Best Happy Hour:


Strong Place

(270 Court St, Cobble Hill)
Two-dollar PBRs and dollar-off drafts are enticing happy hour draws. But this beer-centric bar and restaurant offers a deal more attuned to beer geeks: every weekday from 4-7pm, all 24 taps of craft beer are two for one. Where else can you get two Founders sweet and spicy Rye PA for just $5? Also, fresh oysters run $1 each during happy hour.

Best Late Happy Hour:


Minor Arcana

(706 Washington Ave, Prospect Heights)
Buy one draft at happy hour, and get a second one free by redeeming your buyback tarot card. After the night’s burlesque or dance or trivia event, the deal magically reappears between midnight and 2, when the weird little room reaches peak coziness.

Best Sports Bar:

Banter
(132 Havemeyer St, Williamsburg)
Whether you’re an expat, a recovering jock, or just brought back a couple Arsenal shot glasses from your junior abroad in London, this spacious footie bar is on target. The extensive beer selection leans toward crafts and imports, perfect accompaniment to the most artisanal of sports.

Best Beer Bar:

Matt Torrey’s
(46 Bushwick Ave, East Williamsburg)
With typically 15 or more New York beers on tap and 15 or so more mostly further-sourced labels in bottles, and all very fairly priced, Matt Torrey’s does an excellent job of proving that the best bars for beer aficionados aren’t necessarily those with twice as many taps or the most obscure selection—rather those specifically knowledgeable places that serve their rotation of brews fresh and right. Plus, just steps from the L for easy stumbling.

Best Cocktail Bar:


the Narrows
(1037 Flushing Ave, Bushwick)
Serving up a seasonably shifting range of classics like Old Fashioneds, Vieux Carrés and Milano-Torinos alongside genre-benders like the jala-piquant Que Bonita or the bourbon-barreled Derringer, the kind barkeeps at The Narrows know cocktail tradition, and tweak it with brio. Given their many great beers on hand and a fine wine list, too, as well as a large garden patio of topiary repute, you’ll soon forget how to drink elsewhere.

Best Themed Bar:

Sycamore Bar & Flowershop
(1118 Cortelyou Road, Ditmas)
The vacation-quality backyard, live music, and crafting and mixology workshops ensure plenty of bustle at this neighborhood spot—even without the extra foot traffic around the quirky flower shop open most afternoons and evenings. Try the $10 Beer & Bouquet special. (Photos by John Hagan)

Best Wine Bar:

The Owl’s Head

(479 74th St, Bay Ridge)
Owned and operated by artists and aesthetes, Owl’s Head offers a formidable array of wines from the rustic and robust to the delicate and refined, and from the local to the extensively foreign—and their cheeses, panini and creative crostini are perfect for palate-titillating pairings therewith. The turquoise-specked maple bar is itself a beguiling work of art worth the trip. Is it one of co-owner John Avelluto’s trompe l’oeil paintings? Yes. No. More vino!

Best Garden:


Maracuja Bar & Grill

(279 Grand St, Williamsburg)
Through the dark bar is known for its killer cheesesteaks, its jewel box of a garden comes as a surprise. Trailing ivy and small trees provide a canopy of leaves; it’s most charming when the colorful Christmas lights and lanterns are twinkling and the climbing roses are in bloom.

Best View:

Berry Park
(4 Berry St, Williamsburg)
The blocks of low-slung warehouses between McCarren Park and the waterfront—and the parks breaking up the developments along Kent Avenue’s Gold Coast—mean that Berry Park’s roof deck offers spectacular Manhattan skyline view unimpeded by gentrification (unless you count the well-dressed throngs sitting at all the tables).

Best Spirits:

Noorman’s Kil
(609 Grand St, Williamsburg)
The selection here encompasses close to 300 whiskies, from new-crafts-movement small-batch local stuff to enough imported Scotch to have your dad’s weekly tasting club murmuring “peaty” for months. Soak it all up with a grilled cheese sandwich, if you must.(Photos Cody Swanson)

Best Free Drunk Snacks:


Fourth Avenue Pub

(76 Fourth Ave, Boerum Hill)
We break our vegan vows at least once a week after we’ve had a few too many here: we grab a plastic tray, cover it with wax paper, and dump in shovelfuls of warm, buttery popcorn from the movie theater-style popcorn machine—then we shovel it up into our mouths in sloppy, embarrassing handfuls, and stumble back for more. Sorry to anyone who’s ever had to watch us do this; to the staff; and to the cows whose milk went into the butter.

Best Karaoke Night:


Pine Box Rock Shop
(12 Grattan St, Bushwick)
Aside from their wild cocktails, vegan empanadas and usual crowd of dogs and dog-lovers, Pine Box Rock Shop does an appropriately indie-skewing karaoke night. Thursdays are the perfect opportunity for Brooklyn’s shower-singers to let loose without having to venture into the expensive clusterfuck that is K-Town.

Best Dance Night:


Tandem

(236 Troutman St, Bushwick)
Tandem might look like a mellow bar in the heart of gentrified Bushwick, but its back room serves as the perfect simulation of a Eurotrash club scene. Not knowing what you’re getting into until you step inside (while temporarily blinded by smoke machine fog) makes it more fun. (Photos by Samantha Sutcliffe)

Best Quiz Night:

Rocky O’Sullivan’s

(34 Van Dyke St, Red Hook)
Theme nights, music rounds and picture rounds have turned Thursday nights at Rocky’s into a Red Hook institution. After each round comes a solo question—trivia fanatics fight their answer to the front in hopes of a free pint, a mix CD of the music round and various other random prizes (we’ve gone home with a way-too-small Stephen Colbert shirt). The winning team gets a round of drinks.

Best Home Office:

61 Local
(61 Bergen St, Cobble Hill)
Working at a picnic table in this high-ceilinged space, with the sun shining through skylights overhead, is the next best thing to working outside. Creature comforts include well-crafted cappuccinos, great sandwiches and a solid beer selection. Just be sure to charge up your laptop beforehand—they’re a bit short on outlets.

Best Bar to Bring a Parent:

The Bourgeois Pig
(387 Court St, Carroll Gardens)
With gold filigree on the ceiling and every other surface swathed in brocade, the décor here is over-the-top. Whether she reads it as classy or ironic, your mom will love the Fleur De Florence, a champagne cocktail with tea syrup and black walnut bitters. (Photo by Katie Sokoler via Gothamist)

Best Bar to Bring a Book:

Harefield Road
(769 Metropolitan Ave, East Williamsburg)
With a wide selection of beers, and comparably great nibbles, you’ve reason aplenty to drink here. And the lighting, layout and seating are just ample enough to bar down or nook up with a buzz and a book. Until someone lures you into conversing, perhaps. And we all know where conversations about books can go. Sometimes. Choose titles accordingly if that’s your angle.(Photos by Guang Xu)

Best Bar to Bring a Date:

Wolf and Deer

(74 Fifth Ave, Park Slope)
The cozy space is hiply rustic, the music is pleasantly inoffensive dinner-party worldbeat, the wine is varied and reasonably priced, and the charcuterie and cheese plates are small but luxuriant. If things don’t go well, it wasn’t meant to be. (Photos by Cody Swanson)

Best Local:

Sunny’s


 (253 Conover St, Red Hook)
Miles from the subway and closed more than it’s open, Sunny’s sits near the waterfront on a desolate stretch of Belgian-blocked street—where it has, under various names, for the last 120 years. Its rickety, homespun interior is the model for what every hipster bar in Brooklyn wants to be, except it’s totally unforced. Sunny’s doesn’t try to be the borough’s best local bar. It just is.