Royal Oak: With wallpaper like your grandmother’s parlor, Royal Oak is about the last place you would expect to find a metal dance night or such strangely crowded bathrooms, but if that’s your scene, it’s the first place you should look. Consistently crowded with the friends of that night’s local DJ, the bar is perennially popular with the bike couriers and night-crawlers who haunt Union Avenue as well as well-heeled young Manhattanites looking for some outer-borough excitement. Drink specials keep the kids loose and happy, but you should consider double-fisting as the line at the bar is usually at least four people deep. To take advantage of the overstuffed booths in the front, try showing up on a weeknight or at least before the (apparently observed) witching hour. |
