A Real LuLu
Call it the Chuck E. Cheese effect. Several years ago, the animatronic-animal party spot opened in a downtown Brooklyn mall. Kids flocked not for food (the pizza is ideal for discus throwing) but arcade games, especially Skee-Ball.
My nostalgia meter went haywire. Countless childhood Saturdays were spent with Chuck, pumping quarters into a slot to play Skee-Ball. Reality, though, kicked in: Rolling frames beneath a robotic mouse's watch-while six-year-olds screamed and parents drank cheap wine-was an acid nightmare.
But the last few months have been a dream; big-kid hangouts have crept into Chuck's territory. Ace Bar offers not one but two Skee-Ball machines, as does Greenpoint's just-opened LuLu's, located in a burgeoning bar-hopping zone near the East River. While at the increasingly drunken intersection of Greenpoint and Franklin Avenues, the Pencil Factory offers perfect pints and Coco66 brings the DJ beat, LuLu's is three levels of excitement carved from a loading dock.
The first floor could be mistaken for a '50s diner. Sparkly blue stools and make-out-ready booths are jazzed up with shiny chrome and set on a black-and-white checkerboard floor. DJs spin and customers congregate on several dozen more stools in the third-level alcove. It's tempting to dribble drinks on patrons below, but be good-you don't want to miss the middle.
To enter the second floor you must pass through a pastel-colored arch, the gateway to a carnival. Circus sideshow paintings (sword swallowers and Siamese twins) jostle for attention with old carousel horses and chipped sconces of mermaids and whimsical creatures. The painting of the twins is appropriate, for it overlooks the pairs of pool tables and vintage Skee-Ball machines. The setting is Astroland via Greenpoint, with local drink prices to boot.
Nightly until 8 p.m., chug half-price pints ($2.50, normally $5) of Brooklyn Lager, Newcastle or Guinness poured nice and slow. Mixed drinks are similarly priced, as well as severely inhibition reducing. Best of all, even the low-rent lush is catered to: two slim bills buys a can of Schlitz.
"PBR would've been too easy and obvious," the heavily inked bartender tells me on a recent weeknight.
I agree, and I'm happy to hear a Schlitz booster. See, my formative alcoholic years were spent blacking out on icy Schlitz, which my favorite college dive sold for a dollar. Though I originally drank with my wallet, I developed a taste for the fuller-bodied brew, as much as one can love a beer priced cheaper than a bag of chips. Still, if a sud should knock PBR from its hipster Everest, I vote for Schlitz. No sane saloon could sell a can for three bucks, bringing cheap beer back to buy-it-with-loose-change levels.
Schlitz is most popular on the weekends, when LuLu's three levels are overtaken by boisterous Greenpoint transplants, local bartenders and Williamsburg refugees. They plug a rabble-rousing mix of Poison, the Pixies, Johnny Cash and Operation Ivy into the jukebox, which mingles with the crack of Skee-Balls crashing to create a sweet, nostalgic cacophony. An overdose of nostalgic good times is cured by fried bar snacks like cheese sticks ($3) and tater tots ($2).
Though weekend nights bustle until about 2:30 a.m., weekdays find LuLu's ghost townish. At nearby bars like Pencil Factory or even Tommy's Tavern the cozy environs allow a solitary drinker to blend into the scenery. At LuLu's, however, you're a basketball player partyin' with jockeys-a bit out of place, a pinch uncomfortable.
Solving this problem is simple: more people. Eventually, drinkers will discover this Coney Island?like emporium. Heck, if Coney Island is redeveloped, LuLu's may be more like an amusement-park escape than the original. The bar, after all, is baked from a time-tested recipe: cheap drinks, great communal games, an ace jukebox and, um, carousel horses hung like taxidermied deer.
What's to hate, besides the location off the dreaded G train? Think of the commute as a trip to a magical wonderland. Here you can bring two friends or 20 and bowl yourselves back to childhood, a time-can you believe it?-when you didn't need beer to have fun.