Today is my brother's birthday and he and I went out for some beers last night. The heatwave finally broke, so we walked from the Q at Union Square over to the Hudson to check out the Rusty Knot. The sun was going down and the far west side of Manhattan is a pretty nice place at that time of day.
One thing I will miss about the East when we move (and there are a lot of things on that list) is that the sunlight glistens in the humid air, and makes this really warm light at certain times of day.
The Rusty Knot, has a nautical dive bar "theme." This means it is full of people who would probably not go to nautical dive bars. There are plenty of those around the city:
Bait & Tackle, Red Hook
Sunny's, Red Hook
The Gowanus Yacht Club, Carroll Gardens (full of hipsters but the operation is essentially divey)
The Brooklyn Navy Yard Cocktail Lounge (admittedly, I have not yet ventured into the Brooklyn Navy Yard Cocktail Lounge, it's always been closed when I've walked by)The Rusty Knot is not rusty in the least. It does have a lot of nice
furniture and some cool model boats, one with windows that are lit from the inside. They also have these little mermaids that go on the cocktails. The food is supposed to be amazing (we weren't hungry at the time, but it looks great...there's a chicken liver and bacon sandwich on the menu). We stuck with Tecate, which they serve with lime juice and salt mixed in already.
We left when it started to get super crowded and (the bartender agreed with us) the douche factor was getting very very high. All in all not a bad place but you have to go early. I will be back for that sandwich, mark my words.Next up we went to the Spotted Pig. There is some connection between the two bars—I think they share an owner or a chef. Emily and I went there on our anniversary a couple years ago and Jay-Z and Beyonch were at the next table (I think he's a part owner too). It was too crowded last night, so we went to our old stand-bys, WXOU Radio and then the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, finishing the night with some Hornitos, Frito pie and wingy.
Sky's promotion to the truck (the ladder), came through yesterday on his two-year anniversary with the FDNY, so we were also celebrating that. He will see a lot more fires now, and a lot less first-responder type stuff like car accidents, murders, heart attacks, suicides, ODs, etc. When you're a firefighter, that's what you want—you want to put out fires—so congrats and happy birthday to my little bro.