Saturday, July 17th, 2010—Bar 188

Day 188—Friday, July 16th, 2010
The Oak Bar
First off the PayPal donation bell is ringing! Gidget, the coolest DJ in the world made a comment the other day that she was going to make her kids send in their ice cream money for the bar crawl and I thought she was kidding. But today I got a very generous PayPal donation of fifteen dollars  from Gidget’s three kids, Jack, Dyl, and Maia! Thank you so much kids and if it truly is your ice cream money I’m going to feel very guilty as I drink it! And thanks to Gidget for being so supportive of the site, she set up the facebook fan page and gives the site lots of free plugs on her ultra-cool show on Woody Radio. You really need to check it out here: Woody Radio. Gidget’s also got a great blog that she writes and you should check it out here: Gidgetbates's crap she spews. Okay, thanks again Jack, Dyl and Maia, now you kids have to stop reading this post because a lot of words you shouldn’t be reading are coming up.
Okay, unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ve heard/been bombarded by the press about the Mel Gibson rant tapes that were released. Just in case you haven’t heard them you can listen to the worst one here  Newspapers, magazines, blogs and comedians have been having a field day with Mel and the crazy-ass rants he let loose at the gold-digging woman he left his wife for. So what does this have to do with me crawling to 365 bars? Well, The Oak Bar in the legendary Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel announced this week that they were now serving a drink called the Mel Gibson. The drink is made up of Van Gogh Vodka (Van Gogh was bipolar), gin, vermouth, club soda, and onion juice. Anyway, it’s kind of a cheap ploy to get press and it worked. It got written up all over the place. So since Fridays are usually rough because of the crowds, I thought this might be a good place to go. With the high prices in this place mixed with our current economic situation, I doubt it’s going to be packed. So come on, Sugar Tits, let’s hit the fucking road.

Unbelievably I looked in the window at the Oak Bar and it was packed. Not everyone is feeling the economic crunch I guess. So I decided to come here and have a couple beers and let the crowd at the Oak Bar die down a little.

And here's beer number one.

And beer number two, okay, let's go see if it's a little less crowded at the Oak Bar.

Here it is, The Plaza Hotel in all its over-priced glory.

And here's the Oak Room. The Oak Bar is set off to the side of this place.

The wall outside of the bar features photos of famous people at the Plaza. Here's the Beatles in the lobby with someone I don't know the name of.

Here's Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow. This picture was an early inspiration for Lady Gaga.

Okay, it's after midnight and the bar has settled down somewhat, there's even a seat which I will take.

I ordered the Mel Gibson and here is the bartender mixing it up.

And the Mel Gibson is served.

And the drink is awful and brings out the inner Mel in me. I deserve to be blown godammit!

Here's a close up of the drink. It really tastes like shit and costs over twenty bucks.

There's a painting behind the bar painted by artist, Everett Shinn.

And here's another on a side wall.

Bar snacks!

This bartender has the electric eyes going on. Scary stuff, kids! Owooo!

There's lots of table outside of the bar to drink overpriced drinks at.

And couches are placed along the sidewalls as people throw money to the wind on 20 dollar cocktails.

This jazz trio was playing in the back of the room.

She was singing, "Bye Bye Blackbird," and I took it as a queue to hit the road, no more 20 dollar Mel Gibson's for me. Goodnight everybody!

Review
The Oak Bar is adjacent to the legendary Oak Room in the Plaza Hotel overlooking Central Park. The original Oak Bar was restored last fall and the bar features artist’s Everett Shinn’s original murals of winter happenings in Central Park. The bartenders are old school and friendly and the crowd is a mix of businessmen doing deals and tourists gawking about. Nobody seems to mind the fact that cocktails range in the 20 dollar area. Except for me.

The cocktails here are all classic style drinks, martini’s, sidecars and now a Mel Gibson and they cost plenty. The view is great here, but you can go to the deli around the block, get a beer to go and see the same thing while standing on the sidewalk and drinking a 16 ounce can of Budweiser for a buck fifty. I recommend that, who wants to pay 20 bucks for a drink? Give me the Mars Bar any day of the week.

The Oak Bar
768 5th Ave. (between 58th St & 59th St)
212-758-7777