyn: Seems appropriate that a big-ass Brooklyn food festival shares the weekend with a big-ass Brooklyn literary festival. To complete the trifecta, someone should hold a big artisanal conference. Oh, wait. In any event, there's all sorts of bookish entertaniments to be had, from Sackett Street's delightful "Unlikeable Characters" reading to Armchair/Shotgun's "Old-Timey Radio Show." Sharpen up the horns on your best librarian glasses and try to remember the first lines of a few novels to impress people with. ("It is a truth universally acknowledged that the best of times are all alike." Or something.) 5pm-8pm FREE.
* Sunday, May 19: Shred Fest, Prospect Park: Now, I realize that "Shred Fest" could be a number of things: Guitar spoo-ing competition. Skate off. Ninja Turtle villain convention. Somewhat less exciting, this event will ensmallen your personal documents for free so that the nefarious types can't steal your identity and buy X-tra large Lee jeans in a North Carolina Walmart. There are also identity-theft protection tips and free shredders to the first five guests. Then, at the end, they drop all the shredded paper over your head like confetti. (That probably doesn't happen.) 10am-4pm, FREE.
* Sunday, May 19: 5th Ave. Fair, 12th to Sterling: You know what's NOT the Great Googa Mooga? This. Totally local, probably no cell phone dead zones, likely very few long, annoying lines of food snobs. Music and other entertainment all along the ave. Show some Park Slope pride and dooga something else this weekend. 12pm-5pm.
* Sunday, May 19: Chair Build/Sandy Benefit, Build It Green!: Come learn how to make chairs. It's cool, because you can be all active, and then have something to sit in afterward when you inevitably return to your inactive, lazy ways. This event also includes a party/sale after the workshop, with proceeds going to post-Sandy restoration in Gowanus. Workshop: 2pm-5pm, Party/Sale: 5pm-8pm, FREE to attend (items for sale cost dollars, duh).
* Sunday, May 19: Get Happy Talk Show, Public Assembly (Williamsburg): This talk show gets the audience very closely involved in the talking action, with secret words and rituals. It's also guaranteed to make you happy. Because you will be drinking. 8pm, $7.
* Monday, May 20: Music Industry Secrets, Knitting Factory (Williamsburg): At this point, when you meet someone in Brooklyn, it's probably best to just assume they're in a band until proven otherwise. Just be like, "So what's your name and genre?" "Mike and kinda folky, kinda alternative, we're really influenced by indie hip hop, you know?" That's the only conversation you need ever have from now on. My point, though, is this: many of you are musicians. Attend this event and learn how to get better gigs. You know, or practice so you get better. Either way. 7pm, $5.
FIPS Throwback Thursdays is a new semi-regular column where we ride the wayback machine into the FIPS archives to see what we were talking about in years past. Back in May 2009, Erica wrote a post declaring her undying love for So You Think You Can Dance, and wondered how the fuck there were people who didn't love the shit out that show like she did. Here's an excerpt of what FIPS said then:
This is the b-e-s-t show on TV people. I wait for this show ALL year long, and am at the point that I literally do not think I could make it through the sweltering summer without having SYTYCD to look forward to twice a week.
And trust me, I could care fuck all about dance in real life. I don't go to the ballet, haven't been to dance class since I was 7, and once laughed my ass off during some modern dance special I happened to catch on PBS. But this show rocks my whole fucking world...H-A-R-D.
I know for a fact that Erica feels exactly the same way now as she did then...cuz she's tweeting the shit out of the new season which started this week. So, did follow her bidding 4 years ago? Are you watching?!