Sycamore

A single night at Sycamore, a sprawling bar in Ditmas Park, is a self-contained pub crawl, offering the restless patron four sections to chose from. One damp Thursday, two adventurers started their evening in the large back yard, where rough benches threaten soft places with cruel splinters. A young woman flipped through old Trivial Pursuit cards while a man in a denim jacket with faux-shearling trim read “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” In an adjacent Bedouin-style tent, decorated in an improbable hunting-lodge theme (fake fireplace, taxidermy pheasant), Queen Cobra Thai Street Food served up sweet chicken wings covered in cilantro. Mounds of discarded metacarpals sucked clean grew on mismatched picnic tables, as a moody, crooning rendition of the “Bingo” song signalled the start of queer singles bingo. (The food venders, and events, change nightly.) The evening’s host, Ariel Speedwagon, warned players not to stop too soon—“That’s what she said!” rang out in response. The crawlers, finishing a hot whiskey cider that tasted like the dregs of an overly honeyed tea, passed through a teensy smokers’ patio and into the booze-soaked main bar, attracted by a glowing yellow counter, its surface like the cracked crust of a crème brûlée. Nearly a hundred varieties of whiskey line narrow shelves stretching across one wall, yet not enough of it found its way into a watery Manhattan. In the final zone, a flower-shop storefront, a wandering Jew intertwined its iridescent silver and purple-green vines with the hand-shaped leaves of a prayer plant. Fatigued after their long journey, the two travellers rested with Sazeracs in a forest of ferns, bright-green tentacles stroking their hair. ♦