Carousel
36 Wyckoff Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237
Carousel
36 Wyckoff Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237
An article on SwayNYC (an events posting site/app) recently called Carousel “Bushwick’s Newest 70’s Themed Bar.” The name SwayNYC caught me off guard as well so I checked their oldest post and it was less than a year ago so they may not remember the club called Sway which was where Paul’s Casablanca is now and their legendary Smiths nights every Sunday. In the title we are told 1) it is in the 2.34 square mile area of North Brooklyn known as Bushwick and 2) of all the 70’s themed bars this one is the newest. How many of the bars in Bushwick are “70’s themed?” How many of the bars that were bars in the actual 1970’s would we walk inside of and stop and think “ah perfect, the 70s.” My friend and oft bar attending compatriot Sal, told me about a new (old) bar he found in Ridgewood that you can smoke inside of and the drinks are priced as if it were the 70’s and they serve sausages that are quite good. Is this not also 70’s themed as it is from the 1970’s? Think of what that designation means to you and picture a bar. Is it one of these: Birdy’s, Ray’s, Ray’s 2, The Flower Shop, Twin’s, Carmelo’s, Goldie’s, Pony Boy, Coyote Club, Three Diamond Door, Do or Dive, JoyFace, The Johnson’s, etc? Are these really 70’s themed or is it that they look like you’re in Ohio? Or more accurately in the Ohio of my mind’s eye. Have the pandemic billboards advertising Ohio reached into our subconscious and incepted us? These bars generally shy away from having a television unless it’s a television from the 70’s as is the case at the new Ray’s in Greenpoint. Someone there informed me they play “the game” there on it to which I wondered why I would want that. I noticed for the first time in my lengthy experience at 169 Bar recently that the TV was playing a live sports game rather than an old film in technicolor from the 70’s or 60’s or earlier which gave me pause. For as long as I’ve known 169, the venerable dive bar staple for probably generations and arguably New Orleans themed, never had a movie playing more current than Cocktail (1988) nor a song since Phil Collins No Jacket Required. To see them drop one of these criteria made me wonder whether they are aware of all those other bars and what they are doing to try and popularize this aesthetic of old or 70’s or just pre iPhone pre Uber. Walking into a bar that has decorated itself thusly reminds me of watching a spy or crime or detective film that is set in the 70’s for no reason other than to avoid having to write around the fact smartphones exist. Another friend of mine Eddie previously lived in Milwaukee. When they got off work they’d cross the street and hit the happy hour at a dive bar. The bar offered a special: beer and a shot and a loose cigarette for $5. That’s the theme I want. “Welcome to Al’s Manhattan Bar where at happy hour you can get a beer and a shot and a cig and a bump for $20.”
My father and mother were in town for Christmas this past December; as has become the norm since both of my siblings joined me in New York. My father 73 and his father, my grandfather, was a bartender. He turned 18 in 1968 which was the drinking age, in Pennsylvania, in 1968. My father’s first experience of a bar was probably the bar my grandfather worked at. It was the sort of place you drove your car to after a full day’s work or stopped into before a full night’s. It was also sort of a bank as well because you could have your checks cashed there at the end of the week. How could a small local bar have enough cash on hand to cover that many paychecks? I am told common practice was to open a tab against the total and close out at the end of the weekend so they really didn’t wind up handing much currency out. I took my mother and father to all the local spots I frequent. We even hit a few in Bed Stuy and Fort Greene and Park Slope, some of which could be returned in a social media search for 70’s themed, and not once did my dad mention their decor so I had to ask. I described the 70’s theming situation and he said “so in other words they are bar themed. This is what bars have always looked like and still do.” He is kind of right but I think to my father he does see a bar as a bar as a bar because to him bars are either for craft beer tasting or for alcoholics. He did not like Alibi in Fort Greene I should say. I think he was likely most transported to the past by that dive and got flashbacks of a time where going to the bar could mean your father, the bartender, introduced you to your future boss at General Electric or a place to get too drunk and stay too drunk and one day you’re 60 having a stroke on the same stool.
Carousel is on the corner of Wyckoff and Starr and occupies two commercial plots. There are two large bars: one horseshoe in front of you as you enter and another in the left side room that is half the length of the entire building only cut short by a sunken conversation pit on one end and the DJ booth at the far. I assume just mentioning the phrase “conversation pit” is enough to get at least 20% of the readership curious to visit. There is a similar enough set up in the basement of Flower Shop but I have never felt terribly comforted by the people lording above me peering down into my drink. This conversation pit is set off to the side however so you don’t feel as oppressed. Also it fills up quickly so don’t expect to be able to sit in it on a Friday if you didn’t go straight from the office. The space is huge and circumnavigates an aquarium-like smoking section; encased in glass. Walking clockwise past the long bar at 9 o’clock is a little lounge room with a DJ at a booth playing presumably, or at least aesthetically, vinyl in front of the basement living room set from That 70’s Show. At 12 o’clock are two pool tables atop a congested neck of a hallway straddled by sniffly bathrooms on its shoulders. Last I was there it was too busy to bother waiting for a game of pool but the tables seem fine. They only take change and when my friend Sal first visited the change machine was broken so he had to walk around the block asking taco trucks for change but still came up a quarter short. I went to the smoking section, which I was hoping would be like what you find in an Italian airport or maybe like the smoking room at Le Carmen in the Pigalle neighborhood of Paris; both of which are plexiglass houses with a loud fan. Instead it was actually outside, which is technically better, so we got rained on. A young adult girl asked me for a lighter in a foreign language I didn't immediately understand but something in my head told me I had heard it before.
“What was that?”
“Hast du ein Feuerzeug?”
“You need a light, yeah?”
“Do you know what language that is?”
“Ah .. I don’t know, Portuguese?”
“It’s German.”
She says it again.
“I mean yeah I have been to Germany but I don't speak it.”
The young adult man who was just telling me that he also went to film school, but now works for a real estate management company, which I took to mean a landlord surrogacy, butt in to say something to these three girls; under 10 years my junior. I took the opportunity to duck out.
An article on GrubStreet (now owned by New York Magazine) was recently titled A New Bar That Goes Back to The Basics; in reference to Carousel. The writer, Tammie Teclemariam, expressed that “Carousel has become [her] go-to because there’s nothing flashy about it.” If you click that link you will see a picture of the DJ booth area replete with disco ball and spinning party light. I am of two minds on this topic. 1) When did we decide flashy is so bad as to warrant unconditional avoidance? And 2) This place feels set decorated to the umpteenth degree. By comparison Thai Diner comes to mind. Before it opened I thought it was a leftover set dressing for a TV show until the day I saw people eating in it. An experience similar to when you turn down a block with production vehicles and realize it has snowed but only on this one street. At Carousel numerous bits of decor have been specifically placed just so yet still winds up feeling empty and anonymous. I wrote a whole paragraph about this sensation mirrored in society, pop culture and politics etc but it was really annoying so I deleted it so instead here are some entries from my Notes app:
Imagine Twins but Septuplets
I don’t really see many barbacks and there’s empty beers everywhere in a way reminiscent of frat parties
Beers are reasonably priced which is especially good because I need to be drunk immediately
The walls are all 3/4 inch piece of plywood. Someone opened a door near the bar and it looked like I could run through it like the Kool Aid man
DJ is playing idk stuff
Dance floor kinda isn’t. Which is cute when it’s because there isn’t space but not when there is
There’s a lot of kids with colds leaving the bathroom
The conversation pit is cute and maybe where the adults are supposed to hide
They should put in a working phone booth
If in 40 years I go to a bar with a 2000’s theme I will be very confused
I feel like actual NYC in the 70s was like “dive bar? no that’s where my dad went, and worked, we had blow that wasn’t only fentanyl free it was actually good and we didn’t know what STDs were. Why would we take the train to go stand in a fake bar in RIDGEWOOD?”
Lastly, one thing I did learn from that article is that the conversation pit can be reserved in advance because of course it can. Whenever I try to get a burger at Metrograph and it’s closed for a private event or I go to Fong’s and someone has rented it for their birthday I shed a single tear like the man in that commercial from the 70’s where the “Indian man” cries about pollution. Fun fact that actor is Italian. Why in a world where I select my movie theater seat and make dinner reservations one month ahead of time exactly as they become available to me via Resy would I leave an evening out drinking up to chance?
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This is awesome writing.