Midtown Happy Hour: Dave’s Tavern
If you like to eat, chances are you like to drink (read: a lot of you are freakin’ lushes), so I thought maybe it was time to introduce a happy hour column to the site. Every week we’ll post about a different bar in Midtown that fits the Midtown Lunch mentality: unhealthy food, not lame (unless it’s lame in a cool way), and most importantly… cheap. This week Mamacita goes to a dive surrounded by $1 pizza and cheap hot dogs…
Dave’s Tavern inhabits the armpit that lies between the Lincoln Tunnel and Port Authority- but if you’re in the neighborhood, and looking to for a cheap drink with some entertaining locals, you’ve found your dingy oasis. As I crossed the threshold of Dave’s I was welcomed by the crunch of peanut shells discarded on the floor, like a casual honky-tonk bar. An enameled metal bin chock full of peanuts was perched atop a table against the North wall. Above it hung a mounted boar’s head that seemed to watch over the bar’s clientele. As I readied to take a picture of this sharp tusked beast, a silver-haired man walked in and said to me “You’re taking a picture of that boar? You know I shot that boar!” Then he turned towards the bar and joined his friends. You can obviously learn a story or two from the guys here. There is a real sense that everyone here knows each other, yet an outsider slugging a drink is welcomed into the conversation. You have the usual range of liquors and domestic beers with $1 off drinks during happy hour, 4 to 7pm. In the back there’s a pool table to pass the time and some booths that are good for groups.
Dave’s is flanked by two of Midtown Lunch’s cheapest spots: 99 Cent Fresh Pizza and Papaya Dog. Add in Dave’s $5 beer and a shot special and I dare say you have the holly trinity of cheap, greasy, and boozy. This is exactly the right mix for this dive. Dave’s serves the grizzle and bones of the city. The tattooed bikers, ageing peacocks, sweet older men that are quick to offer their stool to a lady, and career drunkards that can hide a midget in their beer belly. Put this all together and you have a glorious conglomerate of American life. I pity the fool that comes in here with a sharp suit and some well-heeled gal on his arm (unless he’s a pimp of course.)
Ah yes, and then there’s the lovely and feisty bartenders in schoolgirl uniforms. Perhaps they are best kept to the dim bar light, lest it reveals their real age- but under the blur of a few drinks they dreamily invoke the fantasies of the revelers. Just remember boys, tip but don’t touch or the burly bouncer will use you to wipe the pavement outside. Obviously you can tell I liked the place. With a cheesy slice under my belt and a cold PBR and shot in hand I had even made a new friend.
THE +
Good Happy Hour
- Free Nuts!
- Obscenely close to Port authority or Lincoln Tunnel if that’s your commute home
- All American eats nearby: Pizza and Hot Dogs.
- Pool table to pass the time
THE –
- Obscenely close to Port authority or Lincoln Tunnel
- Free nuts and PBR do not make a night out (pshaw! Where’s my lobster!)
- Not exactly a place to take a date, unless, you know, you’re classy like that…
Dave’s Tavern, 574 9th Ave (btw. 41+42nd), 212-244-4408
Post and photos by Mamacita
Posted by Zach Brooks at 3:30 pm, November 14th, 2008 under Midtown Happy Hour.
15 Comments | RSS comments feed for this post
15 Comments
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My dearest Mamacita
That is a particularly alluring photo of you!
You are indeed as well-endowed as some of the posters here have claimed. More so, in fact.
I am very much enjoying trying to figure out how you balance that Miller Lite ice bucket on your hip. I do have some theories, but, as a gentleman of fine breeding, I cannot share them here.
I am planning to make your photo into my screensaver, should that give you a little boost.
Cheers,
Chuck
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………theres never a bucket of shit handy for chucky when i need one.
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How’s YOUR midget McBeagle?
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I woudn’t tell you and your dirty fat ugly trailer trash piss stinking wife a thing.You Obese fat inbred Target shopping fuckwit.
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Aww, I like Port 41 and all its shadiness. The back room with the pool table is great (was even better when they had skee-ball). The bartenders seem to REALLY appreciate it when normal working folk come in there so my coworkers and I are always treated well. I can only imagine what they have to deal with on a daily basis…
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Skee-Ball!!?? Damn, I would die to graba a drink and play skee-ball. Oh, wait, I’m sounding white trash right now ain’t I? Bocci and skeeball, great drunk sports.
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usually men offering their stool in the vicinity of Times Square isnt a good thing..
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Dubbin, where you been? The Deuce has been Disney-fied! The only stools offered these days are gaily colored toadstools surrounded by princesses, singing dwarves and magical frogs
Sadly they cost more than magic mushrooms too
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Somehow, I’m guessing that the guy did NOT shoot the boar! It does look like an interesting place though, never been to “the armpit that lies between the Lincoln Tunnel and Port Authority,” but maybe I should give it a try….
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Mamacita, you know they have skeeball at Ace Bar, right? Also I was bought a few beers by a bartender at Maggie’s on 47th last night on the Amtrak back from Boston. I might need to put in an ML happy hour report on that bar… I just seem to be lacking a digital camera…
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I was hoping Dave’s would make it has Midtown Happy Hour listing.
Can totally confirm Mamacita’s post, I walked in one Sat. afternoon last spring to meet my buddy. He had just gotten off a Joisey bus at Pawt Awthoriteee, wandered in and called to tell me to meet him there. The regulars here are as friendly as you will ever find at any bar and the PBRs were ice-cold.
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Dubya, so true. And boys, this hot babe was wearing fishnets and a tight tube dress. Zach, your wife will not approve.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59445098@N00/3030451388/Can’t believe Doc didn’t jump on that pic.
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Mamaciita, Doc Chuck was probably railing on the evils of globalization or posting another review of another chain hotel restaurant to mention that picture.
Don’t think “purple” was there was when I was there, I definitely would have remembered her!
Nice job M
At first I thought you had dared to venture into “Port 41” which has to be THE shadiest bar left in that area (just east of 9th on 41st) – if Dave’s is in the armpit then Port 41 is in the asscrack
Did you shank anyone?