Greenwich Village Stroll

Ah, a nice sunny day and daylight savings time. Perfect for a late afternoon, early evening stroll in Greenwich Village.

355) Fiddlesticks

An extremely nice English style pub on the corner of Greenwich Avenue and Perry Street. There is a large, half-oval wooden bar that is very ornate and fairly massive. In the center of the bar area is a matching center shelf that rack for glasses that sits atop a more modern metal cooler for beer and wine. The bar stools are wooden with patterned fabric tops. The whole place is decorated with multi-colored Christmas lights and garlands of pine needles. This is a very large place with several rooms. The flooring is old wooden planking. All of the stuff in here looks authentically old. There are pew-like benches and round tables. Other benches with chairs and stools strewn about. Lot's of antique stuff, jugs, pictures, metal advertising signs, all of the furniture. The two back rooms have sofas and couches and look very cosy. Like someone's grandparent's parlor, back when grandparents had parlors. The walls are brick, dark wood, and yellowish plaster. The place looks very much like an authentic country English pub.

I had a Newcastle Brown Ale

356) Wogies

This is a smallish corner bar with wrap-around windows. It is on 39 Greenwich Avenue, not far from Fiddlesticks. Even with the windows it still manages to seem somewhat dark. It has a decent sized, seven bar-chairs, bar. The bar is dark wood with a silver colored rail. Some of the bar-chairs have dark-green vinyl cushions, but most do not. The back of the bar is wall-to-wall mirrors which makes the place look a bit larger. There are actually four large mirrors with narrow wood strips seperating them. Hanging over the mirrors are four lights with inverted, dull-grey cone-shaped shades. Plain dark-green shelves are behind the bar below the mirrors. These hold the liquor and glasses. Over the bar hang four bare old-fashioned lightbulbs.

Seperating the bar area from the seating by the windows is a waist-high wooden divider with a narrow ledge just big enough to set down a glass or a bottle. On top of the ledge is a glass or plexiglass extension. Booths line the by one set of windows and there is another booth against the back wall. There are a couple of interesting large black-and-white photos of cityscapes on the walls. It looks to be a nice comfortable neighborhood bar and was doing a fairly brisk business considering the early hour. The place is supposed to be known for their cheese-steaks

I had a Philly Ale.

357) Living Room Cafe @ Bar

Actually, only one nook of this place at 211 Waverly really looked like it could be someone's living room. There is a decent sized blond wood bar with a nice brass rail. There are five dark-wood bar-chairs. A nice semi-circle dark-red settee with a dark-wood coffee table sits in a nook behind the bar-chairs. There is just a no-frills setup behind the bar, metal coolers with bottles on top and a couple of mirrors. A stack of wooden shelves sits to one side of the cooler and wine racks with liquor and wine bottles occupy the corner at the other end of the bar.

The flooring is light-tan tile and the walls are kind of a dark-mustard color. The ceiling is rose-colored. Bright sunlight streamed in through the larg windows on this sunny, late-afternoon spring day.

I had a Corona ($5.40 - kind of a change from the $1.00 I was paying in Mexico).

358) Agave

This place, on 140 7th Avenue is also kind of at the intersection of Charles and West 10th street. The streets and avenues get kind of weird in this section of town and it is easy to get confused. There are large windows on two sides and a narrow, curved glass ceiling over the tables next to the windows on the 7th Avenue side. The bar has a metallic-silver gop with a white-plaster front. There is a nice, heavy bar-rail. Lamps with light-tan fabric shades sit on top of the bar. The bar-chairs are wood with brown padded vinyl seats and backs. Tall cacti sit on either end of the bar.

The bar, even though it is named Agave, has a real Southwestern decor with cattle skulls either painted or decorated with feather or both hang on the walls along with other Indian (the native American kind) style decorations such as shields, feathers, and such hang from the walls. The ceilings are timbered. The reason for the Southwestern decor is because the owner really likes Santa Fe, New Mexico and plans to retire there. Too bad they grow agave in Mexico, not New Mexico. They do have a large selection of tequilas though, the most expensive one going for over $50 a shot. Unfortunately, like so many bars in New York, they use a lime-juice mix instead of just frest lime-juice to make their margaritas. This, to me at least, is a real no-no and a sure way to spoil a margarita no matter what kind of tequila you use. If you name a place Agave, you should at least have fresh lime-juice available for those that request it.

I had a so-so margarita (but the chips and salsa with a few spiced olives were good).

359) i tre merli

When a place spells its name in all small letters you know it is just too cute for words. This place, at 183 West 10th Street, had a nice copper-topped semi-circular bar with a wooden edging. The front of the bar was copper as well. A large vase with thin tree-limbs covered with small yellow blossoms ast at one end. Mirror-backed glass shelving holding the liquor and wine supply was behind the bar. Lights with pale-green cone-shaped shades hung over the bar. They had great thin breadsticks in glasses on the bar.

Quite a small place for being on a corner. There were windows all around and mustard-yellow walls burgandy high-lites and a touch of brick. Mirrors with copper-colored frames hung on two walls. The chairs have wicker seats and the tables along two walls have maroon settees on one side of them.

I had a glass of pinot noir.

360) Riv

Take a few steps down to this place on the corner of West 10th Street and 7th Avenue and you enter a large, multi-leveled bar and restaurant. A long wood bar with a wood paneled front and the traditional brass rail. The bar-chairs have padded green-vinyl cushions. A window behind the bar provides you with a sidewalk level view of the passing scene. There are eight small-screen televisions above the window and a larger one on each end of the window. There are at least another 20 or 30 televisions around the rest of the place and they were all tuned to one or another sports channel. Brick, both natural color and painted white, and dark green walls and pillers give this a pubish look.

I had a Bass Ale and toddled off to catch a subway back home.

Not a bad day, 6 bars, 360 for the year, and 640 left to go.