Twins Lounge
732 Manhattan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11222
Twins Lounge a bar with two-levels: half pool-dive and half sunroom, mid-century Tinder meet up spot. Perhaps tiki notes, perhaps a whiff of old Vegas but filter both those ideas through Los Angeles. The kind of place that will impress your date with your knowledge of such a vibey bar; that is if they haven't really been anywhere or don’t really drink like that. It’s as if they built it specifically to operate as such. Greenpoint, a neighborhood with many, currently or soon to be, relationship’ed, young professionals, seems too appropriate a home for it to be coincidence. Is the urge to couple and nest so strong here because the rent is too high to afford on your own? If not then maybe you’re killing it: move to the city or buy a Brownstone. The neighborhood is appealing to those with means, and this bar has two large bars and is cash only. I mention this to say: Twin’s must be making a killing.
I sit upstairs and sip a spritz that tastes like bitter velvet. The upstairs bar shares an aesthetic kinship with my great aunt Madd’s Ocean City (NJ) beach house, as I remember it in the 90’s, which means maybe furnished in the late 70’s? The downstairs is long with those casino style cushioned stools with backs, booths lining the left wall, and two pool tables all the way in the back. In the past, I have played many a game of pool here, generally too drunk to be any good, and have haunted the end of the bar taking shots with a buddy who works here. “How’s the sour with Banane de Bresil?” “It’s good but I prefer it with Hennessy.” “I’ve heard that called a ‘Banana Hammock.’” The owners of Twin’s opened the bar Carmelo’s, in Bushwick, a few years ago. If nothing else, they know their audience and how to target it effectively. Carmelo’s serves $2 draft Buds, making it popular with skateboarders, and the pool tables are as far away from the more polite floor level crowd as space will allow. You can feel being in a dive without actually being in one, technically speaking. One big difference being Carmelo’s always felt like a fight could break out at any time and that is noticeably missing here. At Twin’s the deeper reaches of the bottom floor are far from any hint of sunlight while the more manicured bar upstairs is awash for most of the day; due to the windowed ceiling and front wall the likes of which I feel I’ve seen in movies with characters who live in Midtown.
Personally, I’d have a hard time imagining coming here if I didn’t know a bartender, or couldn’t play a capable game of pool. I could imagining attending Thursday night drink appointments with coworkers or a friend group that works enough to necessitate a Google Calendar notification to actually get everyone in the same place. It’s maybe less obviously ‘Greenpoint’ then the last rounds of tailor made establishments, such as Goldie’s, Pony Boy, or even Paulie Gee’s, but it does have the veneer of admitting its all artifice. Like it you took a sledge hammer to things it would be no deeper than a Bushwick remodeled apartment. It invites you not to think about it.
I, however, am thinking about it. The plants are fake. The room feels set decorated. Have you been to London and experienced the recent brand of corpo pubs? If not, there is a bit of a scandal in the UK about a small group of investment companies owning a percentage of the new pubs. As if every dirty old pub in England got the Guliani Times Square treatment and now they are clean, corporate, and disheartening. This, and other places in the greater Williamsburg/Greenpoint/East Williamsburg zone, are of a similar ilk but they said “make it Bushwick.” There’s a compulsion homogenized around what a new Brooklyn bar is supposed to look like. Not to say there aren’t these bars in the city. Whenever someone asks me what Ray’s is like I reply “it’s like someone picked up a Greenpoint bar and dropped it behind the Bowery Mission.” Flowershop feels too obvious to mention but it counts. I get the appeal and I’ll abide by “bar bar,” but the underlying fibers are starting to be laid bare. You know how those AI drawings always seem to get at least somethings correct but at the same time their weird robot minds’ shortcomings are eerily apparent? Whatever our collective subconscious thinks the 70’s looked like is starting to become mass market; as if we were asked to recreate past social environments entirely drawing from episodes of “Stranger Things.”
Whilst I’ll return I am reminded of the time I toured the Warner Brothers backlot and walked down the New York street. I bumped into a fire hydrant and it fell over. Good enough for government work, and I’m sure it won’t be long before we see a third enterprise from this group. They have the Bushwick skaters covered, the Greenpoint prenatal career set handled, so where do they go next? Where do the well to do 40+ (with or without) kids hang out? Do they have time to hang out? Fort Greene?