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Botanica Bar: Yet another LES dive bar with cheap beer and hipsters
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Botanica Bar NYC
47 E Houston St, New York, NY
(212) 343-7251
If you’re looking to add to your list of small dank bars that attract hipsters from all over the city, Botanica isn’t your worst choice.
Featuring the usual “edgy” exposed brick and “hip” old furniture including soiled couches and rickety tables, the entire place is steeped in irony. Oh wait, no it isn’t. Let’s face facts. In days when look at this f*cking hipster thrives and half of the cast of Gossip Girl is sporting mismatching plaid, it comes as no surprise that the entire off the beaten path artsy look has pretty much guaranteed that every bar in this neighborhood frequented by students and artists will look and feel exactly the same.
Care to be quizzed on your knowledge of Werner Herzog or maybe the history of the analog synth? Want to impress people with your up to date info on the latest Nylon shoot? Have no fear; you’re in the right crowd.
Most bars on the Lower East Side trend to this sort of décor and thus this sort of crowd, and it’s getting tiresome. At this point it would actually be sort of refreshing to find clean furniture. Is it too much to ask to hang out with the kind of people who won’t mock you because you can’t rattle off John Ashbery poems? Is it finally necessary to give up the F train entirely and just plan to head, gasp-dare-I-even-suggest-it, uptown?
The one major upside of places such as these is the fact that drinks are guaranteed to be on the cheap side. Obviously only wicked conformists can afford the $12 martini of the Wall Street Bar which means gallons of HH beer can be yours for less than it’ll cost to pick up an artistically broken down beanie. Come one come all into this fantasy land built for and by Manhattan’s supposed intelligentsia.
The funny thing is, as much as this place tries to be a trendy little dive bar, they still allow the not-yet-jaded 19 year old shot peddlers to try and induce the innocently chic hipsters to take a free keychain or play a game and win a shot. These are the kind of people you usually see at the more “college” football bars a la the big easy. It’s almost like the perfect storm of irritating bars with drinks just cheap enough to keep you coming.
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