Fridays I babysit. It’s true – there are other sides to this Bar Fly. One of which is a nurturing babysitter who takes a cool little boy to painfully dull PG movies and then practices math flash cards. Of course, after all that cuteness, it was time for a drink. I don’t know the Upper West too well, so I found a few addresses via my blackberry aka the love of my life. I wasn’t quite committed to one destination, so I just started walking up Amsterdam. Surprisingly, I was not (as I wrongly assumed) out of my price range. Many of the bars around the 80′s had happy hours and crowds.
Crowded at 5:30- Impressive.
When I started to pass Jake’s Dilemma, at Amsterdam and 82nd, I noticed an exciting crowd and could go no further. I later found out Jake’s is part of a family of bars, some of which we’ve all been to at some point: Down the Hatch, Off the Wagon, The Stumble Inn, The 13th Step, etc. I’ve been to O.T.W. and found it overwhelming, but these happy hour prices are so good I can’t hold a grudge. (I did think it was funny that the bouncer questioned my ID because I had brown hair in the picture and I was 5’11. Yes, I grew. Yes, I died my hair. Yes, I was wearing contacts in the picture not big nerdy glasses.) I arrived, once I had proven my age, at 5:20 and the place was already packed. The crowd went from twenty’s to fifty’s and everyone was having a good time enjoying the 1/2 price drinks as well as games, including fooseball, buck hunter, and the college classic: beer pong. While the front of the bar felt like and old-time saloon, the middle was a frat house, and the back was a homey library. Interesting mix. I got a Blue Moon for 3 bucks and started stalking my prey.
Kira on the left, Lily on the right. Cute girls representing for the nerds! High Fives!
Lily and Kira seemed approachable enough. Two low-twenty-something girls in all black drinking beer and saying “hello” to other patrons they seemed to know. Turns our these girls work at the American Museum of Natural History. Freeking fannnntastic, right? Immediately upon hearing this I had a hard-core craving for laying under the big whale. These “Program Associates in the Educational Department” got into the business via different routes. Lily studied film and worked at a documentary film festival and also managed other projects and that somehow just lead its way to the Museum. Kira interned at the museum for 2 summers in college and couldn’t get enough. I have to say, if I were a guy, I’d find these museum cuties very intriguing! Don’t you?
Bar Fly: So do museum people like to drink a lot?
Lily: Depends on the department, but this is a popular happy hour place.
Kira: I’d say a museum in general has a lot of free spirits.
Bar Fly: Do you come here every Friday?
Lily: We don’t but there’s always some museum people here.
Bar Fly: And what’s your favorite drink?
Lily: Here or in general?
Bar Fly: I guess in general.
Lily: Negroni. (Sadly, I needed her to spell this for me. I’m a beer and whiskey kinda girl, this is complicated)
Kira: For me, I have to admit, a filthy martini.
Bar Fly: How long will you be staying here?
Lily: An hour more?
Bar Fly: Keeping it low-key?
Lily: Well, I have a friend’s birthday party downtown at Union Square Coffee Shop. You know it? (I nod, though the nod is a lie, I think). Me friend rented out the bottom floor for the party.
Bar Fly: Fancy. I was just wondering, does any wierd stuff ever happen at the museum?
Lily: The answer is: yes. (Both laugh…) Because we work with lots of live specimens and lots of taxidermy we have flesh-eating beetles that we use to clean the specimen. I don’t know if that’s weird.
Bar Fly: It is.
Lily: Yeah, most offices have filing cabinets, we have cabinets full of flesh-eating beetles.
Kira: Oh and we got an email the other day about a snake getting out and to keep an eye out for it.
Bar Fly: Crazy. What kind?
Lily: Just a milk snake, they are harmless. (Lucky it was that kind of snake, right?)
Bar Fly: Well, it sounds like you guys definitely deserve a drink because you have real jobs, unlike me. How long have you been doing this?
Lily: A year and six months, no a year and nine months.
Beer Pong Action Shot! It didn't go in : (
Kira: We came around the same time.
Bar Fly: Well congrats. And just wondering, what’s your favorite thing about Jake’s here?
Lily: Cheep drinks and playing games. Activities are very important to us.
Kira: Beer pong is clutch.
Bar Fly: My fatboy ex’s couldn’t have said it better.
Thanks girls! Cheers (to flesh eating beetles).
Beer for dinner. Yum.
Bzzzzzz…. And I fly off.
