Your life is really going places when you're at a dive bar, alone, BEFORE the entertainment shows up at 7:30 in the p.m. on a Wednesday.
But enough about me.
There are a few kinds of dive bars. Well, maybe two, and then from those two categories spring several subcategories.
You have cool ones and shit ones.
The latter are dive bars by default, dive bars without character, dive bars where optimism and decency and hope truly took a, well, dive.
The challenge with a dive bar is that you can't tell what kind of a dive bar you've got until you walk inside.
Maybe you've got a dive bar in your neighborhood and you already know its reputation, but most of the time dive bars are what catch your eye when you're on your way somewhere else, like to a nice bar.
I was doing some writing at a Starbucks in Bethpage because I was getting sick of writing at the Starbuckses in my home town, and I was considering doing an open mic, and I saw that one was taking place at Mr. Beery's, a mere .3 miles away from the aforementioned Bethpage Starbucks.
So I got some work done and I drove over.
Mr. Beery's holds court in the corner of a strip mall on a hit-or-miss section of Hempstead Turnpike, next to a Brothers 3 Pools establishment, and I always hated the name "Brothers 3 Pools" but I guess that's a subject I can tackle in another Yelp review, though I don't have a pool and have only one brother.
From the outside, Mr. Beery's is the kind of place you don't want to enter with your hands inside your pockets, because you feel like you could get jumped at any moment.
But it was only half past seven, so the crowd consisted a handful of tattooed individuals who could definitely throw me through a window if it was "Toss a Stranger Through a Window Wednesday." And the male patrons could, too.
The establishment has a narrow layout, as if it were two lanes of a former bowling alley, with a cornered niche for the entertainment. There's a working men's room with a urinal instructing you to PUSH IN [the handle] TO FLUSH. These directions were accurate, I must attest.
But enough about the bathroom. I'll reserve a more thorough review of that space for the Yelp spinoff, YelpPublicBathrooms, starting with a review of the very uninspired albeit accurate name.
If I stopped the review here, you would not only be relieved, but you'd assume this was just some average dive bar.
HOWEVER
However, when you reach the actual bar -- isn't it weird that "bar" can mean both the area where you sit on stools and order drinks as well as the entire building? -- you notice something that elevates Mr. Berry's to Cool Bardom: The beers.
I'm a snob for beers (among other things), and not only do they offer -- in addition to the usual swill (FIVE MIller Genuine Drafts for twenty bucks? The Champagne of Beers, indeed!), they have the following (to name just three) from my list of favorites:
* La Chouffe
* St. Bernardus Abt 12
* St. Bernardus Tripel
...and these are not only ON TAP, but these beers are pulled from branded taps. Meaning my Tripel was poured from a fancy tap on top of which stood an actual grinning St. Bernardus monk action figure, clearly offering his blessings for the smart choice I made.
I drank my beer (in an actual tulip glass -- fancy!) as the box of juke played a rather eclectic selection that included "Forever" by Throwdown, "Scratch the Surface" by Sick of It All, some song from Motley Crüe that was a pop hit 100 years ago, some song my Shazam music recognition app could not recognize but the makes-Tom-Waits-sound-like-Ella-Fitzgerald singer was in dire need of an otolaryngologist, and "White Lines" by Melle Mel.
And I thought to myself, "This is a hell of a dive bar. NOT a dive bar from hell."
I didn't stick around for the open mic. There's also an almost-full-size bear in the corner. Maybe the place should be called Mr. BEARY'S.
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