Gut Instinct: Full Metal Jacket

Rockers, horror-film freaks and penny-pinching lowlifes, lend me your ears: New York City’s most louche heavy-metal bar has relocated once more. Where has this head-banging haven gone? To an ill-lit South Williamsburg block, a stumble from the screeching elevated train, inside a sooty building sporting lurid neon advertising—with two emphatic exclamation points—THRILLS!!

“Welcome to Duff’s,” says Jimmy Duff, the dive’s stupendously goateed, hearse-driving owner. He sidles up to the bar, as white as a Republican convention, bends his inked arms and surveys the snake-skinny room: slasher-flick posters, an Elvis bust, autographed memorabilia and DJ booth turned demented shrine to B-movie monsters and Duff’s septuagenarian mascot, former customer Dancin’ Dominick—a deceased postal worker who loved drinking and arthritis-defying gyrations.

Duff orders a Coors Light. Takes a sip. “It feels like home,” he proclaims. For Duff, home is mutable. The peripatetic proprietor has spent a decade transporting his kitschy cache, chugga-chugga jukebox and whiskey-slurping mayhem across the metropolis.

In 1999, he co-opened Hell’s Kitchen’s infamous Bellevue, where TVs played retch-worthy porn, Rob Zombie hosted Headbanger’s Ball, hookers chugged hooch and winos broke windows like clockwork.

“I call that the bum tax,” Duff says, recalling the gritty locale. Eventually, Duff burned out on Port Authority debauchery.

So in 2005, he decamped to a gnat-size Williamsburg checkcashing shop near the East River. “If the old location was Siberia, then this was the North Pole,” Duff says. Distance was no deterrent: “Not to be corny,” Duff says, “but the people that wanted to be there really wanted to be there.”

Every couple weeks, I’d hit Duff’s for a buck PBR, a Type-O Negative infusion and to watch footage of Dominick’s jerky, entrancing dance. Duff’s was a dirty port in Williamsburg’s swankifying storm, a filthy refuge where cursing at bartenders was encouraged and the unisex toilet could breed bubonic plague. Duff’s Two, however, was doomed from Day One. “It was always temporary,” Duff says. “I thought it’d last three years, then it’d be torn down.” One year passed, then two, then three, with countless buildings kissing the wrecking ball. Windy Kent Avenue’s winds of change brought condos—and no quarter for metal sleaze.

“I saw the writing on the wall,” Duff says, as he embarked on a years-long search for more permanent digs. He surveyed 30-plus spots, from Hell’s Kitchen to Williamsburg, during New York’s real estate gold rush. Landlords wanted mucho moolah, or offered super-short leases. “One place we wanted now has a psychic,” Duff says disdainfully, “with psychic spelled wrong. Another time we went into contract, going back-and-forth with the landlord for about four months. Finally, he stopped returning my calls. I guess he saw our website”—an orgy of heavy metal, heaving cleavage and liquor-soaked desire—“and freaked out. He was a born-again Christian.”

God, though, couldn’t keep Duff from South Fifth Street. When he surveyed defunct DJ lounge Boogaloo, the chips clinked into place. The landlord dug his concept.

Upstairs lived several old Bellevue regulars. And a built-out bar meant no permit hassles. “I said, this is it. It’s back to civilization”—rather, easy subway access.

Duff spent months arranging his collection of curios, keeping the new location clandestine. “The bartenders were in the cone of silence,” Duff says. Instead of shuttering the check-cashing location, Duff instead transformed it into rocker hangout The Bunker. And then, come December, he blew open the doors to Duff’s (168 Marcy Ave.betw.South 5th St.& Broadway, Brooklyn; no phone).

Fans of his bygone filth holes will be dazed and confused. “Most people say, ‘Holy shit,’” Duff says. “That’s good. We wanted to create something totally new.”The bar’s gleaming and glossy, lacking vomit, spilled-beer stench or the threat of staph infection. “Bars are like people. They get distinct personalities as time goes by,” Duff says, assuring me that grime will come quickly and messily.

My cleanliness quibbles overlook the positives: There’s quadruple the space, booths and seating aplenty. The bartenders remain brassy and busty, and the jukebox still thrashes. “Even the drink prices are the same,” Duff says, sipping his beer. PBRs, blissfully, are still a buck until 9. “I don’t think we’ve raised our prices in a decade.What makes a dive bar is prices. Even if you’re serving beer out of a port-a-john, it’s dirt-cheap drinks that attract a cast of characters.”

Though Duff is thrilled with his new metal mother ship, he knows nothing’s permanent in New York. If this incarnation should shutter, then it’s time to move on, to reinvent again. “I have a couple more bars in me after this one,” Duff says, as raucous tuneage cranks to 11, customers double-fist Pabst. “It’s my calling.”

Drunk of the Day: Luck o’ the Irish

And my girlfriend wonders why I love football so much. It’s because it allows bearded midgets to get rip-roaring soused in public. Viva public intox!

Drunk of the Day: Box Head

From the dark recesses of college debauchery, does anyone else recall the glory that was the game “box head”? Basically, it was a card game. If you lost, you had to wear a box on your head and drink. A lot. It was basically a vehicle for intoxication, but then again, isn’t everything in life?

Gut Instinct: Now We’re Cooking

Last sunday eye, while crammed into Greek eatery Kefi’s sardine-can basement, I tossed down my dirty fork. “No más,” I sighed, like a bloodied, battered boxer. I pushed aside my crunchy-unctuous sweetbreads and rich sheep’s-milk ravioli leavings. “No more fancy food,” I said, rubbing my globular belly as if it were a wounded beast. “I’m suffering from dining fatigue.”

For this affliction I’ll receive little sympathy, like a millionaire forced to sell his Rolls. But listen to my lament: Lord, I’ve overdosed on dining out. The last month has meant Taco Santana’s messy Mexican cemitas and Madam Geneva’s cool Vietnamese beef salad. I’ve treated my kitchen like a leper. And as much as it pains me, gingery bok choy dumplings at Chinatown’s new C and L or nostril-clearing green curries at Elmhurst, Queen’s Chao Thai should be occasional treats—not everyday eats. Constantly dining out dominos my bad behavior. No cooking? No grocery shopping. Hence, while working from home, I subsist on my girlfriend’s wasabi crackers, granola bars and peanut butter.

“Didn’t I buy this last week?” she asks, shaking her nearly empty Nature’s Valley box. “Have you been eating these?” “Must be mice,” I reply, shutting my wrapper-filled desk drawer. “I’ll buy some traps tonight.”

I see the path I’m heading down, and its name is Angela. My perky fashionista friend so detested cooking that she transformed her Astoria apartment’s oven into sweater storage. Her kitchen cabinets were stuffed with T-shirts and jeans. And her underwear, well, I’d rather not reveal.

“I buy more clothes than groceries,” she reasoned, chomping a takeout bean-andcheese taco. Not I. Know why? Let’s time-travel to 1991. My younger brother and sister (6 and 9, respectively) are entrenched in elementary school. I’m 12 and in junior high, a sad era of few friends and many strange hairs.

Back then, my mother worked as a nurse. That left no dinnertime chef—save for the pre–bar mitzvah son. “Josh, what are you doing after school?” my mom asked one morning. I was perusing baseball box scores, lost in the Cincinnati Reds’ stats and box scores. I shrugged.

Same thing I did every day: watch Supermarket Sweep, then play Super Mario Brothers until my thumbs blistered.

“Do you want to cook dinner?” “Sure,” I squeaked. The Princess could wait to be rescued.

“How about…stir-fried chicken with garlic?” she said, thumbing through her cookbook. “Can you handle that?” I nodded yes, though I meant hell no. Sharp knives? A smoking wok filled with scalding peanut oil? Was my mother dying to meet my school’s social worker, the ruefully named Mr. Seaman? Years later, she’d tell me I’d been cooking since I was a toddler, helping her sift and measure flour since before I could add and subtract. Lessons learned, lessons forgotten.

But that first night, I only recall repeating the words that have become my culinary mantra: Don’t get blood in the food. “You did such a good job tonight,” my mom said, scooping up some well-seared, aromatic meat.

“Do you want to cook dinner again?” I bobble-headed back and forth, while my heart pitter-pattered with a happiness adults need booze to replicate. And so dinner became both my daily chore and joy. No matter how vicious the bullies (that Berenstain Bear taunt is burned into my brain), I could look forward to stovetop solace. Slicing carrots was soothing. Crushing garlic was cathartic. And chopping onions gave me an excuse for tears. Then as now, my tastes ran from hearty American to Asian, fragrant dill-vegetable soups to spicy pickled cucumbers.

The cupboard was my playground, where I ran no risk of an arm-twisting Indian rug burn. As I barreled through my teens, discovering the pleasures and pains of women and my parents’ liquor cabinet (note: never mix chardonnay and Ecto Cooler-flavored Hi-C), my cooking continued unabated. In college, where I was schooled in binge drinking and journalism (two pursuits that are hardly mutually exclusive), I developed a knack for hand-rolling sushi and sizzling spicy pad Thai. In New York, this Swiss Army Knife skill set—drinking, words, cooking—helped me locate the quickest route to my ladyfriend’s heart: “You know why I love you?” my girlfriend asked a few days ago. “My ability to make you— ”

“Happy with cooking. Your cooking. Let’s stay in tonight.” I caught her drift. I pedaled to Sunset Park’s cut-rate produce corridor (8th Ave. betw. West 55th and 59th streets) and acquired eggplants, tomatoes, onions, mushrooms and garlic, then down to Park Slope’s M&S Prime Meats for still-warm mozzarella.

My bag bulging with eggplant Parmesan provisions, I hustled back to my apartment, heading straight for my kitchen home.

Gut Instinct: The Big Sleazy

“My God,” my girlfriend said, shrinking in shock, “what are you putting into your mouth?” I looked up from my plate, filled with limp, four-leaf-clover-colored foodstuffs.
“It’s…it’s…” I began. I coughed. Bowed my head, red-faced with shame. “It’s salad,” I said. “Salad. I’m eating salad.” I paused, expecting heaven-sent thunderbolts to smite me. Instead, she harrumphed: “After last week, you need a dozen more.” Reader, I was repairing my intestines due to a New Orleans adventure built around beer, pork and potato chips. Specifically, I speak of crisp Abitas and Zapp’s shatteringly crunchy fried taters, the salty pride of Louisiana.Yes, you can score such indulgences at Brooklyn’s Bierkraft (try malty Turbodog and spicy Cajun Crawtators).

But devouring southern treats in Yankee country feels plumb strange, like dirty-dancing with your sister. See, region-specific foods possess an ineffable terroir. Take Texas barbecue: Fatty brisket tastes better inside soot-stained smokehouses than faux-folksy joints like Hill Country.This holds true for New Orleans comestibles. Though Delta Grill, Bourbon Street and NoNo Kitchen pump out gumbo and catfish po’ boys, the French Quarter food feels Xeroxed, a Chinatown knockoff. Though the po’ boy appears uncomplicated—fried seafood or animal protein shoehorned into French loaves—the key ingredient, airy and crusty Leidenheimer’s bread, stays near Bourbon Street. I needed the real deal. I needed New Orleans.

“I hope you’re wearing sweatpants,” my girlfriend said as we flew to The Big Easy. It was my second culinary tour since Katrina—despite disaster and ongoing repair, the Crescent City remains a gastronomic Disneyland, with more eateries now than pre-deluge. Thus, my itinerary: drink until drunk. Eat until distended. And sleep less than six hours a night. In other words, I’d pretend to be 21. “That’s not as much fun as I remember,” I moaned the first skullthrobbing morning. I’d spent the night sucking Abita’s floral Jockamo IPA at d.b.a., a beer bar with great Big Apple branches.

“Perhaps you feel crappy because you ate jalapeño Zapp’s,” she said. My goal was eating a different flavor daily, a noble quest in mind, not body. “And don’t forget that fried-shrimp po’ boy.” “Yuhhh-uss,” I groaned, as headless crustaceans danced before my eyes. For lunch, I devoured a gravy-drenched roast-beef po’ boy at Parkway Bakery, paired with stout Abita Mardi Gras Bock and mellow sour cream and Creole onion chips. Come snack time, I crammed down BBQ Zapp’s and a Ferdi Special from Mother’s: baked ham, roast beef, rich meat “debris,” cabbage and zesty Creole mustard, a veritable farm on a bun. Cochon hosted dinner, where zippy grilled pork ribs with watermelon pickle; gumchewy fried gator dipped into chili-garlic aioli; and crispy suckling pig (a.k.a. cochon) with cracklings were eaten with abandon. The eatery’s pilgrimage-worthy for pork fiends.

“Is it smart to consume that much pork in a day?” my girlfriend wondered, as I gnawed ribs like a wolf setting upon a prancing doe’s limbs.

“Don’t harsh my happy,” I chided, reaching for Catdaddy Carolina Moonshine. By dint of eBay or generous down-South friend, you must acquire this North Carolina liquor. Mellow and ruinously easydrinking, Catdaddy tastes of frostingtopped vanilla cake fit for lumberjacks, not sniggering sorority girls.

The days passed, fatty and flavorful. For breakfast, powdered-sugared Café Du Monde beignets. Lunch? Ham-studded cabbage and moist, finger-licking fried chicken at Willie Mae’s Scotch House.“I sure hope you’re full till dinner,” the boist said. I wasn’t. I snacked on Casamento’s sandwich of shucked and fried oysters, relishing the briny, greasy mollusk bounty. But still I saved space for the final dinner, which doubled as my sweetheart’s birthday. “Will you feed me a po’ boy?” she wondered.

Déclassé dining? Not tonight. “We’re getting fancy,” I declared, as we decamped to MiLa, the sibling to NYC’s Dirty Bird to-Go. Instead of duplicating their fried-chicken venture, hubby-wife team Allison Vines-Rushing and Slade Rushing concocted a seasonal, locally sourced restaurant that applies French techniques to Southern eats. Graceful, easygoing waitresses delivered sweetly herbaceous mint juleps and “deconstructed” oysters Rockefeller consisting of lightly wilted spinach topped by poached bivalves and bacon chips, as well as supple sweetbreads swimming in creamy black-truffle grits so sensual, I’ll forever alter my offal opinion.

“Not me,” said my seafood-only sweetheart, contenting herself with buttery, citrus-kissed barbecue lobster. While she dove into crispy snapper with tart orange-chili reduction, I devoured butter-poached chicken as soft as sun-warmed licorice, offset with cabbage and pickled chanterelles. And sweettea–brined duck shellacked with date jus. “Can we just skip to dessert?” she asked, bored of my fowl fun. “It’s your birthday—whatever you want,” I said, like a suave romantic.

“I want the adult Reese’s Cup,” she said, ordering a chocolate peanut butter tart topped with peanut brittle and chocolate sorbet—a crunchy-velvety melding finished with HAPPY BIRTHDAY written on the white plate in curvaceous chocolate script.

“It’s perfect,” she said, digging into the lovely, lingering Southern sweetness.

Dollar Grub: East Village

Sigh, I’m such a cheap bastard. Today, find the latest installment of my Dollar Grub series. This time, I head down to the East Village and have a sweet, soft-serve Obama treat. Fo’ real. Eat it up!

Kings (County) of Beer

Big surprise here: I wrote a piece about Brooklyn’s beer-bar boom for Metromix. Lord, I’m so predictable. Drink it up!

Drunk of the Day: Double the Fun

Help me figure this out: What is that weird blueness surrounding her mouth? And lord, I’m betting this boozing ended badly. Very badly.

Gut Instinct: Hamming It Up

“My mom wants to know if you like ham,” my girlfriend asked.

“Do I like ham, or will I eat ham?” I replied. Though I love porky pleasures like Wah Fung No. 1 Fast Food’s candy-crunchy barbecue, Redhead’s bacon-peanut brittle and kielbasa ropes at Steve’s Meat Market, I’m no fan of spiral-cut Christmas ham. Overly sweet. Overly salty. Overly symbolic—especially for a Hebe. “I’ll eat ham if you eat ham.” “Stop being difficult,” she sighed, unwilling to break her 15-year vegetarian vow. “I’ll tell her ham is fine.” Oh, ham. Ham! Ham! Ham would be the centerpiece of Christmas dinner in New Hampshire, my girlfriend’s home state. I like New Hampshire. It’s ball-shrinkingly cold, sure, but there’s zero sales tax. That means zesty Allagash White four-packs cost $7 on the nose—a favorable price, for I’d require cases to survive the Yuletide.

“Stop being melodramatic,” my girlfriend interjects. “It’s just three days.” Three days? For fruit flies, that’s three lifetimes.

During holiday lockdown, minutes  sludge past like days. This tedium is exacerbated when visiting your significant other’s folks, a species that fills me with low-grade fear. “My mom keeps bugging me about mar— ” “Shh! Don’t say that word.” “I’ll buy plenty of beer,” she said, stroking my hairy cranium like a basset hound. “It’ll be fine.” “Ham, ham, ham, ham, ham,” I chanted, as our commuter plane puddlejumped to Portland, Maine, on Christmas Day.There, my girlfriend’s dad and younger brother chaperoned us to their ranch home in a working-class hamlet.

“We usually open presents in the morning, but we waited for you,” her dad said. “And after, oh boy, we’re gonna have ham.” “Ham!” I said, like I’d won the porcine jackpot.

My girlfriend pinched the tender flesh a few inches above my elbow, making me yelp like a slyly goosed starlet.“Be good,” she whispered.

Upon arriving and depositing our bags in our bedroom—no separate sleeping quarters for sinful unmarrieds—we huddled around the twinkling Christmas tree. Like a sociologist observing a foreign tribe, I watched family members ritualistically rip off wrapping paper and give thanks for home-manicure kits. “There’s one for you, Josh,” her mom said, passing me a box. It felt strangely novel, like sticking a digit where the sun don’t shine.

“You shouldn’t have,” I said, holding a back scratcher like a scepter. “There’s more,” she said, passing me boxes containing salt-and-pepper shakers, gloves, a scarf and several strawberry-red spatulas. “It’s for cooking,” she said, in case I had devious designs for the rubber scooper.

Within the hour, the gifts vanished.Wrappings were trashed.We relocated to the kitchen. “Can I help?” I asked, wielding my spatulas.

“Well,” her mom said, folding linen napkins, “you can glaze the ham.” Glaze the ham? She should’ve also asked me to hammer the nails into Jesus Christ.

“Sure…thing,” I said. I boiled the brown, clove-spiked goo and painted the meat with sloppy strokes, like a cut-rate housepainter. I baked the ham until shellacked and then let her dad carve fork-friendly wedges.

“Ooh, nice and juicy,” he said, wielding his big, sharp knife. “Yup, juicy,” I said, bonding in my small, awkward way.We sat down and carbo-loaded on mashed potatoes, buttery rolls, veggie lasagna, boiled Brussels’ sprouts, green beans and carrots. And ham, shiny and tonsils-pink.

I dutifully took several squishy bites—all nitrites, chem-lab seasonings and saline, an all- American end to an oinker’s life. “How’s the ham?” Dad asked, digging into seconds.

“Delicious,” I said, devouring holiday tradition by the forkful. Tradition, though, is best in teensy increments. For dinner that night? Ham sandwiches.

Breakfast the next day? Ham omelettes. Lunch? Ham, ham, ham. Perhaps it was a sneaky attempt to convert me to the J.C. tribe. But I’m not what I eat, and by Sunday I was hammed out, hungering for multiethnic Brooklyn food. My girlfriend and I crammed into the car and motored to Portland, to the airport, to home. “Do you want to go see Portland’s Christmas decorations?” her mom asked.

“It’s not really my thing,” I said, engaging in diplomacy far greater than anything the U.S. government has recently accomplished.

“I think the display has a couple dreidels or maybe a…what do you call it?” “Menorah.” “Yeah, a menorah.” “That’s not really Josh’s thing,” my girlfriend added, short-circuiting the conversation.

“But you threw a Hanukkah party,” she said. “That was your daughter’s idea.” “Oh.” Silently, we slogged through the shindeep, slushy snow to the airport, where families said goodbyes both teary and terse—too little holiday cheer, too much holiday cheer, it’s tough to find a happy balance.

“Merry Christmas,” her mom said, giving me a well-meaning, if somewhat misguided hug.

Drunk of the Day: Tig Ole’ What?

Even I’m not uncouth enough to wear that shirt in public. Kudos, my misogynistic friend, kudos.

Drunk of the Day: Throwing Up…Signs

There’s something so endearing about old, sloppy-drunk men throwing up signs like they’re extras in a  Snoop Dogg video circa 1993.

Gut Instinct: A Touch of Gelt

Much like my first clueless dip into the sexual waters, that start-stop fiasco of thrills, spills and errant fingertips, my initial foray into making potato pancakes was shaping up to be sheer disaster.

“Don’t burn yourself,” my girlfriend cautioned, eyeballing my cast-iron pans with abject terror, as if the gurgling oil was a hissing serpent.

“At first, you’re going to mess up,” my friend Ben added, just the encouraging counsel I’ve come to expect from my pals. “Are you sure that’s how you make the latkes?” my girlfriend prodded, pronouncing it late keys. “Jesus,” I muttered, spooning some potato-onion pabulum into the crackling pan, “I didn’t even want to have a Hanukkah party.”

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s been a long, hard season of holiday merrymaking.The celebratory onslaught started with my strenuous, familyand-all Thanksgiving and stretched straight through to Santacon, the boom-box march of Unsilent Night, friends’ cheese-nibbling gatherings, liquor-soaked birthday revelries and dance fests where I performed my angular, jerky rendition of the robot. Simply put, I’m party pooped.

“But I want to throw a Hanukkah party,” my girlfriend said. “You’re not Jewish,” I replied, quite reasonably. “It’s the holidays. I want it to feel like the holidays,” she said. A week earlier, she bought a mini Christmas tree and decorated it with candy canes, Mardi Gras beads and, curiously, a rooster mask. “But…” “No. I want a party.”

In love and war, there are battles you can win. And there are many, many more you will lose. Sensing my Battle of the Little Bighorn odds, I decided to try a novel technique called compromise.

“Fine, fine, you can have a Hanukkah party.” She beamed, all rainbows and sunshine. “But you have to handle all the decorations.”

“Like I wouldn’t do that anyway,” she said, her brain spinning like a dreidel. “And you have to make potato pancakes.” Me? Potato pancakes? Oy vey. Few foods symbolize the festival of lights like latkes—that fried merger of potatoes and onions. As a child, my family wasn’t much into Hanukkah gift-giving.

Even then it felt contrived, a sop to the poor, suffering, Santa-less Jewish kids. Instead of video games or flashy gewgaws, I eagerly anticipated my mom’s latkes that, naturally, were far crisper and fluffier than other mothers’ latkes. Replicating them would be like assuming the mantle of mom or grandmother, a role that’d hold more appeal if I liked tucking appendages betwixt my legs and cross-dressing.

I emailed my mom for her recipe. I received succinct instructions on proportions of potatoes, onions, eggs, baking soda and matzo meal. “It’s my personal recipe,” she wrote, which was code for don’t fuck up my legacy.

The morning of the party, I performed my manly duties—moving chairs, rearranging tables and, sigh, scrubbing the toilet—then decamped to lesbian bar Cattyshack (249 Fourth Ave. betw. President & Carroll Sts., 718-230- 5740; B’klyn) to watch football while my girlfriend decorated. It’s been tough being a Cincinnati Bengals fan, with my team mired in another miserable campaign.At most bars, I’m mocked for my Bengals allegiance. But at Cattyshack, I can quietly root on my hangdog underdogs while nursing my virgin bloody Mary. In years past, I glugged beer during games. However, the crushing losses, combined with depressing alcohol, left me a sullen wreck. Remove booze, I found, and I could stomach the defeats, instead of kicking the bar with my Converse.

“Spicy virgin bloody?” asked the bartender, a gregarious gal sporting a deflated faux-hawk. “Sure thing,” I said, settling in for another afternoon of disappointment. “I had to escape the house—we’re having a Hanukkah party tonight.”

“Ouch.You need something stronger than a virgin bloody,” she said. She retrieved a Maker’s Mark bottle and poured me a hefty amber measure, then uncapped a hoppy Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. “You need to be drunk before heading home.” By the game’s end, I was elated—as a Hanukkah gift, the Bengals won a rare game— and inebriated. “Starting early?” my girlfriend asked, when I wobbled into the kitchen.“I don’t know if it’s wise to use sharp knives.”

“Ish always wise,” I said, swiftly, clumsily removing potatoes’ skins. She sighed and left the kitchen, greeting the guests who arrived bearing tender brisket, smoky whitefish salad, sweet kugel, bialys, bagels and pickles, pickles, pickles. Candles were lit, prayers were mumbled and then I returned to the stove to prepare the potato pancakes.

“You’re everyone’s Jewish mother tonight,” my friend Randi said, as the latkes browned and took their irregular shape.