Gut Instinct: I Love Busch

That’s a nice hat.

Here’s how I learned to love Busch Light: Weekends during high school, long after my parents were deep in sugarplum dreams, my band of suburban miscreants congregated in my backyard. There we embraced recipes as dangerous as the makeshift bombs (toilet-bowl cleaner + aluminum foil + two-liter container = BOOM!) we exploded in neighboring woods. For example: Take one hot tub cranked to 106 degrees. Add a trampoline. Mix with a 30-pack of frosty Busch Light, purchased at a lenient beer-and-wine drive-thru.

“They don’t even ask if I’m 21,” boasted dip-chewing Ryan. He was a 35-year-old trapped in a high-schooler’s frame. By 17, Ryan had six-plus surgeries performed on both knees, leaving him bowlegged. Add his bushy goatee and wavy hair combed backward and gelled until stiff enough to stop bullets, and it was understandable why he was never carded.

As moonlight bathed our pimply bodies, we climbed into my parents’ hot tub while Geoff assembled his latest invention. Geoff was an engineering whiz who, last I heard, was maintaining the navy’s nuclear submarines. His smarts and Protestant work ethic were balanced by self-destructive deviancy. During high school, that meant constructing flame-powered potato guns and colossal beer bongs.

As college freshman across the Midwest know well, a beer bong is a funnel attached to plastic tubing. Though it recalled a torture tool, we fought for the chance to insert the tube betwixt our jaws and then test our gag reflex: The foamy brew racing down our gullet felt like a dam burst. If you finished the funnel, we cheered. If you vomited, we cheered—quietly, lest my parents rustled. A decade and a half later, I’m mortified that I considered chugging three beers concurrently a fun Saturday night. But back at 17, the beer bong felt like a portal into an adult universe. We pretended to be mature by pounding Busch Light.

“Why don’t you buy Bud?” I asked Ryan one night. Back then, my fall afternoons were spent watching the Cincinnati Bengals’ and Ohio State Buckeyes’ gridiron battles. Halftime commercials trained me to crave Budweiser.

Ryan pointed to his leather wallet. “You want to pay more than $8 a case?” I shook my head like a pit bull ripping apart a squirrel; my cheap gene is innate, not learned. “Then stop complaining and drink it,” he said, opening a can of what became my favorite watery mood-adjuster. Conditioning convinced my taste buds my Busch Light was America’s best cheap beer. My belief endured through college, lasting till my arrival in New York City nine long years ago.

“Do you have any Busch Light?” I’d query the Greeks running the delis in Astoria, where I first rested my head. They’d eyeball me warily, like I’d uttered words not found in one of Queens’ 138-odd spoken languages.They’d point to Bud, Coors, Keystone Light or, if I was lucky, the odd 24-ounce Busch. However, the full-flavored brew was unpalatable; envision a dedicated Diet Coke drinker forced to swill corn syrupy Coke.

Like a heroin addict settling for methadone, I weaned myself off Busch Light with equally refreshing—and affordable—Coors Light. That was my targeted beverage last week as I strolled to Brooklyn Beer & Soda (648 Washington Ave., betw. Bergen & Dean Sts., B’klyn, 718-622-8800). I was stocking up for my annual birthday party at Coney Island, a daylong bacchanal of cheap beer and griddle-crunchy, mushroom-stuffed quesadillas from Plaza Mexico Doña Zita (Bowery St., at Henderson Walk, B’klyn).

Since opening several years back, Brooklyn Beer has been my go-to for mass brew. The wholesaler sells 36-packs of Budweiser for about $20, a price bordering on Ohio-cheap. Plus, there are growlers of local suds from Sixpoint and Brooklyn Brewery, and swell microbrews. It’s a dream for the discriminating drunkard. I was striding toward the Coors Light when my eyes swirled like peppermints: On a bottom shelf, beneath a $12.99 sign, sat a solitary 30-pack of Busch Light.

I grabbed the dusty, stained-black box and gave it a girlfriend hug. I’ve missed you for so long, I thought, as I paid and hustled home. Unable to wait till Coney, where I wore bathing trunks that barely covered my derriere and sensually applied sunscreen to my upper thighs, I grabbed a frosty cylinder. I cracked the tab, and soon the fizzy bubbles brought back warm, fuzzy memories. Though I just turned 31, I still loved how 17 tasted.

NYC Homebrew Tour!

Hey, y’all, in conjunction with New York City’s Craft Beer Week, I’m going to be leading a tour of Brooklyn homebrewers, tons of samples included. Here’s the info. Sign up soon, yo.

NYC HOMEBREWERS TOUR

Saturday, September 12. Tour limited to 20. $25/person includes samples—and a BBQ. I’ll show you the joys and tribulations of homebrewing in Brooklyn’s gnat-sized apartments–without compromising taste. We’ll venture inside the homes of the city’s finest amateur brewers, see their set-ups, discuss their craft and, most importantly, sample from their stashes of superlative beer. There will be several stops; bring a Metrocard.

Beer of the Week: Bleeding Buckeye Red Ale

What’s little in the middle and big in the end? ? I am! Oh, and Ohio. In this week’s brew column, I sample Bleeding Buckeye Red Ale, from a little brewery in Columbus called Elevator. Thirsty? Drink it up!

Gut Instinct: A Fine Evening

I blame bad art for getting busted.

“My friend takes amazing pictures,” my girlfriend said, fawning in a fashion that likely meant his photos were unfit for Mars Bar’s putrescent toilet.

“Is there free wine or liquor?” I asked. I judge an art opening not on the works presented but by the open bar. Serving Franzia or Yellowtail equals a big fat fail. Pour Brooklyn Lager or Jameson, and I’ll give any gallery a glowing review.

“Tons of free alcohol,” my girlfriend said, soothing me with the honeyed words I needed to hear. Upon arriving at the graffiti-splashed Williamsburg gallery, I was unsure of the larger letdown: The colossal prints of unclothed ladyfolk contorted (artfully, of course) on burning leaves or the sole social lubricant: room-temperature chardonnay, so metallic that a Bowery bum would pause before pouring the rotgut into his rotting gut.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” I told my girlfriend, decamping to a corner bodega to procure more palatable mood-altering potion. I scored Sierra Nevada’s skunky Torpedo Extra IPA.The ale’s so assertively hoppy it smells like marijuana. Outside the gallery, I dropped the 12-ouncer into a brown paper bag, popped the cap and pulled on the cool, piney pleasure.The Torpedo destroyed my frown, sending tiny waves of contentment and what I’ve come to call happiness rippling through my bloodstream. I took another taste, then another for good measure, so lost in my good-beer reverie that I neglected to notice my audience.

“Come ovah here,” a stubble-headed cop commanded, beckoning from inside his cruiser. I pointed to my chest: moi? “Yeah, you. What do you think you’re doing?” “I just stepped outside of the gallery, sir,” I said, employing the deferential tones that the boys in blue so love.

“You know you can’t drink on the sidewalk,” said the officer, who barely looked old enough to drink himself.

“But I’m—”

“No buts. Let me see your ID.”

Let’s pause for a station break. Aside from dipsomania and my tendency to sniff my sneakers, my most glaring character defect is my disdain for authority. Teachers, bosses, cops, they all rankle my canker. I chose the freelancing life, toiling from home in my holey underwear and finger-scooping crunchy Jif from the jar, because I’m incapable of answering to a tight-assed supervisor. Hell, I’ve held just one full-time job in my life, and that was scribing for a C-rate porn publisher—who would’ve fired me for insubordination if I hadn’t first quit. This diatribe is just a protracted way of saying that, despite the knockoff Louis Vuitton wallet bulging my right pocket, I fibbed to Officer Babycheeks.

“Whaddya mean you don’t have an ID?” the officer replied. His jaw dropped in disbelief, as if I told him that de-clawed hamsters ran circles inside my skull.

“I just don’t have it,” I said haughtily, still cradling my beer. Truth is, I was practicing what my police-averse pal Aaron preached. During December’s drunken Kris Kringle Santacon gathering, Aaron and his wife were caught guzzling whiskey. The officers de manded identification, but Aaron insisted they lacked licenses. “Never give a cop your ID,” he later whispered. Incensed, but not wanting to handcuff Mr. and Mrs. Claus, the officer let them loose. My jean shorts, however, were not the same as a jolly Saint Nick outfit.

“Well, there’s two options,” the cop said, his lips curling around his canines like Dracula does moments before piercing a pulsing jugular. “You can either show me an ID right now, or you can take a ride to the Tombs.” For those who’ve never had the pleasure of incarceration, the “Tombs” is the fun-loving nickname for the Manhattan Detention Complex. My tough-guy act cracked like an egg. I passed the cop my license, hoping he’d be pleased I was an organ donor. “Oops, forgot I had it!” I said, laughing in machine-gun bursts. Ha-ha, I’m so absent-minded!

“Why’d you lie?” the cop asked, his anger boiling like water on a stove.

“I…didn’t know I had my wallet on me,” I replied, my own personal entry into the Bad Excuse Hall of Fame.

“You know, I was gonna let you off with a warning, but now I’m gonna give you a ticket.” He passed me a carnation-pink summons for an open-container violation, another $25 for the city coffers. “Now stay inside,” Officer Babycheeks said. I followed his index finger back into the gallery, a fate that, if not for the Torpedo I still seized, might’ve been worse than a night in jail.

Dollar Grub: Coney Island Avenue

Oh, hi there! Today’s article is a continuation of my long-running cheap-eats series, Dollar Grub. In my latest installment, I pedal my big ol’ thighs down Coney Island Avenue, snacking on the nabe’s best buck eats. Hungry? Eat it up!

Beer of the Week: Ska Brewing’s Modus Hoperandi

Do you like your IPAs stinky and skunky? I sure do. In my latest Beer of the Week column, I pen tale of Ska Brewing’s Modus Hoperandi, a beer that’s seemingly as potent as everyone’s favorite little green herb. Curious? Drink it up!

Gut Instinct: All the Underage

Got another Camel Unfiltered?

My earliest memories of falling on my face stem from the Greenery, an 18-year-old Ohio drunk’s best friend.

Slanting and falling apart across two floors, the fetid dive was spacious as a barn— and smelled like one too. Chunky upchuck petrified in corners, while a black broth of stale beer and cigarette butts slicked the linoleum. Hormone-addled teens groped in shadowy nooks, their indiscretions fueled by the Greenery’s door policy: have cash, get trashed, regardless if you’re 18 or 80.

“Open your wallets and head upstairs, freshmen,” ordered the bouncers, their biceps the size and color of Thanksgiving turkeys, sending students up a sticky flight into rapture. And no night was more glorious than Quarter-Draft Wednesday.Two bits bought an 8-ounce beer of foamy, fabulous fun. Two bucks equaled a one-way ticket into a shimmering new world, one in which undergrads occasionally removed their undergarments.

Though the short-lived Greenery (cops eventually followed the tributaries of stumbling, slurring teenagers to the source) was heaven for freshmen, it was hell for another long-suffering breed: “What do you mean you’re not going to tip me?!” I recalled one bartender screaming, his hair gelled so stiffly it could deflect bullets. “I just poured you 12 beers!”

“I need more money for more beer,” I said, cradling the joy juice like a newborn. “Yeah, well if you don’t tip me, you’re not getting any more beers. Respect your bartender,” he said. He taught me a lifelong lesson: Don’t anger the man who holds the key to your happiness. Like a primordial creature escaping the ooze, the lesson crawled into my consciousness last week, when my pal Matt hoodwinked me into tending bar at a Brooklyn nonprofit’s art show. Featuring college artists.

“I’ve never been surrounded by so many 19-year-old girls,” Matt says, appraising the rosy-cheeked ranks. “And they all want something from me.”

“Beer,” I tell him, protecting the icy cooler of Brooklyn Lager from grasping, gaudily painted fingernails. “It’s like a female prison riot.” Playing bartender was not tonight’s plan. Originally, I was supposed to grab Matt and bolt back to my abode.We had a date with a bottle of Rittenhouse Rye, my spicy whiskey sweetheart, and a sixer of Humboldt Brewing’s smooth, citrusy Red Nectar Ale. Instead, I am now fending off summer-break students lusting for beer like zombies for cerebellums—and with manners to match.

“It’s three bucks for each Brooklyn Lager, plus tip,” I tell one melon-chested blonde, her plunging red neckline a ripe reminder of that statutory law. “I donated at the door,” she says. I try to explain that’s fantastic, but money is required. “But…”

“No buts. Go to a bar or any bodega and you pay for each beer. That’s how drinking works.” She withdraws 31 cents from a green change purse. I shake my head. She storms off, muttering sweet nothings that aren’t so sweet.

A guy with a baseball hat and a John Waters mustache has a similarly difficult time comprehending commerce. “Can’t I just have a beer for free?” he whines. “No.”

“Why not?” I just shake my head, fully comprehending America’s no-money? Here’s-a-home! crisis.

A kewpie doll of a gal, cheeks chipmunked with baby fat, shuffles my way.“Perhaps I should get to know you better—like, over a beer?”

My hands clam, my heart hummingbirds. I’m cohabiting with my girlfriend, however, happily living in rumpled-sheets sin. So I kibosh the coy talk. I hike my jeans and channel my inner old man, no doubt assisted by my recent affinity for Blue Sky Bakery’s bran muffins.

“Excuse me, but just how old are you?” I ask in principal tones. I hold a sweaty Brooklyn Lager like a switch, lightly banging it against my callused palm. “What’s your birthday?”

“August 25, 1986,” she spits back, barely missing a beat. “That makes you how old?”

“Twenty…three?”

“Sorry, little sister,” I say, dropping the beer in its icy bath. “You need better math than that. Or at least a fake ID.”

“Come on,” she pleads. “I’ve been lying my way into clubs since I’ve had braces.”

“Is that supposed to make me trust you?” Her eyelids flutter, a hot knife into men’s buttery hearts. Not mine, not tonight. Though the Greenery made me, I, sir, am no Greenery.

Beer of the Week: Mama’s Little Yella Pils

Beer! Is it too early for beer today? Not at all! Today’s BOTW is a little yellow beauty from Colorado’s killer Oskar Blues. It’s called Mama’s Little Yella Pils and it sure is purty tasty. Drink it up!

Gut Instinct: Ruin Your Night

Whenever I’m feeling like a filthy degenerate, I like to pay a visit to Port Authority.

Despite Giuliani’s iron-fisted efforts, the blocks surrounding the bus station still brim with inflatable sex dolls, airplane bottles of vodka and dollar slices of cardboard pizza. Scallywags patrol glass-strewn streets, wetting their wizened whistles at Dave’s Tavern and the Holland Bar. Around Port Authority, drinking is serious business. And business is always booming.

The latest addition to this licentious realm is Blue Ruin (538 9th Ave. betw. West 39th & 40th Sts.; no phone). The dark drinking lair is a no-nonsense stack of bricks and shiny tin and a pool table, with the ol’ stars and stripes tacked to a wall. And there’s no knob on the men’s bathroom, turning the toilet into an accidental peepshow. “I did not need to see that,” a tattooed dude mumbled one night, catching me in midstream.

If the confines feel familiar, that’s because Blue Ruin once housed heavy metal hangout Bellevue, where Pantera pounded Pabst and bums tossed trashcans through windows like evil discus athletes. Bellevue was a very specific brand of liverpickling fun. So it was with great sadness that the space was replaced by bright, clean sports bar Why Not? It failed. To succeed, Blue Ruin has once more lowered the bar.

“Is this a knifing saloon?” asks my friend Aaron, my constant accomplice to houses of ill repute. “It’s just a little slice of happy hour heaven,” I reply. To my dwindling brain cells’ enduring detriment, every inebriant is two-for-one ‘til 8 p.m. Aaron and I hunker at the sticky bar. To our left: Several Spanish-speaking guys—a touch taller than the Wizard of Oz’s little people—are guzzling red wine and massaging one another’s shoulders. To our right: a gaunt grandpa who recalls David Carradine. In front: a busty bartender, her low-cut top and tendency to bend over leaving no question that her finest assets are silicone-free.

“Whaddya want, boyzzzz?” she asks, drawing out the z’s like we’re backup dancers in a teenybopper musical act.

The tap selection is tepid (Guinness, Stella and the typical undesirable Americans), but Brooklyn Lager is a lifebuoy in an uninspiring sea of swill. We both grab a $6 Brooklyn. “Attention, everyone, look alive!” the bartender bellows into a megaphone. Sluggish barflies flutter their heavily lidded eyes and straighten their slouches. Someone burps. Someone goes woo-hoo. “That’s better,” she says, pleased as punch.

One of the teensy men—eyeglasses like magnifying lenses—swerves to the bathroom. He stumbles back to the bar, chased by beefy men screaming “puta.” The little man’s companion holds back his mate, squirming in his grasp, as the shouts mount. In drips and drabs, I deduce that he purposely knocked the pool balls askew, breaking guy rule No. 231: Never mess with a man’s balls.

“Looks like you get to watch midget wrestling for free tonight,” David Carradine says, clapping Aaron and I on the backs. He laughs lustily, creepily, like a stranger with sweet candy. But before we roll out the spandex and baby oil, cooler heads prevail. The pool players defuse. Aaron and I resume drinking.The wee men beside us start imbibing at an accelerated pace.They finish full glasses of wine like water.They rub one another’s shoulders with renewed vigor, as if they’re corner men pumping up boxers.

Aaron and I scoot down a few feet, into the comparative safety of creepy David Carradine. Does he know Kung Fu too? The pint-size troublemaker moseys toward the rear, where a rainbow of balls race across green felt. What now? I wonder as he takes a left into the bathroom. Upon exiting the toilet—the pool sharks eyeing him warily—I see that he has transformed into a pinball. On jelly legs he bumps into a wall, before careening toward the bar and crashing into several men wearing Mets caps, sending beer foaming everywhere. They stand. “Lo siento,” he slurs, tossing down dollar bills and lurching toward the door. He hits it. His partner gathers his dry cleaning and staggers behind.They burst outside and lurch down Ninth Avenue, like wild ponies on the lam, just another average eve around Port Authority.

“Now that,” David Carradine says, turning back to his beer, “was the drunkest midget I’ve ever seen.”

Beer of the Week: Full Sail Session Black

It’s Monday, and you know what time that is: Beer of the Week! This week’s beer is the Full Sail Session Black, a flavorful lager the color of my heart. This beer’s a tasty summer indulgence, a lager fit for folks that hate lagers. Thirsty? Drink it up!

Gut Instinct: Thanks for the Mammaries

In my short, eventful life, I’ve shoved many a breast into my mouth.

Mainly, the mammaries have hailed from chickens, like the crunchy, juicy cluckers from Fort Greene’s No. 7 (7 Greene Ave., betw. Oxford & Fulton Sts.) or the East Village’s first-rate The Redhead (349 E. 13th St., bet. 1st & 2nd Aves.), which makes waist-busters as fab as anything fried down South. But no breast experience could prepare me for what I ingested in northern Africa.

Armed with Pepto-Bismol and a fistful of credit cards, I recently vacationed in Morocco. The trip was my girlfriend’s fancy, but her vegetarianism made her a terrible dining partner in a country where lamb and camel are consumed by the metric ton. Fortunately, our companions were Parisian pals Emily and Bati, a Frenchman who favors snails, pigeons and duck tongues by the dozen.

“The quacking makes them extra delicious,” he said when I saw him six months ago, sucking flesh from the appendages at Flushing’s Sichuan star Little Pepper (133-43 Roosevelt Ave.). He’s a fearless eater, unafraid of offal or fermented stinky tofu. The more unfortunate—and cheaper—the comestible, the happier he is. Even better, Bati is forever famished.

“Let’s eat,” he ordered, upon our arrival in sun-baked Marrakesh. After 14 hours of flight, including a layover in Brussels, where I drank monk-made Orval beer at sunrise, I was eager to devour Morocco. In Marrakesh, that meant visiting the teeming city’s chaotic heart: Djemaa El Fna. Once the site of public executions (its translated name is “assembly of the dead”), the expansive square bristles with snake charmers, henna artists, zooming scooters, guitarists wearing live chickens as hats and street vendors, their aromatic meat smoke swirling above the hubbub.

After every evening’s Islamic call to prayer, numbered food stalls materialize in regimented rows. Sweaty chefs in white smocks ignite stoves and stack hills of veggies and skewered kebabs. Pushy hawkers proffer menus and boasts (“Hey, Starvin’ Marvin, our food is finger lickin’ good,” one grinning salesmen says; “Five-star Michelin,” another says, gesturing to a grease-covered bench). The scene recalls Red Hook’s ballfield vendors, as run by the East Sixth Street Indian gang on amphetamines. But like basset hounds on the hunt, Bati and I sniff out deliciousness.

A thin, circular bread loaf is split and swollen with hard-boiled eggs and potatoes, then sprinkled with fresh herbs, cumin and pepper-spiked harissa. Harira (bean soup) is soothing and chickpea-packed, while pinkies of sausages are greasy guilty pleasures. Still, what’s the fun of visiting a foreign country and subsisting on victuals you can identify? Dining abroad is about escaping your culinary comfort zone by opening your mind—and mouth—to new-fangled foodstuffs. In love and dining, everything is fair game.

In Beijing, I speared a rooster’s gelatinous, chewy cockscomb. Kazakhstan provided a quivering mass of camel tripe. And in Marrakesh, Bati and I sat at a stall displaying lamb heads, their teeth frozen in macabre smiles that might’ve inspired the Joker. “Are you a lily?” Bati asked, rubbing his hands and licking his lips.

“I’m more of a poppy,” I said, ordering a quarter head. It was dunked into a gurgling, oily stockpot, then hacked apart as casually as a cold-blooded killer—jawbone shattered, brain matter splattered like gray jam. The gory spectacle resulted in meat shards that were sharp, rich and satisfying, provided I ignored the blackened lamb eye sockets staring my direction. While Bati scooped up brown nose bits, I turned my attention to a Christmas ham–size hunk of meat the color of flan. In flawless French (Morocco’s second language, thanks to colonialism), Bati inquired as to the food’s origins.

“He said it was a woman’s tit,” Bati said, puzzled. A woman’s tit? A breast, I surmised, running the phrase through my foreign-translation filter. Sure, why not try the breast of lamb! The breast was hacked into bite-size bricks, then served sauce-less. I grabbed a chunk and, beaming like a beheaded lamb, incisored it in half. This was unlike any sheep I’d consumed, almost sexual in its sensual lusciousness.

“There’s nothing like sheep breast,” I boasted to Bati.

“Do you know what you’re eating?” he asked, pushing away the plate.

“I’m eating—oh, no,” I said, as the dots connected like a terrible constellation. There is no breast of sheep; I was eating a sheep’s breast, the nipple-covered mammary glands fit for suckling baby lambs.

“No,” I moaned. I envisioned a mama sheep bleating mournfully, unable to feed her offspring, their tiny mouths grasping for nipples now entering my digestive tract.

“Yes,” Bati said, grabbing another gristly lump of lamb face, its smile long vanished. “Looks like you’re a lily after all.”