Saturday, September 11th, 2010—Bar 244

Day 244—Friday, September 10th, 2010
The Bubble Lounge
I just got the following email from someone who wishes to be anonymous: “I found your website from EV Grieve and you should check out the Bubble Lounge. A chill cocktail place that’s a little different from your usual bar. Keep up the good work, your blog is a lot of fun!” I want to thank EV Grieve for posting the 365 post and it’s Friday and I never know where to go, so what the hell, it’s off to the Bubble Lounge we go!

And here it is, The Bubble lounge in all it's bubblyness.

Check out the logo on the sidewalk.

If you smoke, there's two comfortable chairs outside and a table with an ashtray, nice!

As you enter there's a long, shotgun styled candle-lit lounge area with a comfortable couch, chairs and cushions.

Here's the bar area and there's seats at the bar! On a Friday, let's grab one while we can.

The bartender was a nice guy, but a little shy and didn't want his picture taken, but he did agree to this. I think he's got a future as a hand model, what do you think?

I got one of the signature cocktails, The California Dream. It was delicious, cheers!

Peter and Sean were seated next to me at the bar and were a couple of nice guys who were interested in the whole 365 concept.

Here's the back lounge area. I'm taking all photos without a flash tonight because it's kind of intimate in here and I don't want to ruin the mood for anyone.

Here's a shot of the bar where I'm sitting.

Here's John, who's a friend of Peter and Sean's. He came up to take them to a private party that was going on downstairs. Have fun, guys!

A long shot of the top of the bar.

Frank and Stacey took Sean and Peter's seats at the end of the bar. Hello Frank and Stacey!

Champagne glasses on the wall...

And one in real life. Sandeep enjoys one of the many varieties of champagne available at the lounge.

Wow, it's getting packed in here, time for me to vamoose.

There was a subway station nearby and as I made my way towards the tracks: Blammo! A train was pulling in. What luck!

Is that guy on the right flipping me off?

Oh well, whatever. Goodnight, everybody!

Review
The Bubble Lounge is an upscale lounge in Tribeca that prides itself on a large variety of champagne. There’s a low-lit lounge in front with padded couches and chairs and candle=lit tables. The small bar is in the back with another lounge area opposite and in the back. The scene is mainly after work and neighborhood singles looking to hook up over a glass or two of bubbly or one of their signature cocktails.

Bubble Lounge calls itself, "New York's premier champagne salon," and it backs up that boast by having over 300 champagne’s in the house at any given time. In addition to the vintage and non-vintage champagne, Bubble Lounge has a full bar with 10 martinis and signature cocktails such as: Raspberry Caipirinha, Brazilian Sangria, Bubbly Margarita on the Rocks and the California Dream which mixes Christiania Vodka, Blood Orange Puree, Lime Juice Elderflower Syrup, Pineapple Puree and Crème de Gingembre.

They also have a food menu with a variety of cheeses and some of the small plates to choose from include: Mini Black Truffle Baked Potatoes, Mini Ahi Tuna Burger, Smoked Salmon on Toast Points and Sweet Garlic Stuffed Duck Meatballs served a Demi-Glace Sauce.

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble!

The Bubble Lounge
228 West Broadway (Near White St.)
212-431-3433

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Bonus Column from my book, “The Boy Who Would Be A Fire Truck.”

The Weird Day When the Sky Went Brown

I’ve seen the sky in many colors, various shades of blue, gray, black, purple, but up to that day, I had never seen the sky the color of brown. It kind of made me feel sick in a weird, Twilight Zone William-Shatner-see-a-monster-on-the-airplane’s wing-kind of way. And it was a grotesque brown color; it looked like Satan had vomited a stomach full of Yoo-Hoo all over the Manhattan  skyline. After a couple of minutes of staring at this stomach-turning mess of a sky, I turned around and looked uptown and the sky was blue. Then I turned back around, looked downtown and the sky was still brown. It was really weird. Like some kind of a whacked-out nursery rhyme: Downtown brown / uptown blue /  knick knack paddywhack / give the dog some glue.

The day started weird and just got weirder and more sickening as the minutes turned into hours and the brown day careened into a purple-black night. The day had started with a strange series of clicks emanating from my phone.
    
I work nights so I have a schedule that’s opposite of most people—I keep Elvis hours, I sleep in the day and wake up in the afternoon—so I always keep the ringer on my phone off and turn the volume on my phone answering machine all the way down. So while I never hear the phone ring or the messages people leave, you can hear a click when someone calls. On this day, just as I was falling off to dreamland, I heard my first click.

“Weird,” I thought, “I wonder who’s calling me at this hour?” Then I started to drift off to slumberland once again.

Then another click.

Then another.

And another. Another one. Anotheranotheranotheranotheranotheranother. Click. Click. Clickclickclickclickclick. Click. Clickityclickclickclick. Clickclickclickclickclick. Clickclick. Clickclickclickityclickclickclickclick. Clickclickclick. CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.

This went on for a while. I’d just about be asleep and then another series of clicks would rattle off like a hyperactive machine gun spraying wake up dust all over my kingdom of sleep. Finally, even though I was dreary-eyed tired, I got up, scaled down the ladder attached to my loft bed, and stumbled over to the phone answering machine. The little red light on the grey and silver rectangular machine was blinking in a hyperactive fashion. It was about 1:30 in the afternoon.

“Who the fuck is calling me,” I said to myself as I turned the volume up on the answering machine and hit Play.

Now this is where the weirdness really kicks in to a nerve-rattling gear. I’ve never had so many messages on my phone machine in my life and I didn’t understand a single one of them.


BEEEEP—“Hey, Marty, this is Tom, just calling to make sure you’re okay, call me when you get a chance.”—BEEEEP.

Tom is my older brother, who lives in New Jersey.

“Why in the fuck is he calling to see if I’m okay at this hour?” I wondered. Then:

BEEEEP—“Dude, it’s Alex, I rode my bike over the Brooklyn Bridge. I saw the people jumping out of the buildings, call me when you can. I’m drinking already.”—BEEEEP

“Huh?” Alex is one of my best friends, who used to live in Brooklyn.

“People jumping out of buildings?” I thought to myself. I was starting to feel like you do when you’ve smoked too much pot and start jumping out of your skin as paranoia strikes deep. And with every message, I was feeling more and more creeped out.

There were messages from everybody in my family, almost everybody I know in New York, and messages from old friends from my hometown of Peoria, Illinois. And they all were pretty much the same: “Are you okay?...call when you get a chance...are you all right?...we want to make sure you’re okay....”

Nobody said what had happened. Everybody sounded weird and more than one person was crying. I was starting to imagine apocalypse. Now.

Finally, after I listened to all of them, I looked at my window and wondered what in the fucking hell was lurking out there. I keep black construction paper taped over the two small windows in my apartment to keep the sunlight out (Elvis hours and all) and for a couple of sickening minutes I just stared at my black windows and trying to imagine the horror that was happening on the other side. Finally I walked over to the door that leads to the roof overhang and slowly and carefully opened it up and poked my head out like a turtle coming out of his shell. When I looked outside, I was shocked.

Everything looked normal.

I looked outside and nothing appeared out of the ordinary. Sure, I heard some sirens, but that’s standard operating procedure for New York City. The sun was shining brightly, the sky was bright blue and was dotted with white fluffy clouds. A bird flew overhead and a warm breeze hit my face. Maybe Hell wasn’t hiccuping after all.

Then  I shut the door and turned on the TV.

I can’t remember which station it was, but I remember looking at the screen, seeing planes flying into buildings and people with horrific zombielike faces running away in big crowds from giant dust clouds. My jaw dropped and I grabbed my stomach. It kind of looked like New York and I instinctively and quickly turned the channel, somehow hoping that would make this go away.

It didn’t.

After I watched the TV and figured out what happened I went outsid to the street, looked downtown and saw the brown sky. I should’ve walked away from it, but I wasn’t thinking clearly and started to walk towards it.

Throngs of people were walking like zombies towards the brown sky. Before I knew  it, I had joined this lemminglike parade. Regular traffic was shut off after 14th Street, so it got increasingly surreal the closer I got. No cars except cop cars, helicopters buzzing overhead, a brown sky, people walking willy-nilly in every direction, everybody with a dazed how-could-this-happen look plastered on their puss. Some people were openly weeping. Army men with guns dotted every street. Cops were all over the place. TV cameras and the talking heads from all of the news channels were blithering and blathering on every other corner. It was chaos. I got pretty close and then decided I really didn’t want to be down there anymore. What I wanted was a beer, so I turned around and started walking towards the blue side of the city. It probably wasn’t normal anymore either, but it had to beat the brown side of town.

I wandered to many bars that afternoon and evening. The atmosphere in the bars was weird. They were all filled with people drinking in almost total silence while staring obsessively at CNN on the television sets. I finished the night off at a bar called the Stoned Crow drinking beer after silent beer while watching the TV people endlessly replay the tape of the planes flying into the buildings. On my way home, I bought a six-pack from a Korean deli. The little fiftysomething Korean man behind the counter took my money and put the beer in a paper bag. After he gave me my change, he touched my arm as I grabbed the bag and said, “You be safe, okay?” I looked at him and nodded, I couldn't talk because I felt like I was going to start crying. I remember wondering if I was going nuts.

When I got back to my studio apartment on 16th Street, I opened a can of beer and looked at the round plastic clock hanging on my wall. It was 12:24. The day was officially over. I felt a small speck of relief washing over me. I took a long gulp from the 16-ounce can of Budweiser and thought to myself, “Jesus, what a weird fucking day.”