The houses at Calyer Street and Clifford Place (Google Maps)
Calyer Street has one of the most beautiful groups of landmark row houses in Greenpoint, where Calyer Street meets Clifford Place. These five Neo-Greek brick houses were built between 1879 and 1880. The quaint landmark houses seem to have jumped straight out of the Edward Hopper painting Sunday Morning. These houses delude you into thinking that Calyer Street is frozen in time—but change is coming quickly to Greenpoint, even to historic Calyer Street.
Perhaps no street is more historic than Calyer Street. The history of the street even predates its official opening, going all the way back to 1645 when the first European home in Greenpoint was built by Norwegian immigrant Dirck Volckerstzen 100 feet from where Calyer and Franklin meet. The house was built on a knoll, but was burned by the Native Americans in 1655 and rebuilt after the conflict had ended. The house and the hill it stood on were leveled to provide landfill for shipyards in the 1850s. Continue reading →
Nowadays, Greenpoint has a bewildering number of bars, but many of the best ones aren’t really places to watch a football game. So what makes a great sports bar where you can watch all the Sunday N.F.L action (or Monday night or Thursday night or Saturday College Football)? First, the bar has to have a big screen TV, preferably many TVs, so if you don’t root for the Giants or the Jets you can still catch your team’s game. Second, the bar’s gotta have good cheap beer and preferably some kind of beer and shot specials. Also, who doesn’t watch a football game without getting the munchies? A bar that serves pub grub has to rate higher than one that doesn’t. Finally, you want to watch with a good crowd, not in some mausoleum. With those categories in mind, here is a list of the top ten places to watch an N.F.L game! Continue reading →
WEDNESDAY 12/17 * Music & Pyrrhonism Without Us @ Capri Social Club (156 Calyer St) 7:30pm, FREE, Join Triple Canopy for a presentation by 2014 commission recipient Kieran Daly, More info ♫ Permutations121714 @ Cloud City (85 North 1st St) 8pm, $15, Featuring Kafka Fragments / Mike Tyson Will Eat Your Children / Talking in Circles / Four Koans, and more, RSVPContinue reading →
Fancy bars and restaurants with all sorts of sexy food and drink (Tørst, Beloved, Nights and Weekends) are all over Greenpoint these days, but let’s face it – sometimes you just want get hammered on a budget, pay homage to the neighborhood’s longtime establishments, or just check out something different and new (or old). Greenpoint definitely has no shortage of dive bars, but where to begin?
This weekend I hung out in some of these dives (a.k.a. “old man” bars) in the neighborhood and got to know them and their clientele a little better. I scoped out the drink specials, watched Jeopardy with the regulars, and relaxed in some sweet backyards. And now I present to you, along with my little rating system, some of the neighborhood’s best kept secrets:
Irene’s Pub (623 Manhattan Ave)
Irene's Pub
Despite being so centrally located, Irene’s is somewhat of a mystery. Perhaps most Greenpointers are unfamiliar with the bar’s philosophy:”it’s happy hour all the time,” which I verified as TRUTH. Irene’s prices are actually equivalent to happy hour deals, all the time – we’re talking $2 drafts and dirt-cheap mixed drinks. I repeat: all day and night long. Continue reading →
