Great Bars in NYC: The Beer Garden, the Astoria Legend

There are other, supposed, ‘beer gardens’ in NYC, but nothing compares to Bohemian Hall in Queens, The Beer Garden. When you walk in the front door, it looks like a sketch bar populated by locals. But walk to the other side of the bar and go through the back door, and you hit pay dirt. You are now in a giant courtyard, filled with picnic tables, a little gazebo in the center, and two stands, one selling beer, the other selling kielbasas and fries. Now when I mean beer, I mean real beer; the place only serves the best beer Eastern Europe is willing to export to Americans, for 14 bucks a pitcher (again, out of towners are confused, but a high end German or Czech beer for that price is a steal). The first time I was even in Astoria, Teach took me there at 6 in the evening in the summer, and the place was packed with everyone from 20somethings to families with their kids. In a city with overprices Coors Lite and cramped loud backrooms, a sprawling yard with only quality beers to offer can mean a lot. That, and the Kielbasa is great.

The place is an interesting mix of locals, young artsy types from the area, and on prime nights in the summer hip young professionals from The Island. I have yelled at security once or twice for not letting me in the summer, enraged that a loyal year round costumer like myself would get turned away while the posers who took a town car from Manhattan crowded the courtyard. I prefer to come in the off season, where the crowds are less, and sometimes they set up a tent with some space heaters in the courtyard. I once hip checked one of those space heaters after a particularly rough night, waking with a bruised side that I could not explain until Teach regaled me with the story. They still let me back though.

The craziest I ever saw the Beer Garden was during the 2006 World Cup. The management, seeing an opportunity to cash in on being a vaguely German establishment in a multicultural neighborhood, procured half a dozen flat screens, set them up around the courtyard under some cover, and showed every game. I was only there one afternoon, but it was for the USA/Italy game, which fans will remember as the only game where Italy did not beat the other team (in truth, USA should have won, but for a dodgy off-sides call). The place was packed to capacity at lunch time, there was a line to get in, and people were going crazy. Seeing the US having a shot at one of the best teams in the world got the capacity crowd going. We got so hammered and swept up with world cup fever, that I went and bought the world cup Xbox game right after we left the bar, just so it would not end.

There are other great tales of the place. The time a drunk German man claiming to be the owner told me he liked me because my jacket made me look like Gestapo, or the time I was smoking in the courtyard but was too drunk to remember to put it out as I walking inside to leave the bar, and they banned me for life (it didn’t stick). If anyone has a beer garden story they want to share, please put one up on the comments section.

The Beer Garden, the only bar you can get your Manhattan friends to come to in Queens.