Drunk of the Day: So Trashed.

Sleep, my pretty, sleep the sleep of babies and princes. And don’t get broken glass wedged into your cheeks.

All You Can Eat (Burp)

Only because it’s mildly entertaining, and I enjoy encouraging mankind to engage in wanton gluttony, transforming into Stay-Puft Marshmallow Men and Women, I will present this latest Metromix ditty: All You Can Eat. Can you taste the delicious journalism? Oh, I can. No, wait—that’s just tears shed for my rapidly imploding industry.

Gut Instinct: In the Second Place

This is a story of second acts and an act best banned in public.

At the turn of 2000, in condo-deficient Williamsburg, there existed the fantastically skuzzy Sweetwater Tavern. It was a pigsty where punkers guzzled Guinness by the 20ounce glass, shot stick and screamed along to deafening rock ditties. Sadly, Sweetwater died, reinvented as a same-named bistro slinging buttery escargot.

A mile or two toward East Williamsburg, big, boring neighborhood joint Grand Central opened five years ago. The bar’s chief selling point was that tipplers received free, raw chicken to BBQ. A potential salmonella lawsuit, sure, but it was a nice perk. It was Grand’s sole perk. So what occurs when a crappy bar closes and bartenders from a dearly departed dive scratch their drink-serving itch? They turn that fowl bar into The Second Chance Saloon (659 Grand St.betw.Leonard St.& Manhattan Ave., 718-387-4411; B’klyn), a paean to Iggy Pop excess—that is, whiskey by the barrel, beer for a song and the tuneage tinnitus loud.

“Hurry up, hurry up!” I tell my girlfriend one Tuesday evening,as we hustle down grimy Grand Street toward The Second Chance.

“What’s the rush?” “Happy hour ends at 9 p.m.” “Cheap bastard.” “You certainly liked that grilled tilapia sandwich,” I say. Minutes ago we had departed Mother’s (347 Graham Ave.betw.Metropolitan Ave. & Conselyea St., 718-384-7778; B’klyn), a mirror-filled pub where I struck a bargain: I’d buy dinner if she’d accompany me to Second.

“No such things as a free ride with you, is there?” she says, opening the front door decorated with a halo-crowned headless chicken—an oblique nod to Grand Central’s past.Whereas Grand Central was as appealing as bathroom mold, with yellow walls and ill lighting that made customers appear as green-skinned zombies, Second is dark and prickly: big booths, Big Buck Hunter, a snug graveled backyard and a rattlesnake DON’T TREAD ON ME flag.The punk juke plays studded-leather ragers such as The Pogues, Cro-Mags and Dead Moon. On stools, bike messengers sip Miller High Life, while concertteed men slurp Evan Williams whiskey.

“No whiskey on a Tuesday,” my girlfriend says, ordering an effervescent Blackthorn Cider. Most pints run $5 (a buck off everything till 9 p.m.), including Guinness (20 ounces, natch) and local microbrews from Brooklyn Brewery and Keegan’s Ales. Class is offset with affordable crud: $2 Schaefer cans and $3 Genessee Cream Ale—a worthy successor to PBR’s lowbrow throne.

“Give me a Genny,” I tell the bartender, using my collegiate nomenclature. Back then, I patronized a black-walled, nicotine-stained bunker dubbed The Union. There, I learned to chain-smoke and adore icy Genny, sold for a buck a bottle. To me, Genny tastes like youth, like rebellion, like— “Crap,” my girlfriend says, wrinkling her nose. “Blasphemy,” I say, retrieving my precious nectar. Her harmful words hardly harsh my mellow: For every Tuesday, there’s an ulterior motive to visiting this righteous dive: karaoke, featuring 75,000 songs of potential aural disaster.

“Oh, no,” my girlfriend says. “I love you, but—” “I sing like a tone-deaf frog,” I finish. Her silence is understandably damning. Most mornings, she suffers through my shower warbling: scratchy, croaked torture, as painful as those high-frequency whistles that cause canines to cower, paws covering ears.“I’ll take that whiskey now,” she says, selecting a sweet, potent hot toddy packed with whiskey and honey liqueur.

I request instant confidence—Schaefer and whiskey, always $4—and thumb through the thick song binder. I ponder Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and countless hairspray anthems before a soulful dirge attracts my bespectacled eyes: “When a Man Loves a Woman.”

“You like that Michael Bolton song?” my girlfriend asks, cringing as if learning an awful secret. “No. Percy Sledge’s original version.”

“Percy who?” “Sledge,” I say, recounting the Alabama soul man’s tale: After getting laid off from a job—and his gal pal—he turned his heartbreak into that stirring lament, which rocketed to No. 1 and into my tender, teenage heart. I listened to “When” obsessively one teary high school eve, when Keri Ptak dumped me for a pothead with facial hair seemingly grown from a Chia Pet kit. I punch in Percy’s hit and grab the mike. Horns and strings swell. I enter a widelegged stance, like a football lineman. And then I open my mouth, letting my liquorloosened vocal cords spend roughly four minutes mimicking an African-American man from The Deep South—an act, I erroneously envisioned, every bit as punk and lovable as Second Chance itself.

“How’d I do?” I ask my mortified sweetheart, the bargoers’ applause on pause. “Next time,” she says, sipping her warm, memory-eradicating cocktail, “I want more than a tilapia sandwich.”

Gut Instinct: Katz Scratch Fever

Once a week, sometimes more, often less, my friend Aaron and I convene at bars and pour ourselves into the kind of confessional conversation that fills saloons at last call. “And that’s why my beagle always peed when she saw me,” I’ll tell Aaron, swallowing my seventh pint of something strong, wet and truth-inducing. Our drunken summit is therapeutic, a stand-in for the psychologists I’ve distrusted since 1989. One afternoon in fifth grade, after blemishing my straight-A record with a B, I tossed chairs across my classroom. They landed with a clatter; I landed on a quack’s leather chair.

“Why were you so mad?” the bearded doc asked. If I were a Mensa munchkin, I’d answer: “Undue parental expectations.” Instead, I idly picked a knee scab and said, “I want to go home.” “I think it’s great you got a B,” the psych said. “I think you’re wrong,” I replied, as insolent and skeptical at 11 as I am at 30. This is not to imply that I distrust my girlfriend’s counsel. It’s just that her opinion is colored by the fact that we sleep in the same bed—sometimes with each other. She’s as neutral as Iraq. Aaron is Switzerland, minus that nasty Nazi episode. We’ve been friends for 13 years, through all-night raves and coffee-fueled road trips, roommate strife and a thousand shots of Jack. We’re sounding boards, especially since we’re both employed in the supernova-ing publishing universe.

“Soon enough, I’ll be writing press releases for soup kitchens,” I tell Aaron one Wednesday eve at Local 269 (260 E. Houston St. at Suffolk St., 212-228-9874). The gritty, rickety-chaired rocker dive proffers a recession steal: two-for-one taps till 9 p.m. “I’ll be in line for the soup kitchen,” he says, ordering another Brooklyn Lager. “I don’t think there’ll be much need for retouching pictures when everyone is wearing potato sacks.”

“Another round for me, too,” I tell the scruffy-faced bartender, sighing. Job prospects for surly writers who spend their days typing in their underwear and their nights drinking are surprisingly slim.

The evening evaporates, one cut-rate pint after another, until our witching hour arrives: 9 p.m. “Time to go home to the wife,” Aaron says, spilling brown beer down his throat.

Five lonely years ago, this early hour would start our evening. Nowadays, employment and romantic entanglement supersede downing another $4 whiskey-and-Schaefer at International Bar or combating coeds in air hockey at Cheap Shots and Beer. Glassyeyed late nights are for yearning singles, while we fuddy-duddies head toward the warm, bosomy embraces waiting at home. Aaron and I stride into the night, bellies growling for a sobering bite. “Ever eaten there?” he asks, gesturing toward Katz’s, the legendary Jewish delicatessen dedicated to brined cucumbers and double-decker pastrami and corned beef sandwiches.

“No—I should rescind my bar mitzvah,” I say, ashamed. Like countless locals, I take the city treasures for granted. We’re surrounded by landmarks, museums and eateries that we neglect to patronize, turned off by a whiff of tourist taint. It’s New Yorkers’ second nature to be too cool for school, but just because something’s popular doesn’t mean it’s worthless—except for Zac Efron.

Through the window, I watch diners gaily devour juice-spurting hot dogs and jaw-dwarfing sandwiches.The tableau is an irresistible advertisement, tractor-beaming us inside this old-world relic packed with neon exhortations (SEND A SALAMI, BEST SANDWICH IN TOWN) and Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda. Meal ticket in hand, we nab corned beef on rye. It’s stacked to the fluorescent lights, served with a log mound of spicy pickles that I nearly spill when delivering the feast to our faux-wood table.

“Ready?” I ask Aaron, as we each grab half. “Ready,” he says, toasting my sandwich like it’s yet another beer. We masticate. It’s love at first bite. The corned beef is carnivorous bliss, with the rye, mustard and thin-sliced meat creating alchemic sandwich magic. “It’s the drunk food of the gods,” I tell Aaron, busily chipmunking his cheeks. Our plate is quickly crumb-less, but booze has made us ravenous. I want more. I need more.To the right: Our camera-toting neighbors’ pastrami is untouched, another casualty of Eyes Bigger Than Stomach Disease. “Are you going to eat that?” I ask, batting my hazel peepers like a shitfaced Shirley Temple.

“It’s all yours,” the scoop-shirted girl says, pushing the plate toward us like it’s road kill. One woman’s trash is my treasure: The pastrami is peppery and meltingly fatty, slicking my fingers with grease. I slurp them clean and then totter to the cash register.

“You know, I’ve lived here nine years and never eaten here,” I tell the zaftig cashier. “That’s a crime,” she says, twisting the guilty knives into my overstuffed tummy. “As punishment, you should eat more pastrami.”

If only our judicial system were so just, I think, as Aaron and I stride into the unexpectedly warm and wonderful night.

Drunk of the Day: French Fries Over Shame

Yeah, they’re writing on his passed-out tummy, but even funnier is that someone is chosing French fries over further shaming their pal. Now that’s a true friend. Or someone’s just hungry.

Gut Instinct: Bloody Good Time

Like a lighting during a blizzard, my brainstorm was equally unexpected and electrifying: “Hon,” I called out to my girlfriend. “I have another excuse to drink.”

“Come look at this couch,” she responded from her office, where she was researching secondhand furniture. She’s currently consumed by nesting, a bird collecting the choicest twigs—preferably mid-century modern.

“Domesticity can wait. Now about this notion—” “It should include lengthy neck massages.” “Better! It’s a party revolving around Bloody Marys.”

“With spicy green beans?” “You must be clairvoyant.” Over the last decade, we’ve both developed serious affinities for New Orleans–style Bloody Marys: the spicier the better, packed with pickled green beans standing soldier straight. Several of these fiery pick-me-ups clear last night’s fog like liquid sunshine.

Luckily for my hangover-ravaged cadaver, replicating Big Easy bloodies is simple. Cheap? Not so much. Zippy beans, either green or wax, from Brooklyn purveyors Rick’s Picks and Wheelhouse Pickles cost upward of $9 a pint. Locally made is often interchangeable with overpriced.

“Just buy a couple jars, cheapskate,” my girlfriend said, perusing credenzas large enough to serve as a birthing station.

“It’s a recession, baby,” I said. “I’m going to pickle green beans.” My first order of business was sourcing mason jars. If Brooklyn were a South Carolina city, this would be a snap. But my local five-anddime is Target. Downtown Brooklyn’s branch is a tornado-swept time warp to communist-era Moscow, with barren shelves, boxer briefs ditched in the (oddly appropriate) hardware department and teenaged employees who’d rather text-message than answer a customer’s question.

“Do you sell mason jars?” I asked an employee on the phone. “Mason who?” “Jars. For pickling.” “Pickles are in the grocery department.”

“No. Pickling.” “Hold, please.” I could’ve listened to listless muzak for hours, but instead a tipster (well, Google) sent me to home-improvement depot Pintchik (478 Bergen St .at Flatbush Ave.,718-783-3333; B’klyn). I bought a dozen moonshine-worthy jugs and booked home, eager to investigate vinegar’s transformative power.

“Can’t you wait? I want to pickle too,” my girlfriend said, marking America’s inaugural appearance of brine-born jealousy.

“You gotta work, hon,” I said. “After all, couches don’t grow on trees.” Threat of scalding-water aside, pickling was an amusing snap.With This American Life babbling in the background, I:

a) Dropped trimmed green beans, fresh dill, mustard seeds and cayenne into a sterilized jar.

b) Topped the mess with a boiling, 50-50 blend of vinegar and water—a quarter cup of Kosher salt for every five cups of liquid.

c) Capped jars, then boiled for 10 minutes. d) Kicked back, cracked a floral Troëgs Nugget Nectar and awaited the coming apocalypse with a stocked larder.

“I feel like a 1950s farmer’s wife,” I told my sweetie that evening, gesturing to my pickled pride. “We’re not role-playing tonight,” she said, retreating to her computer to search for Craigslist couches.

“Your loss,” I replied, moving onto my next round of Drunken Homemaker: infusing vodka. I scored four bottles of crisp, affordable Sobieski vodka and inserted cracked black pepper, crushed Sichuan peppercorns, garlic and dill and Scotch bonnet peppers, which are 40 times hotter than jalapeños.

“Oh, sweet, vengeful God, the burn!” I cried, after rubbing my eyes with peppersluiced digits. “Don’t be so dramatic,” my girlfriend said. “My eyes look like blood-red Niagara Falls!” I shouted.

“It’ll go away. I’ll be in my office.” Couches, it seemed, took precedence over potential blindness. Hours passed, the blazing waterworks ebbed. Days passed, the vodkas were fragrantly infused. Two weeks passed, and the green beans were at their tangy, zesty apex. Right before the bash, a charcoal-gray couch arrived in our blue living room. “Don’t you dare spill anything,” my girlfriend warned friends, who arrived one Saturday morning to sample my wares. Horseradish, garlic, tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, lemons, celery salt, black pepper and Tabasco were spread across a table, allowing guests to mix their preferred a.m. intoxicant.

The garlic-dill was delightfully vampirerepellant. The Scotch bonnet infusion was blistering, though pleasingly zingy when cut with unadulterated vodka.The Sichuan peppercorn was floral, while the black peppercorn was piquant and woodsy—a great Bloody Mary mate. Best yet, the beans were flavor batons, edible wands that knocked the socks off celery.The morning was a success, booze-drenched and budget-friendly, but my hard work was overshadowed by someone else’s efforts.

“The green beans and vodka were super,” one guest said, “but I really, really love that new couch.”

Dollar Grub: Chinatown

Man, that guy is such a shmuck. Looks like he got himself in another adventure, trying to eat one-dollar foods in Chinatown. Are you hungry for cuttlefish skewers? If so, eat it up!

Gut Instinct: Giving Hank’s

A blurry Line separates my professional dipsomania from the swollen-livered lushes with rheumy eyes and a predilection for salty snacks and airplane-bottle booze. I call it Sunday.

On fat-newspaper day, I take a sabbatical from that sweet devil sauce.After a week spent investigating dumpy saloons and pseudo speakeasies, Sunday is reserved for sober R&R, a day when I don’t fall asleep with jeans bunched around my ankles. Recently, though, a fellow writer requested my secrets of freelance-writing survival. Though I could condense my tips to one sentence (“Eat dollar dumplings, embrace rejection and purchase a thesaurus”), he preferred face time at a dive. “How’s Sunday?” he asked.

“Do I have to drink?” I replied. “Not if you don’t want to.” Since I’ve got the willpower of Eliot Spitzer in a hen house, I agreed to convene at noon at downtown Brooklyn’s Hank’s Saloon (46 Third Ave. at Atlantic Ave., 718-625-8003; B’klyn).This flame-decorated honky tonk was formerly the DoRay Tavern, a gritty hangout for

Mohawk Indian ironworkers. Now, Hank’s is both a rocker clubhouse and a sunlight-deficient bunker for blue-collared lugs and pensioners.

“What are you doin’ here?” asks the paperclip-thin bartender, her voice chain-smoked to a rasp. “Not even my regulars come till later.”

“We were looking for quiet,” I say, sitting at a school-desk table. “Well, you found it,” she says, as ’60s ditties soundtracked the saggy-ceilinged dugout.

Stella Artois and Sixpoint Sweet Action pints are ordered, running $6 apiece. Ouch. This isn’t faux-dive dive. This is a dive.We drink slowly and talk quickly. The bartender would like these reversed.

“Know what you guys need to do?” she calls out. Call my parents more often? Make love without whiskey’s aid? “Shots,” she says. “It’s time to do kamikaze shots.” Before we can beg off, she mixes a tart batch and fills several glasses. Too Midwestern-polite to decline her offer, I carry the sorority-girl slurps to our table.We disappear them. “Bring them back up,” the bartender commands.

She refills our shot glasses.We empty them. It’s 1:14 p.m. “How am I going to explain this to my wife?” my friend asks, his tongue booze-thickened.

“Blame me,” I volunteer, sipping my Sixpoint. For my friends, Josh is equally an excuse and an indictment for tardy arrivals and slurred speech.

Our alcohol-greased conversation resumes as AARP-aged customers trickle in, bearing pretzels and newspapers—the armaments of daytime drinking. Hockey players skate across squiggly TVs, while rain spits onto the gray sidewalk. It’s a textbook day to drown miseries, both real and perceived—and, it seems, to gamble.

“Who wants to play high card?” the bartender asks, bringing out a deck. High card is simple enough to hook elementary-schoolers.

Each gambler receives a card, with the highest suit winning. Straightforward, yes, but I’m a cheapskate. At casinos, my miserly ways send me to nickel slots, where I try tricking waitresses into serving me free gin and tonics.

“Come on, it’s just a dollar,” the bartender says. Those are my magic words. I peel off a buck. She passes me the deck to shuffle.

“I can’t shuffle.” “Shuffle,” she commands, as I fumble aces and fours.Though my hand-eye coordination lets me chopstick up string beans or smoke Wii tennis forehands, I shuffle cards like a thumb-less ape. Kings, queens and twos fall to the sticky bar, causing one patron to roll his brown eyes: I’ve failed at manhood.

“Give me those,” he says, taking the cards and shuffling with World Series of Poker flair. The seven contestants each snag a facedown card. One by one, they’re flipped. I receive a king. I’m a winner.

“Beginner’s luck,” scoffs a whiskey drinker. “Let’s play again.” We do. I receive a queen. Win No. 2— eight dollars. “Again,” the whiskey drinker commands.

He ain’t losing to a card-fumbling sissy. Instead, we both lose to a drinker munching baked potato chips. “Who’s in for another round?” the bartender asks. Following gambling’s cardinal rule, I cash out while I’m ahead. We return to our seats. I try completing my origin tale, when the bartender notices our empty cups. “Another beer?” “No, thanks,” I say. It’s impossible to be a productive member of society when you’re seeing double at 3 p.m. “You need more beer,” she says, passing us two Pabst cans, just three bucks apiece. I part with my gambling winnings; the house always wins. Here’s how I lose: “How about some whiskey with that beer?” she asks. During any lengthy drinking session, imbibers both professional and amateur reach a critical juncture, wherein the seesaw of sobriety tilts in the balance. Another beer? A glass of water? A toin-coss decision determines your future, sending you careening downward or landing with a soft, dignified thump.

“We can’t end the day without whiskey,” my pal says, ordering up Old Crow, preferred wincing whiskey for American alcoholics.

“That’s what I like to hear,” the bartender says, setting up two amber shots of avoidable disaster.

Drunk of the Day: In the Grass

Sleep, my pretty, sleep. Your ass, my good man, is grass.

One Drink, Five Ways: Big Beer

Thirsty. So thirsty. I can never get…enough. In today’s Metromix, I pen tale of big beer vessels. Go big or go home!