Pub crawling in Jersey City

When my friends were in Jersey City a few weeks back we spent a lot of time down the pub (as you do), specifically the pubs around my house which are all a bit scary. If it was in Glasgow these pub would be "Jakey pubs", here they are "Dive Bars". Dive bar culture is pretty hardcore, you don't order cosmopolitans in these places.

The main street by where is live is called Westside Avenue and is mostly Filipino and African-American businesses but there are few Irish bars left from the days when the hood was almost entirely Irish and Italian. After the race-riots of the late 60's (the 40th anniversary of the Newark riots was last weekend), the Irish and Italians all moved out to suburbia as part of the phenomenon known as "white flight".

As I stated before a lot of these bars are pretty scary looking and a lot of people won't go in to them but I have been in much worse places in the West of Scotland. And like the ones in the West of Scotland, the only thing rarer than women in these bars is sunlight and good beer. If you are a people watcher like me they are a fascinating guide to how NOT to live your life.

Anyway, the first bar we hit was called Mike's Place. Hidden behind a Dunkin Donuts and across from a Dairy Queen just off Westside Avenue. It has a pool table, a jukebox with a selection of classic rock (plenty of Queen and NO FUCKING Billy Joel) and the smallest beer selection in America and possibly the world. You can have your pick of Budweiser or Miller-lite, if you ask nicely your glass will be cold and it will only cost you a buck! You will also get a buy-back for every two ONE DOLLAR beers you consume. This probably explains why the bar looks like it is made from formica and leftover kitchen cabinets.

The regulars, all 3 of them (including Mike), are all really friendly even if they do bear resemblance to Fredo from The Godfather. Oh, and I would also mention that when you are playing pool, the table may seem like it is on a slope but in fact it is the whole bar that is on a slope. Put the white ball on the floor and watch it roll downhill faster than George Bush’s popularity.

Just down the street from Mike's Place is a another bar called "PF4 Friends". A confusing name that means nothing to me and seems to predate the invention of text message language by some 20 years. It occurs to me that it may have some connection to the scribblings of the artist formerly known as… the artist formally known as Prince who used to say things like “When 2 R in Love” and “I would Die 4 U” years before the cell phone industry caught on.

The clientèle consists of the barmaid from the Journal Square pub (more about that later) who obviously does her drinking here because the JSQ pub is too up-market for her and an ex-marine who is possibly the angriest man in America and bears a passing resemblance to Lemmy from Motorhead.

Beers were 3 bucks which was a shock after the communist paradise that was Mike’s Place, and again the jukebox was FUCKING Billy Joel free. Top marks for that fellas!

After that it was onto my local and in my opinion, the best bar in Jersey City, The Park Tavern. It has Guinness, Blue Moon wheat beer and a host of others on tap. The jukebox has a good selection of classic rock, Irish and country music. The whole place smells like wood, the bar tables are old wooden cable spindles turned on their side, in the winter there is a real wood fire and in the summer they have an outdoor space in the back. FUCKING Billy Joel doesn't get a look in.

The regulars are mainly Jersey City Police Department and JC Fire Department with a smattering of younger inhabitants thrown in. It's still a scary place though. If you want to come here, beware there is no sign on the door and I wasn’t able to find any reference to it online (hence the lack of a definitive address above). Just look for the place that has the old wooden shingle front that looks like it burned down some time ago.

Next it was onto City Hall.....

I say that because Jersey City has an Irish mayor and he is known for liking a drink, so much so that he answered the door naked during his election campaign and last year was arrested (and later found guilty and fined) for fighting with the police in another New Jersey town. The Astor Bar where I went next is one of the mayor's hangouts and, I suspect, where most of the important decisions regarding the city are really made.

Stepping into this place is like stepping into a time-warp. It looks like it hasn’t changed since the 1950’s and it probably hasn’t.

Frankie Valli and Tony Bennet are on the jukebox, and so are 2… FUCKING 2!!!!… FUCKING Billy Joel CD’s. That almost ruined it for me but as soon as I heard the soothing tones of Patsy Cline going walking after midnight, I figured I can live with the fish-faced wanker for now.

The regulars were loud and friendly, discussing racing at Belmont at the tops of their voices and chugging $2.50 beers. To a man, they all looked like versions of Archie Bunker, grey-haired and pink round Irish faces.

Finally it was on to the Journal Square Pub, this is the last bar before you get on the train to Manhattan. There are a lot of Scottish tans in this pub. What is that you ask? Well, a regular tanned person has tanned skin and white teeth, a Scottish tanned person has white skin and tanned teeth. The barmaid who I met earlier is very nice but jaded in a way that only someone who has been dealing with hardcore alky's for the last 20 years could be.

I do have a soft spot for this pub so I hope it survives the gentrification of Journal Square which is right around the corner, however looking at some of the regulars I just hope they survive the weekend!