NY Barfly

Wine Comes to Reality TV. We'll Take a Glass.

Gotta love the PBS reality shows. Antiques Roadshow has always been a favorite (what’s lamer: tuning in every week, or being upset because we already saw the episode twice?) Frontier House kicks our city dwelling butt. Now, it's time for a PBS style reality show about one of our favorite subjects: wine.

We checked out The Winemakers at a recent preview event (we were also sure to investigate the freely flowing wine). An Apprentice-esque exercise in all things vino. The six 30-minute episodes follow a group of 12 spirited wine enthusiasts from various walks of life, including law, teaching, sales, retail and marketing—as they compete for the prize of launching their own wine label. The series, which was shot in Paso Robles, Calif., chronicles tense wine-making challenges, as well as the inevitable contestant eliminations.

During the sneak peek, we saw the wine-making contestants frantically push crates, spill wine everywhere, step on grapes, and drink a little bit as well. Should make for an interesting show, especially because you can drink along with it (we always felt strange about having a bottle of Syrah when watching Big Brother, the pairing never quite fit).

We didn’t get to watch a full episode yet, so we don’t know the vino version of Trump's famous line. Maybe “You’re Fired!” will be replaced with “You’re Cut Off!”, “It’s Only Miller Light for You!”, or “You’re Corked!”. We’ll have to tune in and find out.

Casting Call: Bartenders for New Reality Show. Show Them Your Best Vodka Tonic.

We doubt it’s going to be the next Top Chef, or even on par with LXTV’s On the Rocks bartending challenge, but the Fine Living Network is looking for camera ready bartenders. A great show about life behind the bar is long past due. Could this be it? Check out the casting notice below:

Great bartenders have to employ a variety of skills – from mixologist to psychologist - and now Fine Living Network wants bartenders in the New York metro area to put those skills to the test! We’re looking for bartenders in the New York/Tri-State area to feature on “Bartender Wars,” an upcoming FLN series where they are the stars of the show.

Participating bartenders will go head to head with each other and frequently enlist their patrons in a variety of bartending challenges, from the simple to the outlandish.

If you know a bartender – man or woman – who’s sexy, confident, with a great personality and who would be up for the challenge, be it competing for the biggest tips, flirting for the most phone numbers or playing matchmaker for customers, we want to hear about them.

It’s “Candid Camera” at your favorite watering hole with a lot of liquid courage thrown in!

We hope this show will portray the true hardships of bartending, like counting a $7,500 cash out (all those dollar bills!) at 4:30 am while drunk off your ass on Jameson’s.

If you’re interested in showing them your talents, you can get more information here: http://www.gotcast.com/casting-calls/Bartender-Wars/53827. Even a sip of Top Chef fame would be worth it. Did we mention – Hosea and Leah were spotted drunkenly making out, like, everywhere?

Review: Martinis at The Morgan Library's Free Friday

Reason #44 that we love New York: even the culture comes with a side of gin. On a recent Friday evening, we stopped into The Morgan Library for a night of free events. From 7 – 9 pm, this small but classy museum waives admission and encourages the masses to check out the early 20^th Century digs of J.P. Morgan. In addition to a series of rotating exhibits (one on book binding, and another on small landscapes when we visited), and guided tours, the museum lets you visit Morgan’s opulent study and library.

We could tell that Morgan was our type of guy. It’s easy to imagine him sitting on one of the study’s red velvet chairs, drinking a gigantic goblet of scotch while playing solitaire in front of his epic fireplace. After his third cocktail, he’d surely amble over to his gorgeous three story library to page through what was one of the lushest collections in the world. We’re no expert, but we think those little brown spots on the original Gutenberg Bible must have dripped from old J.P.’s glass.

The museum is small enough to take in quickly, which left plenty of room for our favorite part of the evening: lounging in the small cafe, listening to a jazz trio, and enjoying a martini. The lounge, like the museum, is tiny, but we think it would make Morgan proud. They may not have a lot to offer, but they sure know class. We enjoyed a Hendrick’s Gin Martini as our companion sipped on their Blood Orange Cocktail. Both cost only $10.

The conversation skipped from art, to wealth, to 19^th Century history. Wow, at The Morgan Library, we suddenly weren’t just pretending to be a sophisticate. We plan on making our trips to this little cafe a regular thing. Maybe we can learn a lesson from Morgan’s wealth, like how to leverage priceless tapestries for better interest rates on our credit cards.

The Library is located at 225 Madison Avenue. It’s free every Friday from 7 – 9 PM.

Review: Free Fridays at The Morgan Library

Cocktail Options – 4 olives – It’s not the most extensive list in town, but we were impressed with the variety offered at what is basically a concessions stand. At $10 a pop, the drink prices rival many of the neighborhood’s less posh happy hours.

Jazz and Conversation – 5 olives – Leave it to New York to liquor up even its most upscale cultural institutions. It was hard not to enjoy the music after a few sips of that drink. It’s a great place for a date, especially if you are trying to convince your partner that you’re not a complete derelict.

Opulence and Wealth – 3 olives – We suspect J.P. never heard the word “recession”. It’s not that he didn’t go through bad times, it’s that he was able to give everyone around him a bag of money if they agreed not to say the word.

Dive Bar Documentary: A Movie About Siberia is (Hopefully) on the Way

There are dives and there are dives. What separates the two (beyond font choice)? If you ever went to Hells Kitchen bar Siberia when it was still open, we wouldn’t need to answer that question. Holes in the floor, unspeakable things going on in the basement, cheap shots of whiskey served in little plastic cups – it had all the things that make a dive bar truly special. For a bar like this, the letters in dive aren’t just italicized. They’re drunk off their asses.

Grub Street has news that a documentary about Siberia has been shopping itself around on the film festival circuit. We hope that the movie sees the light of day soon. Word has it that bar owner Tracey Westmoreland (pictured, via Grub Street) is looking to re-open in a new location. It would be fun if we could get a nostalgic glimpse of divey smut in a darkened theater before heading to the grimy new bar.

Firsthand accounts of the flick show that it’s sure to leave you with a hangover:

The scenes are filled with close-up rants, dirty dancing, beer-bottle bowling, mysterious fires, and a guy swinging from the toilet chained to the ceiling.

Could the film live up to the original locale? Well, maybe. They’d have to release a case of rats into the theater and have a free keg, but we still think it would lack a bit of divey magic. Yes, even if there were drugs in the bathroom and pickpockets roaming the crowd. That true dive sparkle is just impossible to recreate.

Cultural Cavorts: All Aboard the USS Intrepid

Barfly is always excited by a good nautical adventure. We find that a few days at sea help with the never ending question of existence: how to overcome our hangover. Recently, we decided to hop on board the USS Intrepid. How exciting to explore the Air Sea Space Museum, a gigantic aircraft carrier with one of the most active warfare records in history. A survivor of multiple injuries during its 1943-1974 life span, we were ready to take inspiration from the Navy legend on how to continue to survive multiple hangovers. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday…yikes! How would we continue to live through such great battles?

The USS Intrepid lived through five kamikaze attacks (amongst other damages) and continuously went back into the breach. How similar we were to this ship. Five days of a hangover and we continuously revisited the alcohol war zone. Perhaps the stellar ship achieved such success with a bit of luck from its sponsor, who christened the 27,000+ ton carrier by smashing a bottle of champagne over the deck. That sounds like a hangover cure to Barfly! Off we went, bottle of Veuve stashed in our pants ready to celebrate all of the Intrepid’s notable victories in history.

With very heavy security to pass upon entrance to the Intrepid we thought the burly security men would understand why it was so important for Barfly to celebrate cultural cavorts with a bottle of bubbly this weekend. With a cheers and a wink we began to make our way into the opening exhibit to admire the photo of the boat being christened. Unfortunately we did so with our bottle of bubbly left safely behind the security desk. Truly a moment to be admired, we stared into the photo and imagined the ceremony could only be a significant contributor to the ship’s many lives that we were about to experience.

We tromped up steep, frightful stairs leading us up to deck after deck on the mammoth ship. No wonder they insisted we leave the bubbly behind. These stairs were a drunk trap if we ever saw one! Spanning World War II and Vietnam we read old letters from various members of the crew and peeked into bunkers and control rooms. Up some more and we read logs of the boat entering and departing international ports and viewed photos of it hard at work: carrying up to 90 aircrafts, seeing off spacecrafts and monitoring Soviet submarines.

Awed, we couldn’t imagine living through so much drama. We supposed it could compare to the time we disappeared on a 2 week bender only to find ourselves pantless on 43^rd and 12^th one sunny fall afternoon. Perhaps we landed at that intersection because we were looking to climb aboard the Intrepid for some inspiration at that time as well. All we know is that day we showered and napped in preparation for an all night rave. Back into battle indeed, and we live to speak about it with our pants on.

The One and Only Thing to do on Valentine's Day

Alright folks, Valentine’s week at NYBarfly is coming to a close. We’ve given you plenty of suggestions, and frankly we feel a bit nauseous from all of the hearts and flowers (no one told us that we shouldn’t eat the roses). We received an email today: “Barfly, what are you going to do on Valentine’s day? Won’t you be mine?”

Sorry kid – we’ve got plans. We’re going to wash the romance (not to mention the thorns) out of our mouth with a visit to our favorite theatrical event. NYC Comedy Troupe FUCT is up this month with a new act: Show Me on the Doll. You’re welcome to join us, but we will not call you our Valentine. We’ll call you that strange person who followed us to the theater.

Judging by their previous shenanigans, we think we’re in for a doozie, and we don’t mean a great prix-fixe meal. FUCT promises stunts, acrobatics, nudity, vulgarity, and (most importantly) free beer. The sweethearts in their drunken audience are our Valentines this year. Stop by and get your buzz on. There are plenty of  prix-fixes to enjoy throughout the year. This will be a Valentine’s date to remember (we mentioned the nudity and free beer, right?).

You can catch FUCT: Show Me on the Doll at the Cherry Pit (155 Bank Street), and tickets are available at www.fuctnyc.com for $20. If you are too busy “loving” someone on V-day (barf – get over it already!) the show runs through the end of February on Thursday, Fridays and Saturdays at 9.

LXTV Gets Thrown On the Rocks in Manhattan Court

We’ve been following LXTV’s On The Rocks, a reality web show about the search for America’s Top Bartender (aka a reality show made for people like us). We were all set to check in on the latest webisode, when an interesting tip landed in our inbox. Turns out the show isn’t making everyone drunk and happy. Take a peek:

A Charity Group claims that Absolut and Pernod stole its idea for a "Charity Mixology" reality TV show and broadcast the show as their own creation, "On the Rocks: The Search for America's Top Bartender," harming nonprofit organizations in the process.

Scott Talbot, an Australian entrepreneur who is associated with the charity, has filed a lawsuit in Manhattan. In the spirit of the show, we suggest the two parties settle this the old way: with a barroom brawl.

We’ll keep an eye on developments in the case, but on first glance we are dubious. A Top Chef for bartenders surely was thrown around in many TV think tanks before On the Rocks made it to air (well, web). It doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch from what’s on 100 other channels, top this / best that / True Life I Suck.

We will check in with LXTV in the next few days. In other news, we are waiting for the producer who will come along and develop America’s Most Charming Barfly. Any takers?

New York Times Alcohol Blog Celebrates New Year's Eve with, uh, Sobriety?

We’re shocked how many non-drinkers the Times has writing for Proof (its new alcohol blog). They posed a debbie-downer round up of New Year’s Eve, supposedly the most alcohol soaked night of the year. Not for this group! We suggest, in 2009, they rename the blog Abstain. Some choice bits:

This New Year’s Eve will be the fifteenth that I will pass completely sober. - Jim Atkinson

New Years’ Eve now means breaking out a bottle of Martinelli’s Sparkling Apple Cider and trying to stay up for the changing of the years, not always making it through, either. - Peter Holsapple

I am an adult child of an alcoholic. There are a lot of us out there. I was never a drinker. My job in life was the designated driver, the designated shoulder to lean on, the designated superhero to clean up the mess whenever it was needed. - Darrell Brown

Woo! Happy 2009! We’re saying that early because, based on the blog, we decided we’re going to have a noon game of Mahjong and then be off to bed before the ball drops.

We know that Proof is finding its legs, but they need to get more wobbly soon. There is a trove of material inspired by New Year’s Eve, and all of it does not relate to sobriety. How about the fact that this “biggest night of drinking” is also the year’s biggest amateur night? Everyone and their sober mother drinks tonight, and much wackiness ensues. Or, they should do a story about how we plan to hide from those sloppy crowds, sit in our bathtub, and drink. Once midnight comes, we turn the water on for a 2009 thrill.

Thank god we have Susan Vega to show us what a proper New Year’s Eve is supposed to look like:

My sister and I went to my ex-boyfriend’s house (the same man that had been my boyfriend 10 years before!) and we drank a lot and danced and had a lot of fun, until I sent her flying into the radiator under the window across the room.

Well done, Susan! The first thing we’re going to do when we step out of our bathtub is bash ourselves into the radiator. It finally feels like the New Year.

It's Scotch or Nothing for the Holidays

In a Sunday Style’s piece on indulgences during tough times, we truly appreciate A.O. Scott’s piece on his holiday indulgence. In his own words “It’s Scotch or Nothing.” Bravo A.O., we can understand the need for a nip during this time of year.

We especially enjoy his pickiness. He doesn’t want just any Scotch. See his description:

“[I don’t want] a blended jug with a bagpipe player on the cover. I want a single malt with a name I can’t pronounce and a creamy, austere label that tells a complicated story about ancient sherry casks and peat and heather and weird little islands full of taciturn Presbyterians. I want what is perhaps the only luxury product manufactured in a place notorious for thrift. I like to mix my vice with at least a vaporous pretense of virtue.”

We know the exact feeling. When we reach for our beloved gin, we only want a brand that will get a Victorian’s knickers in a twist. When we reach for beer – well – we suppose that it's extra good if we pick something that would annoy a Mormon.

LXTV's On the Rocks: America's Top Blindfolded Bartenders

The latest episode of LXTV’s On the Rocks: The Search for America’s next bartender seemed a little hung-over. The contestants were tasked to identify drinks only by taste. This could have been a fun-filled challenge, but it seems the show drank too much the night before. It was lethargic, a bit inscrutable, and at times you were sorry you started drinking in the first place.

Watching the contestants try to identify an Absolut Pear & Ginger while blindfolded was funny, in a “watching Helen Keller trying to identify water” type of way. The problem? The judges were giving scores based on an unexplained point system. As the game progressed, it was hard to tell who was getting points for what. 5 points for sounding sexy when identifying the Sazerac (from Fabrizio, of course)? Negative 2 points for spitting out the precious alcohol after tasting it?

We’re not sure – but the winner was Amanda. She is clearly schooled in the “reality show bitch” method, as she promptly eliminated meek boy Daniel, who she viewed as her fiercest competition. Not saying we blame her – we love a little bitchiness in our bartenders like we savor olives in our martinis.

Like any good hangover, it doesn’t mean we won’t be back at the bar sooner than we should. We will certainly tune in next week, especially because it looks like they make the contestants bartend poolside. We can’t wait to see overly tanned Fabrizio ogling the drinks on those girls! How many minutes before he’s charming them by saying “I’d like to order a drink with coconuts. Two coconuts, with the bigness, and the shape. . .”

You can watch the episode by clicking here or check it out below the jump! Yes – we know you don’t like to feel hung-over – but that has never stopped you before, you ridiculous lush!