Gut Instinct: I’ve Got Rhythm

I am a sad Bengals fan. So sad for so many years.

“It’s time to make you a football widow,” tell my girlfriend on a recent Sunday, as the clock ticks close to 1 p.m.—kickoff time for the first slate of NFL games.

She sighs.“Off to the lesbian bar?” The last couple years, I’ve caught my bumbling Cincinnati Bengals inside the cave-like confines of Park Slope’s unlikely NFL hangout, girly club Cattyshack. There, I could choke down bloodies while watching my footballers choke away countless games. Unlike other local bars, namely the unruly 200 Fifth, nobody berated me as Bengals losses piled like dog poo. Cattyshack was a kinder, calmer football clubhouse—a breed with a fruit fly’s lifespan.

An ownership dispute resulted in Cattyshack’s springtime rebranding as 249 Bar and Lounge, an LGBT-friendly establishment. It flopped like New Coke. A recent cruise-by revealed a shuttered gate and a sign reading CLUB FOR SALE.

“I’m not sure, baby,” I reply, grabbing my bike. “There’s gotta be somewhere in Brooklyn for a Bengals fan.”

I pedal toward blue-collar Windsor Terrace, peeking in Farrell’s. A battalion of off-duty firefighters and cops—Styrofoam freighters of foamy beer in hand—cheer the J-E-T-S. Unexpectedly, there’s not a Sunkistorange Bengals jersey in sight. I push on, fighting temptation to buy a flaky, curried veggie DUB Pie, when my friend Aaron’s advice tiptoes into my consciousness.

“Go to Rhythm & Booze,” he advised last year. “They have every game on TV— and cheap beer.” His words haunting my ears, I wind through leafy Windsor Terrace’s till I find Rhythm & Booze (1674 10th Ave., betw. Prospect Ave. & Sherman St., 718- 788-9699, Brooklyn), a corner saloon with a name recalling a third-rate wedding cover band. I enter Rhythm and, amid the greenclad Jets fans, I notice a graying, construction-worker sort sporting an orange-and-black Bengals jersey. I charge him like a bull stampeding a toreador’s red cape. “Bengals fans are a rare breed in Brooklyn,” I say, by way of introduction.

“It’s a curse,” he replies, ordering the first of countless Heinekens.

“True that,” I reply wearily, affixing my rump on a busted green stool. Long-suffering Bengals fans suffer a form of sportsbased Stockholm Syndrome. No matter today’s outcome, Rhythm is a comforting, welcoming room: The tavern’s sunny, with both waitress-service tables and an L-shape bar lined with dudes in Sunday dungarees. Above that, flat-screen TVs crowd side by side, like colorful soldiers. In fact, nearly every centimeter of wall space is decorated with televisions, each broadcasting a different gridiron battle—but with just one sound output, from the Jets game. It’s like watching a badly dubbed foreign movie, or perhaps a silent film starring overweight, spandex-clad mimes with violent tendencies.

But I will gladly take football in even a silent format, especially when accompanied by inexpensive brews ($4 to $4.75 a pint). Rhythm pours a dozen-odd drafts, ranging from pigskin-appropriate Bud Light to Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Guinness, poured as slow and creamy as cupcake frosting. I order one and 12 chicken wings, discounted to $.50 apiece on game day.

Oftentimes, fried fowl wings are minuscule, more bone than flesh. Not so at Rhythm. The flats and drummettes are meaty, as oily and plump as Conan-era Arnold Schwarzenegger. They’re juicy giants, more enjoyable than the Bengals game: a ragged affair filled with fumbles and penalties, missed tackles and injured atheletes with knees as shredded as packaged cheese. Nonetheless, for my fellow football watchers—stubbly middle-aged men, some pouring Bud into glasses as carefully as fine wine—the outcomes are far less important than escapism: from homes, from wives, from hectic lives.

My days and evenings are as stuffed as chile rellenos, from writing about drinking to, well, drinking in order to get material to write. I rarely allow myself to sit still for three hours, to de-stress and unwind—even if it means muttering obscenities at a silent TV. My girlfriend thinks I’m football-crazed. “I can’t believe you’re checking the Bengals’ online message board,” she says, as disgusted as if I were downloading transsexual porn.

What she misses is that watching football is my meditation. Perhaps it’d be better to unwind with yoga, but if a relaxation routine works, why change? Cattyshack is dead.

Long live Rhythm & Booze, which passes my most crucial test: After the Bengals soulcrushingly blow the game in the last 30 seconds, no one mocks me. Sometimes a defeat can feel an awful lot like a win.

Beer of the Week: Southern Tier’s Pumking

Spooky!

Another week, another beer. This time I take a seasonal spin with the Southern Tier Pumking, a pretty little number that tastes like liquefied pumpkin pie. I likes it a lot. Do you? Are you thirsty? If so, drink it up!

Gut Instinct: Challah at Me

Oh, yeah, I’m rolling deep with bread.

It was a dark and drunken night, long past the hour of common sense, so naturally I was swerving my bike home from Williamsburg. My then-roommate Andrew and I had drunk two too many Styrofoam tankards of beer from Turkey’s Nest, where the faded décor and prices are time-warped in 1982: $4 buys 32 ounces of foamy fun, tip included.

“It’s like they’re begging you to get drunk,” said Andrew, who takes hairstyling cues from Hassids’ curly forelocks. Naturally, he felt right at home as we rolled through yarmulke-wearing South Williamsburg and into Clinton Hill. We steered toward empty beds, another night of alcohol-deadened sleep.These were the late, lonely days of 2004, before he fell in love with a dreadlocked seamstress, following her to San Francisco and heartbreak. I was in the ragged end of a long relationship, in which fuck you was a term of endearment. Such giant beers provided our day’s sole joy.

“Something smells amazing,” Andrew said, stopping on Fulton Street and inhaling the cool air. I followed suit, discerning the sweet perfume of freshly baked bread— an aroma as intoxicating as what I’d recently swallowed. Maybe it was Andrew’s hair. Maybe the scent was my Madeleine. “It almost smells like…challah,” I said, recalling my childhood Rosh Hashanah. My heart gladdened envisioning my mom braiding eggy dough into tight strands.

We weaved—out of curiosity and inebriation—past sooty, shuttered warehouses.

Nothing. Nothing. Jackpot. On Waverly Place, a block off Fulton, we discovered a squat building glowing like Vegas on the desert horizon: the Israel Beigel Baking Company (551 Waverly Ave., betw. Atlantic & Fulton Aves., B’klyn, 718-789-0783). Through a gate I watched as men bustled through the bakery, bagging challah loaves rectangular and circular, sesame-seeded and as smooth and shiny as a Ken doll.

We grasped the prison-like bars and ogled the beautiful loaves as if they were strippers working a pole—food porn at its finest. My carbohydrate lust deepened. My pulse quickened. I needed that challah— and I wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Excuse me,” I called to a worker, as deeply tanned as the loaf he held. He sauntered to the fence, stopping several feet away as if we were rabid junkyard dogs. “Whaddya want?” “Bread,” I said, emboldened by beer. He called his boss, who wore a flour-dusted button-down as white as his beard.

“How many loaves?” he asked as tersely as an interrogator.Three.Without providing a price, he ambled off, returning bearing an unmarked brown bag. “Five dollars.” I slid him the fee clandestinely, like we were completing the world’s tastiest drug deal. He got his bread. I got mine. “Remember,” he said, his tone turning bright and paternal, “our challah makes excellent French toast.”

We rode home giddily; for once, our happiness was not served in a Styrofoam cup. Come morning, I coated my cast-iron pan with butter and thick challah slices with a mixture of eggs, milk, vanilla and cinnamon. The crisped final product was fluffy and sweet, with a nice, eggy undercurrent. Like a good Jew, I loved Israel. And Israel loved me back.

Over a half-decade, I’ve oft repeated this covert transaction. Each pass-off is fingerprint-unique. Sometimes the bread’s $2 a loaf; other times it’s three for $5. Or four for $10.The pricing is as capricious as the challah is delicious. But if you deign to buy a loaf, there are ironclad rules of engagement:

1. Come after 11 p.m.

2. Observe the Sabbath.

3. Bring correct change.

4. If you don’t have correct change, await serendipity.

One night, I attempted to buy several loaves.The price: $4. I had a $10.

“Do you have change?” the challah man asked, examining my wrinkled bill as if it were a tetanus-riddled rusty nail. I dug in my pockets, finding only fuzz. We stared at one another through the barred grate, a Mexican standoff between two Jews. He shrugged and began walking away when a voice croaked from the darkness, “I have change.” A homeless man wearing ill-fitting brown rags hobbled forward, his black hair as wiry as a Brillo pad.

From the recesses of his raggedy clothes he retrieved a wad of twisted one-dollar bills. “One, two, three…” he counted, exchanging change for a crisp Alexander Hamilton. He folded it and secreted the currency in a dark, unlikely crevice. “Enjoy the bread,” he said, shuffling off and, if but for a night, restoring my faith in New York’s magic.

Dollar Grub: Corona

Oh, who’s that hungry man?

Lord, I love me the dollar bill. In my latest installment of Dollar Grub, for Metromix, I visited the Italian-Latino corridor of Corona, Queens. It’s a land of tamales, empanadas, empanadas, empanadas and the odd cannoli. Want to know why there’s acid chewing a hole in my stomach? Eat it up!

Beer of the Week: Dieu du Ciel!’s Rosée d’Hibiscus

Glistening!

Think drinking pink makes you a pansy? Think about, sweet chickadees. Because I spent two weeks in August living in Montreal, riding a bike and doing my best to not learn any French whatsoever, I learned me lots about the local beers. Dieu du Ciel! makes amazing tipples, including this lovely beauty made with hibiscus. That turns it pink and tartly refreshing. Thirsty? Drink it up! if you’re man enough. Like me.

Gut Instinct: An Eight-Hour Tour

Everyone is so thirsty!

I awoke from the nightmare, my heart somersaulting, my bladder threatening to spill like an oil tanker: Damn, I thought, why did I agree to be a tour guide?

I blame the good, fine folks behind New York Craft Beer Week—Josh Schaffner and Mark Foggin—who contacted me with an offer I should’ve refused: “Want to lead a tour?” Foggin asked. “You’re a beer and bar expert.”

Expert? Sure, if you consider an expert’s credentials to be awaking with stoner eyes, a swollen liver and a headache like a construction site. However, the same skill set that made me an “expert”—namely, opening my mouth and swallowing a solid portion of my net income—branded me a poor tour guide. I’d require organizational acumen. A cheery demeanor. And the ability to shepherd drunkards across New York.While staying sober.

“I’ll do it,” I croaked, as I’m a bona fide fan of the bad idea. Eat potentially poisonous fugu at Sushi Zen? Pile it on! Drink 150-proof rum and milk at Imperial Biker? Bottoms up! Lead a survey of Brooklyn’s homebrewing scene? It seemed like an Einstein notion. As a functioning drunk journalist—is there any other kind?—I meet myriad beer-world movers and shakers, from bartenders to saloon owners to homebrewers.The latter is as difficult an urban hobby as beekeeping.

For New York brewers, passion trumps common sense. Our metropolis’ ant-size apartments mean there’s little space to brew, much less store fermenting suds or grain, a commodity in short supply locally. Nowadays, several local outfits (like Sunset Park’s Brooklyn Homebrew and Brooklyn Brew Shop, stationed at Fort Greene’s Brooklyn Flea market) have started selling fermentables. Getting fully stocked, however, often entails expensive online ordering and pseudo-shady dealings. “We met some fellow brewers in an online forum, and we all went in together on a giant grain shipment,” homebrewer Josh Fields told me. “We met up and divvied up a couple thousand pounds of grains—it felt like a drug deal.”

But the flavorful, carbonated results make the endeavor worthwhile—or, at least, permit brewers to get tipsy enough to forget the irksome rigmarole.

I initially thought my tour would appeal to five or 10 die-hard beer lovers. Then the RSVPs started flooding in, as fast as a hurricane’s rising tide. By the day of, 25 beer aficionados were congregated in front of the tour’s first home in Bay Ridge.“Nice sign,” my friend Aaron said, snickering. I enlisted him to keep me calm on my first foray as a guide. Instead I got mocked. He pointed to my ripped cardboard placard reading homebrew, like something a beer-lusting hobo would scrawl.

“You are not creating my moment of Zen,” I told him, leading the posse into the awaiting apartment like a mother duck. The first moments were met with deafening silence, like everyone was on a collective first date. Someone coughed. Feet shuffled. It felt like a convention for the socially inept. “Who wants to try their first beer today?” asked the Mike, the tattooed homebrew host. Attendees proffered their plastic cups, like tongues awaiting communion.The collective sips of prickly, sweet Belgian ale soothed nerves, unknotted shoulders.This was beer. Beer was fun.

“To the trains,” I commanded the crowd, after we’d exhausted Mike’s suds. What’s more difficult than brewing beer in New York? Herding 25 beer drinkers to the subway. At each homebrew stop, from Bay Ridge to Carroll Gardens to Williamsburg—four in all, with a dozen-plus beers total—attendees’ boisterousness increased exponentially. I developed a newfound respect for teachers taking students on field trips.

“Maybe I should just pee between the train cars,” one crossed-legs attendee told me, as the G train hurtled us across Brooklyn.

“Maybe you should wait till the next stop,” I suggested, kicking myself for omitting a waiver. In case of alcohol-influenced calamity, I will not sue the pants off Joshua M. Bernstein.

But disaster was averted as the tour lurched to a close. By the time we reached the Williamsburg stop, a woodworking loft filled with sharp, pointy objects, the attendees were kicked. Eyelids sagged, words slurred—in this alternate universe, the signs of a successful afternoon.

“When’s the next tour?” asked a rosycheeked attendee, glugging her last glass of hoppy ale.

I pondered my imploding journalism profession, my desire for a fallback career not including the question, “Would you like fries with that?” “Not soon enough,” I said, filling a cup with my foamy, flavorful future.

Beer of the Week: Buckbean Brewing’s Orange Blossom Ale

Drink me! Drink me!

Oh, boy, is it Monday? It sure is! That means another installment of beer of the week. This time, I look west, toward Reno, Nevada’s Buckbean Brewing. Those desert dwellers have concocted the divine Orange Blossom Ale, manufactured with honest-to-goodness orange blossoms. It brings the tasty to your tongue. Thirsty? Drink it up!

Gut Instinct: The Whiskey Wind’s a Blowin’

If I possessed the power of premonition in July, I would’ve made a brilliant birthday wish: God, make me a mer-man,I’d pray as I reduced cake-candle flames to smoke. For if I’d undergone an aquatic evolution—say, fins for feet, hooded gills climbing my neck like a stepladder—I’d have adored last Saturday’s weather, by now New York’s summertime norm. Rain sheeted down, the drops like concrete-colored gumballs.

“Luckily, our tent is waterproof!” I told my girlfriend, as enthusiastic as a car salesman angling to unload a clunker. We’d planned to camp in seafaring Greenport, located at the dead end of Long Island’s North Fork. She trained a sleep-crusted eye on the wall of wet gray. “Nuhhhh,” she grunted, grinding her head into a pillow. It was the smart response, but I was damned if the rain consigned me to another afternoon of cleaning our apartment.

“Want to do something stupid?” I asked my friend Aaron. He’s a responsible adult with an irresponsible streak concerning bicycles and brews, so of course I pushed his bad-idea buttons. “We’ll just bike—and drink enough beer so we don’t mind our sodden underwear.” Bingo, I had a travel buddy. So as Tropical Stormy Danny turned the East Coast into muddy soup, we boarded the LIRR (armed with warm, chewy Bergen Bagel everythings) and ventured into the eye of the storm.

“You’re really going to pedal around in that?” a ticket puncher asked, motioning to the rain as if it spouted from a leaky septic tank. “Well, we didn’t ride three hours to stand beneath umbrellas,” I replied, as the train slid into the station. We wheeled our two-wheelers onto the platform, where sideways rain savaged our faces.

“Another awesomely terrible idea, Josh,” Aaron muttered, gripping his slick handlebars. But I did have an ace card up my wet sleeves: “Follow me,” I commanded, as we slogged through ankle-deep puddles to a squat former firehouse ham mered into Greenport Harbor Brewing (234 Carpenter St., 631-477-6681; harborbrewing.com), the North Fork’s first microbrewery.

Upstairs is reserved for grain milling, while the bar-equipped downstairs contains a glass partition providing views of in-process brewing and towering fermentation tanks filled with head brewer D.J. Swanson’s suds. “Care for a sample?” asked a lovely, longhaired beer lady, pointing to the taps like Vanna White.The clock read a quarter past 12. It was drinking time. While Greenport Harbor is barred from pouring pints, guests are permitted four-ounce tastes of each tipple. “Line them up, please,” I said, as we swallowed Greenport’s four-beer roster.

We sipped the honey-sweetened Summer Ale, malty and fruity Harbor Ale, robustly bitter IPA and cocoa-and-coffeetinged Black Duck Porter. The easy-drinking Harbor was hands-down our favorite, so we resolved to return later to grab a growler ($17 including bottle; $12 without). “You know, train drinks,” I told the beer pourer, before heeding her suggestion and slogging to Crabby Jerry’s (111 Main St., 631-477- 8252; crabbyjerrys.com).

Situated on a pier, tent-topped Crabby’s is an archetypal, utilitarian seafood shack: Order at a counter. Grab napkins and plastic cutlery. Then eat yourself into an early heart attack. My fryer-crisped bay scallops were splendidly briny, cork-size nuggets of juicy oceanic pleasure. By contrast, Aaron’s steamers were fresh and butter-drenched, though the clams’ dark, thin siphons extending beyond their shells were disconcertingly phallic, like whatever Lady Gaga’s packing beneath her miniskirt.

“Eat me, Josh, eat me,” Aaron taunted, waving the steamer as menacingly as a pirate flag. I passed, for I was saving stomach space for the dark, sparse Whiskey Wind (30 Front St., 631-477-6179), Greenport’s best—and only—dive bar. Quick tutorial: A whiskey wind is when harsh weather docks a fleet, forcing fishermen to head to the bar to drink away the storm. “Kind of like what you’re doing today,” sassy, good-natured owner Chris Kuhlmann said, pouring $3 pints of Bud. (“The cash discount,” Kuhlmann said—credit cards cause every drink to cost an extra 50 cents.) Befitting its name the Whiskey is a true shelter. While Greenport largely shutters come winter, the Whiskey’s open yearround, serving Hebrew National hot dogs and raucous Saturday-night karaoke from morning light to last call. “Another round?” Kuhlmann asked, sweet as a lollipop. Refusal was no option.We ordered more Bud, grasping the cool pints with pruned fingers.

Two rounds turned into three as the whiskey wind continued blowing, wet and wild. “You know, perhaps the rainstorm isn’t so bad,” Aaron said, as we drank and drank some more, landlubbers as happily stranded as those sea dogs of yore.

Captain Lawrence’s Captain’s Reserve: Beer of the Week

Oh, heavens to Betsy, this is one of my favorite breweries. Many times I’ve forgotten my words while savoring their sweet, sweet draft-only nectar. But now the Captain has begun bottling its creations, leading me to become an even happier, more intoxicated man. Huzzah! So this week, I write about the righteous Captain’s Reserve, a double IPA dreamboat. Thirsty? Drink it up!

Gut Instinct: Tiny Bubbles, Big Joys

I was strolling down the quiet brownstone block, my bag bursting with farmers’ market mint and kale, when the brakes banshee-screeched: “J-o-o-o-shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” a man boomed, stretching my name like a rubber band.

Smack in the intersection sat an openbacked truck. It was laden with splintered wooden crates of clattering seltzer bottles, lashed to the vehicle with little more than optimism. “Hey, Ronny,” I said, greeting my friendly seltzerman.

“How’s it going?” he asked, blocking the street. “Great. Just bought some veggies.” I pointed to my leafy kale. “So, I’ll see you Wednesday for the delivery. And Josh…” Ronny said, trailing off. “I owe you an extra five dollars.”

“That’s right,” Ronny said. He ground his gears and rumbled off, a loan shark reminding a deadbeat to pay up… or else. Or else there’s no more nose-tingling seltzer, a return to the Dark Ages of dull tap water. I owe my effervescent Renaissance to

Ronny Beberman, aka Ronny the Seltzerman, aka Seltzer Ronny. For nearly 40 years, Ronny has risen pre-dawn to deliver seltzer to the thirsty citizens of Brooklyn. He fills his hand-blown glass bottles, etched with forgotten firms’ monikers, with triplefiltered, champagne-bubbly water from Canarsie, Brooklyn’s Gomberg Seltzer Works.

It’s the last of its kind. So is Seltzer Ronny. He’s one of a half dozen bubble merchants plying his dying trade. Ronny refuses to advertise, instead letting his rattling truck serve as his mobile billboard. It’s an attention-grabber. One afternoon, I was idly biking when Seltzer Ronny clattered by. It was as if a wormhole had opened, allowing the past to intersect with the present. I pumped like legs in pursuit, my hare-quick bike quickly catching Ronny’s tortoise truck.

“How do I get delivery?” I asked grayhaired Ronny, a wiry man with ropy muscles and bowlegged walk borne from hoisting 60-pound crates. He rattled off his numbers. I dialed them that night.

“Who is this?” Ronny asked, as if I were a crank caller. “How’d you get this number?” “Uh, Josh.You gave me your number.” “What do you want?” “What?” As I later realized, Ronny is hard of hearing.

“Delivery. I want seltzer delivery.” After enough haggling to impress a Moroccan merchant, we reached an accord: For $20, he’d deliver 10 bottles of seltzer every two weeks. “I’m not bringing them upstairs,” he said, consigning me to a biweekly dose of pleasure and pain. The pain was mule-ing 60 pounds of liquid, glass and wood up two flights of stairs, a wheezing endeavor that left me as breathless as a pack-a-day smoker. The pleasure was the seltzer: Unlike plastic-bottle seltzer, which loses carbonation the instant it’s cracked, vintage bottles retain their fat bubbles for up to a month. Half-filled or nearly empty, the seltzer retains its violently agreeable effervescence.

Ronny’s seltzer was rapidly integrated into my daily routine. Come mornings, fridge-cooled seltzer cleansed my tongue’s nighttime fur. Seltzer sat at my dinner table, classing up even greasy General Tso’s chicken. Seltzer settled my stomach after too many 25-cent chicken wings at Greenpoint’s Habitat (Tuesday nights) or $4 whiskey-and-Schaefers at International Bar. Seltzer soothed. Seltzer calmed.

Seltzer was a pain in the rump. My helter-skelter work schedule meant I often missed delivery day. So the duty fell to my underemployed and overly drunken roommate. But his till-sunrise binges ensured he often slumbered through the apartment’s buzzer, an ear-searing bell apparently stolen from a firehouse.Then the call would come. “Josh, it’s Ronny the Seltzerman,” he’d begin, pushing those guilty buttons parents know so well. I wanted to explain my roommate’s addictions, his irresponsibility that was hammering a permanent wedge into our relationship. But this was my seltzer man, not my confidant. He wanted my money, not my excuse. I’d say sorry five or six times, before urging Ronny to ring until he roused my substance-abused roommate. The calls came often. Upon returning from a months-long overseas voyage, I checked my phone messages. Both of them were from Ronny, urging me to call him ASAP—provided I found a payphone in Mongolia’s dusty Gobi Desert.

That roommate soon absconded, replaced by my girlfriend.We’ve taken our relationship to the next level. And now, after nearly four years, I’ve resolved to deepen my relationship with Seltzer Ronny: I’m going to give him the key to my front door, letting him deposit the seltzer at his leisure. It’s a bold move, sure, but I’m ready to make a deeply carbonated commitment.

Beer of the Week: Three Floyds’ Gumballhead

Anyway, so I’m shopping at my local beer shop, Brooklyn Beer and Soda, when I look into the cooler and what do I see? A row of Three Floyds’ beer, including this lovely beauty you see to the right. I rubbed my blurry eyes: This was like seeing a unicorn driving a Cadillac. Three Floyds is a staunchly Midwestern brewer, with no distro in NYC.

“How’d you get this?” I asked the counter lady, more excited than a man should be about a 12-ounce bottle of mood alterant.

“Someone brought it up for us,” she said, smiling slyly.

“I will marry you,” I said, buying a bundle of beer.

And so that’s how I came to write about Gumballhead for my beer of the week. Thirsty? Drink it up!