Barred: Edison Place

Photo: ManBeerLove.com

When: Friday, 12:20am

I wouldn’t blame you for thinking Edison Place would be the type of establishment lit by its namesake filament bulbs, but pork belly and kale has yet to penetrate Glendale (despite neighboring Ridgewood now having a self-proclaimed gastropub named DISH). It’s still lollipop chicken and caesar salads in the subway-free zones.

You would not be wrong if you guessed that Journey and Guns N’ Roses might get played. There were a lot of Amstel Light drinkers, a mix of accents (Queens-y and Eastern European), and an admirable sprinkling of non-young, yet non-elderly couples, the latter which conforms to my theory about smaller cities and more traditional enclaves. People just have kids younger so they’re done parenting and back out drinking by their 40s rather than rearing grade-schoolers.

After a few Bitburgers (and an accidentally broken pint glass, and separately a hard stare for saying “fuck” too loudly) it was time to move on. It wasn’t until I got outside that I realized I’d been in this same space in my 20s when it was occupied by a German restaurant. The bar at Von Westerhagen was the first and last place in NYC where I witnessed overt inter-generational bonding over a dislike of minorities, sealed with honest-to-goodness sieg heils and “white power” said aloud for reinforcement. For the record, I encountered nothing of the sort at Edison Place.

Age appropriate? Definitely. There’s a direct correlation between age diversity and the distance from lower Manhattan and gentrified Brooklyn.