loosie: words: Brooklyn's Worst Bar

Brooklyn's Worst Bar

The Upper East Side invades Gowanus at Park Slope's Cherry Tree.

by Staff | 2006.09.18

Despite its transformation into an ideal residential destination for everyone in the universe, downtown Brooklyn remains trapped in a pre-9/11 nightlife mentality. Stately neighborhoods such as Park Slope, Carroll Gardens and Fort Greene have nestled into a congenial blandness befitting their statuesque stoops and stroller-choked sidewalks while once-gritty locales like Bed-Stuy, Prospect Heights, Clinton Hills and Red Hook are evolving awkwardly as a result of the inherent lameness of portly Midwestern gentrifiers and moneyed brownstone speculators. Stir Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards colossus into this bitter martini and the future of Brooklyn’s nightlife is even less appealing than the present. So-called “Brownstone Brooklyn” is a wonderful place to live, but when it comes to frolicking in the wee hours, it’s boring as fuck.

Unfortunately, attempts to spice up the dreariness can be disastrous. Along 4th Avenue, an 8-lane artery of concrete, exhaust fumes and filthy gas stations, the worst bar in Brooklyn has been created. Planted between Bergen and St. Marks, Cherry Tree seems nicely positioned for success; the nearby Atlantic terminal provides easy access to a dozen trains and restaurant-saturated 5th Avenue is only steps away for those craving an after-dinner drink. The venue itself is promising -- a long, traditional bar opens into a larger seating area overlooking a substantial garden with tables, benches and a grill. Add in $3 Harp and plasma screens, and the debacle that is Cherry Tree becomes even more tragic.

Briefly, here’s who populates 4th Avenue: lesbians, yuppies, Puerto Ricans, grease-slathered mechanics, a few grimy scenesters and lots of crackheads. Cherry Tree caters to none of them. Bafflingly, the bar’s brain trust has opted on making Ohio State University fratboys and sorority sisters their target demographic. We’ve yet to see the place actually crowded, but the people who do congregate within Cherry Tree’s walls are a freakish form of life that has thus far been alien to downtown Brooklyn. It’s a sub-human species of junior-varsity bridge-and-tunnel types; they’re not even cool enough to get strangled by pimps along the tattered edges of the meat-packing district. Glassy-eyed, stupid and hellbent on motion for its own sake, they swarm and wriggle like eels in a bucket, a mindless writhing mass that inspires disgust, fear and, ultimately, sadness. But these creatures did not descend like oily-haired harpies upon Cherry Tree by dumb luck. It was by design.

We’ll begin with the music. In a retard’s chicken-or-the-egg conundrum, Cherry tree has decided that no song is worth playing unless it corresponds with a video broadcast on their twin set of plasma TVs. On a recent evening, the bartender – a long-haired Asian dude who shimmies around like the offspring of Ryu from Street Fighter and Tom Cruise in Cocktail – fluttered the cursor along the list of songs in their computerized stereo-video jukebox until clicking decisively on Nelly’s “E.I”. Other tracks selected to blare over the cranked-up speakers included something by the Pussy Cat Dolls, Dr. Dre’s “Tha Next Episode” and that execrable Eminem song off his last album that even 12-year old girls thought was corny. In a borough that has seen everything from sweaty basement bashments with dutty wine contests to Electroclash coke-fests to ironic Kill Whitey parties, Cherry Tree might have the worst music of any bar, ever.

Not content to let Brooklyn’s worst crowd and Brooklyn’s worst music simply congeal in the same room, Cherry Tree has bravely embraced its role as the Hades of nightlife. The bartenders are the rough equivalent of Charon, the ferryman of Acheron. Not only are they responsible for “DJing”, but they also frequently pull out squirt guns and spray water on patrons. Yes, you read that correctly. It’s so idiotic, so lame, so “Gowanus Gone Wild” that we’re not comfortable talking about it further. It gets worse. Listed alongside Cherry Tree’s menu of extensive beer is an option for some sort of funnel special. This entails the bartender making a loud whooping noise to announce the event and then climbing atop the bar to pour 24 ounces of beer through a funnel and tube into the purchaser’s mouth. Speaking of people getting on top of the bar, the bartenders incessantly encourage females to climb up and dance. It might smack of a desperate ploy to convince girls to take their shirts off, but it seems more benign than sleazy; it’s almost as if the bartenders are advancing a paint-by-numbers formula for some wretchedly clichéd vision of what a “wild” night is supposed to include. Girls on the bar, beer in funnels, Nelly on the plasma screen, vomit in the bathroom. By squandering a prime location, a great space and an excellent beer selection with inexcusable, unrelenting cheesiness, the Cherry Tree is the worst bar in Brooklyn.