#60: The worst bar in Brooklyn
Death By Consumption
6/24/25 - 6/30/25
Death By Consumption is on vacation mode, as we’ve spent the week on Fire Island. Which means today‘s email is shorter than usual. Because vacation isn’t for EMAILS, it’s for waking up saying, “I need to be better today,” and then immediately throwing those plans out the window when someone offers you champagne at breakfast.
This week, I’ve got a story about the rudest waitress in all of Brooklyn, I skim over the debauchery of Fire Island because my mother reads these emails, and I read a fabulous gay book from one of the best writers of our time.
Americanos — at The Long Island Bar, in Brooklyn
Before we left for Fire Island, we went out for dinner and drinks for our friend Hannah’s birthday, where we were delighted and horrified to get in a fight with the most bafflingly hostile waitress any of us have ever experienced.
Right away something was amiss with her, a stern-looking brunette in a horrible pilgrim dress, as she’d practically roll her eyes every time any of us ordered another drink or some food (kind of the main activities at a restaurant). When my friend Sebastian went to the bathroom, he passed her right as she dropped a bottle of ketchup, which he picked up for her. “I realize you’re trying to be helpful, but it’s really annoying,” she sneered at him, snapping for no reason at all. A warning of what was to come!
After dinner, half the group went home, while four of us decided to get another drink, so we moved from our table up to the front bar. “We decided to stay!” we said to the rude woman, who looked less than delighted at this update. We ordered another round of Americanos (the drink of the summer, FYI, best to get on board now), and she immediately asked the most psychotic question I’ve ever been asked at a bar in New York: “Are you driving?”
We stared at her, confused, and she continued, her voice dripping judgment: “You’ve been here a long time.”
“It’s… a bar,” Hannah said. Meanwhile, I snapped into a Midwestern panic and tried to smooth things over.
“Oh, no, we’re subwaying!” I replied.
But she misheard “subway” and scoffed in a mockingly disbelieving tone: “You’re sober??”
“What?” I asked, now confused at the intense attitude coming my way for no reason. Were we… not supposed to order drinks… at a bar………?
But our friend Augie was still stuck on the baffling first question she had thrown at us, so he asked her, “Who drives in New York?”
“I drove here,” she said, puffing her chest out with a strange pride.
“Well, where do you live?” I asked.
“Crown Heights,” she said, as if she had stumped me — but I was only more confused. She drove here from Crown Heights? Why??? Then, in an attempt to regain the upper hand in this strangely interrogative conversation we had all entered into, she asked, “Where are you all from?”
“New York…?” I said, once again confused at how hostile she had gotten so quickly, and why she thought that was a gotcha question. If anything, she seemed to not be the New Yorker, with her odd evangelism for automobiles.
“I’m from London originally,” Augie said, “And no one drives there either!” None of us understood why we were all suddenly in a fight about driving with a waitress, and yet there was zero chance we were going to back down, now that she had forced us to pick up our weapons.
“So no one drives in New York or London…” the waitress said, putting on a falsely chipper tone, “And yet there are cars on the street!” At this, she swept an arm wide, grandly gesturing out the window at all the cars parked outside, a look on her face that said: got you fuckers cornered now. We all stared at her, our mouths agape.
“You’re being really rude,” our friend Claire said, and, for once, the waitress didn’t have a snappy comeback, so there was nothing left to do but to shield ourselves in the righteous American tradition of being the customers who are always right. We dismissed her by repeating our order: another round of Americanos, please and thank you.
Finally she left us, and we were excited to loudly discuss how rude she was, knowing she’d overhear, while repeatedly reassuring each other that, no, we’re not that drunk, and also what’s the problem with spending 4-5 hours at a restaurant and bar? For a birthday party, no less! We were burning with a delicious fury, gleefully working each other up into a tizzy over the unjust treatment we had received. There’s truly no better feeling!
But then tragedy struck: while getting so worked up in our righteous anger, Hannah’s elbow knocked into the empty glass on the bar behind her, and the sound of shattering glass silenced the bar. Immediately we all knew: we had lost our moral high ground, and would never get it back.
“Do not touch the broken glass!” the woman shouted at us from across the bar.
“We’re not!” we shouted back, once again indignant at the insane hostility.
“Do not try to pick up the glass!” the bartender yelled.
“We’re NOT!” we repeated, working ourselves back up into a furious anger.
A busboy came over with a tray and a little hand brush, and swept the glass shards into the tray, shielding the mess with his shoulders in an attempt to block us out, as if we were clamoring to reach around him and get our hands in the pile of broken glass, and sift it through our fingers like sand. “Don’t touch the glass!” he snarled over his shoulder, and for the third time we had to tell an employee – who could clearly see that we were not touching the glass — that we weren’t touching the glass.
We finished our drinks and left in a huff, furious at the treatment we had received, and all of us thrilled at getting to relive our anger about it over and over again for the next, say, 2-4 years. It’s always great to have an enemy, and now The Long Island Bar is mine.
“Can I get a gin and soda please?” — everywhere, Fire Island
This is my first time on Fire Island, and: I get it now! It is gay Disneyland and also gay Hell, a chaotic mix of natural beauty (the most stunning beach I’ve ever seen in America) and unnatural beauty (thank you, Botox and Juvederm!). Our house has fluctuated from hosting 7 gays to 12(!) throughout the week, so we’ve had all the highs and lows of a very good season of The Real World (New Orleans, maybe, or possibly even the first Vegas season). Unfortunately none of it is fit for public consumption, though perhaps this is a reason to finally institute a newsletter paywall. Venmo me $50 and I’ll give you all the tea.
Our Evenings, by Alan Hollinghurst (2024) — hardcover
Hollinghurst writes some of the most beautiful sentences, and Our Evenings is overflowing with them. This book, like all his books, was a pure, luxurious pleasure to read, if only for the gorgeous ways he describes his (still-closeted) protagonist, David, becoming aware of other men:
He had the explorable somewhat unsociable smell, close to, of a grown-up man who's been wearing a sports coat and tie all day, and now has taken them off. My eyes slid away from the book or the record sleeve to the back of his neck, or dwelt while he talked on his strong hairless forearm and his wristwatch with its webbed leather strap. He wore grey flannels in school, snug round his seat, loose in the front, nothing clearly suggested, though the question, for me, always lurked.
No one is better at closely observing the subtle ways we interact with each other, especially when it involves a hint of sexuality like in that quote, but he also excels at observing the specific ways English people are always thinking about class. And in this book, Hollinghurst’s first told primarily through the eyes of a nonwhite character (David is half-Burmese, but raised in England by his white single mother) he turns his sharp observational eye on the issue of racism and xenophobia in British society.
Sorry to drop another massive block of text into this email (I’m outsourcing my email writing to Hollinghurst this week, since I’m on vacation), but I loved this description of a wealthy couple arriving at a party. The way it so beautifully observes their effect as they move through the crowd, before unexpectedly jabbing you at the end with a sharp little point:
The Upshaws were undeniably impressive. They'd come in a few minutes after the start, and I'd watched the way they carved up the crowd, as efficiently as royalty. They were very much a couple, but with no glimpse of Mark and Cara's obvious fondness for each other - they seemed to suggest that at their speed and pitch little time was left over for shows of affection. Norman Upshaw was tall, pale and sleek, in a chalk-striped dark suit and large black-framed glasses that seemed meant to signal both money and genius. He sniffed smugly if something he said raised a laugh, but grew restless if the answer prevented his going on. Jasmine's manner made no claims to his intellectual standing, but her brisk smile and firm little nods, as she came through the room, suggested a greater fund of common sense. She questioned, she advised, and she moved on, in a way that left people unsure what she really felt. I thought they took from her what they wanted, like consulters of an oracle.
When our own moment came, Cara introduced me, 'David Win, the actor.' Jasmine narrowed her eyes, as if not to be taken in, and then tapped my wrist: 'I know,' she said, 'The Yellow Flower - Norman thought you were awfully good,‘ and turned away before I could say, for the umpteenth time, 'That wasn't me, it was Ken Danby, the Chinese actor who is much shorter than me and five years older.'
I will read literally every single word Hollinghurst ever writes, and so should you!