Liquid City

Good times, not end-times, at a blast from the boho past

A A A Comments By Danial Adkison Tuesday, Jun 1 2004

photo: Cary Conover

Last call

Details

Apocalypse Lounge
189 East 3rd Street
212.228.4811

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Shadow dance! Glitter toilet! Spider terrarium! Guitar varnish! A look around Apocalypse conjures free-association verses worthy of Gregory Corso. It's a funky, though fairly new, throwback to the kind of East Village bricolage that flourished before yuppie hegemony. Tables fit together like kaleidoscopic puzzle pieces, diamond plate mingles with curtains to form a postmodern sultan's tent, and Dada lives on in the art that covers every surface upstairs and down—is that "Choking Victim" poster part of an installation? If Apocalypse is a feast for the eyes, it's an oasis for the starving (thirsting?) artist. The mandatory cans of Rheingold and PBR cost $2, and bottles of the usual suspects (the Brooklyn Breweries gamut, microbrews) are $4. Organic sake—plain, raspberry, or plum—comes either as a shot ($3) or in a martini glass ($5), and served with a tantalizing hunk of cucumber. If you're lucky, one of the lady bartenders may hang up a white curtain, switch on a spotlight, and perform the aforementioned (nude) shadow dance—or you can stop by on Sunday night to see her metamorphose into a nurse dispensing booze from I.V. bags. Open-mic nights and open minds keep the creative grounds fertile. Says the shadow-dancing barkeep: "Pretty much anything goes . . . as long as it's good."

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