Finally, a bar with no pretense. Collins Bar doesn’t try to pretend to be anything but a neighborhood watering hole that attracts after work, messenger bag folks and the occasional soul patch dude. There’s no fuckin’ Galaga tabletop game or, even worse, plastic beer sign announcing the Hell’s Kitchen Mad Bar Crawl. Instead, we have your typical narrow bar set up, with one comfy booth up front, a wall lined with wooden tables and a long bar that seats ten happy patrons along its welcoming, worn siding. While relaxing with one of many beers available mostly in bottles, your ears won’t be assaulted by some asshole drum ‘n bass freak or yodeling foreigner (unless you include Oasis in this category), but soothed by the familiar bar sounds of our friends Pearl Jam, David Bowie and Elvis Costello. I must say I was skeptical the first time I walked up 8th Avenue, past all the awful storefronts and porn theaters with their “we no longer have live girls” signs, but this joint is certainly an oasis in an otherwise god-awful mess of humanity. [MF]
735 8th Ave.