The Hanger
THE HANGER
212-228-1030
I HAVE THREADBARE JEANS and a swollen liver for a reason. I abhor shopping, but love an after-work drink. This passion and hatred, for the most part, exist in mutual aversion. While my girlfriend shops for shiny tchotchkes, I grab a brew.
If I joined her, I'd seize with paralytic fear. As Barry Schwartz posits in the The Paradox of Choice, a consumerism overdose can produce genuine suffering. Who needs genuine suffering? I'd need a beer to feel better, so why bother shopping in the first place?
Apparently, several young entrepreneurs in Alphabet City feel differently. Last year, Betsy Nadel and Natalka Burian were batting daydreams back and forth.
"Ha ha," Burian remembers telling Nadel, "wouldn't it be funny if we sold clothes and beer? When people get drunk, they'll buy lots of clothes."
Well, idle chit-chat turned concrete. For fun, the girls drew up a business plan. Not that they were really serious, says Nadel. Still, they started location scouting, finding several ideal bar-store spots. But the girls' hemming and hawing cost them. Undaunted, they lazily searched on, stumbling onto Plant Bar, the once-hot DJ spot shuttered for disregarding the cabaret law.
Plant Bar sported shoe-box confines, but Nadel and Burian were enamored: For two girls with scant bar experience (a restaurant here, a lounge there), smaller was better. On a whim, they signed a lease and, for budget's sake, channeled Bob Villa. With the help of friend Robert, the girls sanded, stained, plastered and painted Plant Bar's "flesh-colored" décor into something resembling a French bordello.
Deep-red walls were adorned with black-and-white femme fatale photos. Circa-1940 gilded mirrors were hung. Tree-centric wallpaper was pasted. A five-buck church pew provided interior seating. The bar was stocked with two-dollar PBR and Olde English, five-dollar drafts and $12 pitchers of "well" cocktails. Now all Nadel and Burian needed were clothes. They took a road trip.
The girls scoured upstate New York thrift stores for vintage duds, then shuttled the garments to a bar they named, naturally, the Hanger. Friends were solicited to donate closet surplus. So did Nadel and Burian. Items like band t-shirts and puppy-dog sweaters were hung on a rack flanking the bar, while shoes and accessories filled the rear. The binary Hanger opened for business-and disaster.
Clothes (buy something and get a buck off a drink!) were an instant success, outselling booze. But the jukebox soon busted, beer taps went fusty and the refrigerator's compressor went kaput.
"Everything that could go wrong, did," says Burian.
The parade of bugs and glitches, however, is being smooshed and sorted, hardly detracting from a strange fact: Instead of causing the shopping crazies, the Hanger fosters coziness. On a recent weeknight, I bring a focus group to test the hypothesis. On one side sit clothes hounds Adrianne and Jessie. On the other, lushes Steve, Aaron, Jose and Andrew. While the Shins and Neutral Milk Hotel sing ditties, each participant finds personal heaven.
"Oh, isn't this the most darling sweater?" Jessie asks, hoisting a cute white cardigan meeting her taste and wallet-$10.
Steve, Aaron, Andrew and Jose, meanwhile, are enamored with downtown's ubiquitous booze special: PBR and a shot of gut-bleeding whiskey for four dollars.
"I can't believe I'm drinking whiskey named 'Corby's,'" Steve says, before ordering another.
Andrew's manna is the bar-top jar of childhood sweets like Smarties, Tootsie Rolls and Lemonheads.
"Eat as many as you want," Burian says, as Andrew sneaks a paw into the sugar pit for the umpteenth time. "The more you eat, the less I eat."
The stray Lemonhead aside, I shy from candy, instead charting bold territory: the Staten Island ice tea. What alco-adventure does an ignored borough have in store?
"Oh, nothing special," says Burian, cracking a can of Lipton ice tea. She pours a jigger of vodka, lime juice and ice tea into a cocktail glass, for which I exchange three dollars.
"It's?unusual," I says, wincing at the lime's sour kick.
"Some people love it, others hate it," Burian says.
"It kinda makes me want to puke." While discussing vomit, I wonder how their merchandise fares within oft-queasy bar environs.
"Well, we usually put the clothes away when it gets crowded."
"Any disasters?"
"Someone once barfed on a shirt."
"And?"
"If you barf on it, you buy it."