Shipping Out To Staten Island

Today I hit the last of the five boroughs of New York City, Staten Island. It was a fairly nice day for a boat ride, but we did stay inside instead of hanging on the rails to watch the Statue of Liberty go by. If you visit New York you really should take the ferry, it is free and you can just get off at Staten Island and then get back on the next one to Manhattan. You get great views. We were escorted by a Coast Guard boat with machineguns fore and aft. First time I have ever seen that.

975) Ruddy & Dean



This is a steak house with only a hanger steak on the menu. To be fair, it was there lunch menu. The dinner menu did, indeed, offer a lot of steaks including a porterhouse, one of my favorites. There is a decent sized bar with a marble top and a polished dark wood armrest and front. A brass rail and wood bar chairs with mustard-yellow seats. A matching wood bar back with shelves for liquor and glasses and coolers with glass doors that were full of beer. Tiered shelves above for liquor with one section full of a good selection of bottled wines. There is a fairly large espresso machine at one end. Large mirrors are behind the bottles. Stubby blue tubular lights hang over the bar.

The walls are pale orange above wood paneling. Dark blue half-cone shaped lights hang on the wall opposite the bar towards the back along with a couple of Christmas presents. Brown booth-like benches line that section of the wall with tables covered in white tablecloths in front of them. There are more tables in a wider section of the room across the way and these have little green flying saucer shaped lights hanging over them.

There is a large upstairs party room with a small outside area that offers a nice view of downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn.



The bartenders said sunsets with the light reflecting off the buildings are quite beautiful.

Rob And LeeAnn, The Friendly And Informative Bartenders


This place is quite close to both the ferry terminal and the ballpark where the “Baby Bombers” play. It seems like it would be a very nice place to stop in for a drink and even dinner before or after a game. I may very well do that one day next summer. On this somewhat chilly day I had a Dewar’s and soda.

976) Sidestreet Saloon



As the name implies, this is a fairly small bar on a small side street. The bar is U shaped and wraps around a square brick column with shelves of liquor on the back corners. The bar is old wood with a brass rail running around it. The bar chairs are high-backed dark wood. The back side of the bar has a door leading to the kitchen and next to that are more shelves of liquor and a metal overhead rack of glasses. A bit of an overhang above the bar (more like a lowered section of the ceiling) has recessed lights and is decorated with a garland of pine and small white lights.

There is a decent sized dining area with brick walls and a large Bass Ale mirror. Behind where I was sitting was a large mirror, a Fire Bird II jukebox, a television, and a System Megatouch game that seemed to cycle through snippets of lots of video games. My favorite was air hockey.

I had a Dewar’s and soda.

977) Danny O’s Pub



This was an Irish pub where everyone, except the bartender, was speaking a language other than English, and it wasn’t Irish either. It sounded like either Swedish or Norwegian. A bit strange. There was a nice wooden bar with a bit of a curve to it at the end by the door. There was a variety of seating at the bar, at my end they were old wooden chairs with high curved backs and seats padded in torn and taped brown leather-like vinyl. This, apparently, was a family owned bar with the old guy tending bar being one of the owners. It was quite dark in here but well decorated with wrapped presents, plastic Santas, and strings of little white lights.

This could safely be put into the dive bar category what with a pretty standard bar back and stacks of boxes of unrefrigerated Almaden wine ready for your drinking pleasure. A cold breeze laced with cigarette smoke blue through every time the bartender stood in the doorway having a smoke. Actually that wasn’t too bad because it masked the slight smell of urine that seemed to pervade the place. The foosball machine was, mercifully, in the front.

I had a bottle of Magner’s Cider served in a glass that wasn’t all that clean.

978) Karl’s Klipper



A somewhat small bar tucked into the end of a fairly large dining area. The bar itself was comfortable enough with high-backed dark wood chairs in front of a bar with a brass rail. Several beer stations each with two spigots sat on the bar. As you might gather from the name, it has a somewhat nautical look to it with a ship’s wheel and a picture of a Clipper ship on the wall. Lots of multi-colored lights were strung above the mirrors behind the bar that had tiered shelves of liquor. Not too much to see here but just a neat little place to pop into for a quick drink.

I had a Dewar’s and soda.

The sun was just setting as I headed back to the ferry and the sunset was, indeed, quite spectacular. The buildings in lower Manhattan had a bright golden glow to them that was really beautiful. This just reinforces my intentions to come back to Ruddy and Dean on summer evening for drinks on their deck.

A very pleasant, although chilly, day with four bars hit making 978 for the day and leaving 22 more for the year. And I have now had a drink in at least one bar in all five boroughs of New York and several in Long Island as well.