Beach-Blanket Beer-Sipping
Harry's LIC Bar and Grill
New York Water Taxi parking lot (near Borden & Second Sts.)
watertaxibeach.com
Here's a head-scratcher: Why are certain bars more elusive than El Dorado's gold? Example: hot spot La Esquina. Location? Nestled in Nolita's Corner Deli, behind a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Reservation? Required. Phone number? Granted by a hostess who'll maybe (maybe) provide a table after you schlep upstairs and call. In the name of Milk and Honey, why is getting drunk a cool-approved privilege?
So a tweak: Take a difficult-to-find bar and make its door policy a touch more egalitarian. A novel concept, perhaps, and one at play on a stretch of New Jersey sand bordering the East River. Confused? Don't be. For about 18 months, the New York Water Taxi has served Long Island City's Hunters Point, the craggy lip of southwestern Queens. Then in July, Taxi CEO Tom Fox and partner Douglas Durst shipped in 400 tons of toothpaste-white Jersey Shore sand (cost: $17,000). Insta-beach! Kind of. For though there is sand, water is off-limits. It's like opening a swimming pool, then relegating everyone to deck chairs and towels.
To complete the fake beach, Harry Hawk was enlisted. Hawk is the chef at all-American grubbery Schnäck and a partner at Gowanus Yacht Club-grandpappy of the PBR-and-burgers-in-unlikely-locales craze. He recreated the outdoor magic with picnic tables and a school bus?yellow trailer kitchen. PBRs were chilled and priced to sell for a buck. Now the only problem was attracting customers.
Though the website touts, "Finding the beach is easy!" I disagree. The 34th Street water taxi is the most direct route, but why drop eight dollars round-trip to drink? And it's a 15-minute hike from the 7 or G train. Instead, bike or drive and look for the bulbous Tennisport complex, beside a parking lot marked by a New York Water Taxi sign. Head to the lot's rear and-voila!-beach.
Keep alert, or you'll meet my fate last weekend: biking in circles, girlfriend screaming, "Why is your sense of direction so shitty!"-more indictment than question. After meandering through the industrial streets, we eventually stumble upon Harry's. Port-o-Potties line the entry, beside a sink and plywood menu scrawled in jagged black paint.
Inside, the scene does the Jersey sand proud: beer-sippers sit at a bar beneath a corrugated-tin roof; drunken men play volleyball, grey Duct tape on their shorn skulls like dreadlocks; a radio station unleashes Collective Soul; and several women sun themselves in bikinis, their bosoms the color of ketchup. A picnic table near the gated water is available, so we grab it. There's a stellar view of the Midtown skyline (through a gated fence decorated with streamers, unfortunately). The scene is tranquil, a breezy reprieve from the summer swelter. I would like to add quiet, but when a bar sells Pabst for a dollar, that can never be the case.
"Run, baby, run!" shout the middle-aged men behind us, wearing pink shirts and slicked-back hair. "Fight the wind!" They're cheering on a visibly sodden companion dashing back to their picnic table.
"I did it! I win!" he says. He grabs another beer and drinks. Hungrily.
A shoeless waiter pads over and hands us a paper menu. "What can I get you to drink?"
A Pabst would be lovely, but the bar's out. Drafts of fine beach beer like Dentergems and Harpoon IPA are just $4, but I'm morally opposed to drinking good brew from a plastic cup. Instead, bottles of Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale ($4) and Corona ($4) make do. The fish tacos ($5 apiece) and elk burger ($8) are intriguing, but, judging by famished drinkers, beef dogs ($2) and burgers ($4) are the popular choices. As is bringing children, who run around like monkeys freed from the cage. At nearly 15,000 square feet of beach, there's space for everyone. But there isn't enough time.
Harry's has a woefully brief lifespan. The bar is only open Friday through Sunday until midnight, and the last burger will be flipped Labor Day weekend. It's a shame, because after about a month, the bar's finding its groove. Hawk's kitchen is humming. The beers are plentiful (save for the PBR). Prices are cheap. And though the bar's far from a secret, it is far enough from mass transportation to keep fly-by-night scenesters away. Perhaps. It may not seem fashionable to travel to the far edge of Queens to get drunk on a faux beach, but I know better than to bet on it.