Thursday, June 18, 2009

East Village, please meet your new nightmare


Somehow I missed this... Thanks to Eater for reporting on this... they linked to an UrbanDaddy article on the bar that's opening at the former site of Rapture on Avenue A between 12th Street and 13th Street.

The following is from UrbanDaddy.

This story is a warning.

You are about to enter a world of crazy—an all-out, raucous, beautiful disaster of a bar that will eat you alive if you let it.

Let's get right to it: meet Superdive, now taking keg service (yes, seriously) reservations for their grand East Village opening next week. Enter at your own risk…

Now, the first rule of Superdive is that there are no rules. You can mix your own cocktail behind the bar if you like. There's no door policy — anyone can come in. You can order a round of beers or a keg of beer, and a cocktail waitress will deliver the keg to your table in a rolling kegerator. You can even sit down and play their Steinway piano underneath a large applause sign.

It's total lawlessness in bar form. You'll know you're in the right place when you walk into quite possibly one of the least adorned bars you'll ever see—the walls are maroon, the banquettes have floral patterns and there's even a row of protected seats for ladies who don't want to deal with gentlemanly advances, delicately dubbed the "f*ck off seats."

Just drop in with a few (or more) friends, carve out one of the booths along the wall, order up a keg (more exotic orders, like Hitachino or Chimay, take 48 hours, but they have regular kegs in stock), take over the iPod and walk out eight hours later not recalling much of what just happened.

In other words, just like a good dive bar experience, only supersized.

27 comments:

Laura Goggin Photography said...

"Lawlessness in bar form."

What could possibly go wrong?

hntrnyc said...

I thought at first that this might be difficult to pull off with the liquor laws and all......then I realized that this is really "bottle service" for the frat class. It is indeed a worst nightmare scenario.

EV Grieve said...

I'm curious how this concept was pitched before CB3's SLA Licensing Committee.

WB said...

Yeah, seriously. This is okay but Mercury Dime couldn't serve wine?

EV Grieve said...

Good point, WB.

Erich said...

Wow. That place sounds absolutely awful.

Bowery Boogie said...

sounds like this place really belongs in hobroken.

Anonymous said...

Think of it as performance art on open-ended run. Most likely it won't last a month, so make sure you get down there with your camera early.

prodigal son said...

I think I like it. It used to be that with just about any bar in New York, you would walk in and not know what would happen that night. There are too many bars here that are less fun than funeral homes. So the concept of bar where you can just do what makes you comfortable is good.

However, looking at the details of the idea I realize it is probably not going to be that way at all. Bottle service for the frat set seems pretty accurate. Or a sort of Disneyland version of a frat bar.

The best case scenario is another Village Idiot. The worst case is Hoboken. I'm curious how this got past the Community Board and the SLA.

Jeremiah Moss said...

how long before someone gets gang raped?

esquared™ said...

and this is why i left the EV. no stopping it. the locusts will just keep coming, until they have consumed everything and everyone around them.

EV Grieve said...

I thought maybe this was all a good joke...but I just walked by the space. Yep, full-speed ahead on the interior.

And what does it say when management decides it may want to/need to sequester women in a safety zone?

"there's even a row of protected seats for ladies who don't want to deal with gentlemanly advances, delicately dubbed the 'f*ck off seats.'"

I'm looking forward to the "we're just kidding/we're just having fun/relax" comments from the management.

Barbara L. Hanson said...

prodigal son: "So the concept of bar where you can just do what makes you comfortable is good."
That way lies uncivilized behavior. What happens when the behavior that makes you comfortable makes others uncomfortable?

esquared™ said...

oh, hope that Terrifica is there to patrol that douche haven in an effort to protect inebriated women in danger of being taken advantage of by these superdouches.

prodigal son said...

"What happens when the behavior that makes you comfortable makes others uncomfortable?"

Well presumably they can go to another bar.

I'm going to stay well away from this place myself, but I think people are overreacting because its sort of an extreme version of half of the other bars that have opened up in the EV recently. So it sometimes seems you have a choice between frat or really pretentious.

There was all sorts of borderline and actual antisocial behavior going on in nightspots in NY pre-2001, in out of the way parts of the city. All easy to avoid if you didn't want any part of it.

ak said...

ahhhhh.....uh, at least bartenders now have a place to redirect the people that they are kicking out.

"you have to leave"
"but i want another drink"
"why dont you go over to superdive"

really though, have these people ever worked in a bar before? this is ludicrous. i dont want drunks mixing anything. can you imagine the mess the porters are gonna have to deal with in the am? it's also gotta be a pony keg/half keg that is being served via "table service". i love hitachino but a full keg? people that drink hitachino are NOT drinking a full fucking keg of hitachino or chimay. givemeafuckingbreak.

but i'm totally sending every asshole/scumbag/etc here when i kick them out.

ak said...

also, apparently the place already has fans.

http://www.gastrochic.com/2009/food/superdive/

Barbara L. Hanson said...

Really, pre-2001? You shoulda seen 1980, prodigal.

Eden Bee said...

People can mix their own drinks?
Great. I'm just going to go there, go behind the bar, grab all the top shelf shit and leave. That's how I mix my drinks.

kmc said...

I'm letter writing. Silver, Squadron, Gerson, Bloomberg and anyone else that can bring some dignity back to the hood.

elisabeth said...

How is it Mercury Dime got denied a beer and wine license--so a bunch of writers could sit around and talk--but these guys got a full liquor license?

Grieve said...

Thanks for the comment, Elisabeth. Damn good question. How this Superdive concept got the CB3 blessing is beyond me.

T.J. Moore said...

I don't understand the objections to the bar. I'd rather live near a dive bar with real people having frat-house fun than a hoighty-toighty bar with snotty, rich kids as patrons.

Barbara L. Hanson said...

TJ, you obviously haven't found the right bar. Poor kid. Thank god you haven't found mine, which is neither.

prodigal son said...

I found out that this place is supposed to on Avenue A and 11th Street. That's too bad, it will be in one of the better parts of the East Village. I had the impression that it would be on 3rd Avenue for some reason.

BK said...

what happens, when kicked out of superdive for whatever reason, the "lawlessness" attitude/right/idiocy extends to the street?

Jason said...

For Fuck's Sake... Now I remember why I run past Avenue A... Lord Help Us All.