Lagunitas Pint Night January 28.

Here's the official lineup for our Lagunitas night on January 28:

Lagunitas IPA
Lagunitas Censored
Lagunitas PILS
Lagunitas Hairy Eyeball
Lagunitas Pale Ale
Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout

As you can see, we've got some interesting/rarely seen styles. We'll also have brewery folks, giveaways, and so on. See you here in late January. (And don't forget we have a Bear Republic event in two weeks, on January 15).

Cal basketball.

After a very successful non-conference slate, Cal enters Pac-10 play beginning Friday against Arizona. We'll have all the Cal basketball games that are televised here at the Standard, beginning with that aforementioned Arizona game, and including nearly all of Cal's conference games. The current schedule is here:

http://calbears.cstv.com/sports/m-baskbl/sched/cal-m-baskbl-sched.html

and will tell you if a game is on TV or not, and thus, whether we'll have it here or not. The televised games may change during the course of the season, so be sure to check before coming by. Here's looking forward to a Cal basketball renaissance this year!

Gift certificates available.

We've never officially announced it until now, but, yes, we do sell gift certificates, which make great presents. You can get them in any amount; just come by and ask a bartender. You'll get a handsome computer printout which will entitle the bearer to X amount of anything we sell.

Bear Republic Event January 15, 7 pm.

We've tentatively rescheduled our Bear Republic event for January 15, by which time we'll have an even better selection of kegs and casks. More details to come.

Two Rogue rums now in stock.

We've long known that Rogue, in addition to being a great brewery, has a nice line of spirits. We finally got around to trying a few of their rums, and were very impressed. So we've added Rogue Dark and Rogue Light rum to our liquor shelf. Come by and try them with a mixer, or by themselves. They stand up really well either way. Here are the official descriptions:

Rogue Spirits - Dark Rum
Deep amber in color. Toffee, stemmy oak, and nutmeg aromas... sweet and sour medium-bodied palate with toffee, roasted nuts, and spice. Finishes with a nutty, spicy fade and peppery alcohol.

Rogue Spirits - White Rum
Clear with a faint straw cast. Jumbled cotton candy and lower alcohol aromas are prosecco-like. A soft brisk entry leads to a dryish light-to medium-bodied palate with butter cream and peppery spice flavors. Finishes quickly with a hot, peppery, vanilla fudge fade. An unusual assortment of flavors that might add a radical twist to conventional cocktails.

Goose Island Bourbon County Stout on tap.

We managed to get our hands on one of the most talked-about beers of the last year, Goose Island's Bourbon County Stout. The 1000th batch of beer made at the original Goose Island brewpub in Chicago, this massive stout has been aged in bourbon barrels for 100 days. It's a dense, dark beer with aromas of charred oak, chocolate, vanilla, and smoke. Come by soon if you want to get a taste of what Beer Advocate is raving about.

Inauguration Day January 20.

Just a heads-up that, yes, we will be opening early on Tuesday, January 20 to show the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th President of the United States. Play hooky from work and witness history with us!

We don't have all the details yet, but we'll be opening early, probably at 11 am or so, so people can get situated and watch some of the parade before the swearing-in ceremony at noon. We have some nice folks bringing decorations, and we'll have fresh Bloody Mary mix ready. We'll also inaugurate some beer specials for the event. More to come closer to the event date; for now, just start getting your excuses ready. (In our opinion, nothing works like clammy hands. It's a good, non-specific symptom.)

New Year's Eve.

We'll be open as usual on New Year's Eve, from 4 pm-4 am. There will be no admission fee, so you can come by any time, have a few beers, and engage in general revelry. We'll have the ball drop on our two big projection screens, and we'll probably cook up a few New Year's specials. But rest assured we won't become one of those awful, crazy, overwhelming New Year's bars. We'll be the same old Standard you know and passionately love, or at least have a Platonic relationship with.

Wordle's depiction of our Yelp reviews.

Pretty cool:

http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/376242/Pacific_Standard

A Brief Notice.

We've had to delay our Bear Republic event. We'll let you know the new date for the event as soon as we know. Thanks for your patience.

Cal football update.

Today, a solid crew of Cal faithful watched us decimate poor Washington 48-7, as Jahvid Best set the all-time Cal record for rushing yards in a game. Cal ends the regular season 8-4, and will go to the Emerald Bowl to face, in all likelihood, Miami. We'll have it on TV at 8 pm on Saturday, December 27.

We want to extend our heartiest Pacific Standard thanks to everyone who came out for the games this year--you were great to have around, and we hope you agree that it was a lot of fun, even if we didn't realize our loftiest dreams. If you're around, we'll see you for the swan song on the 27th, but if not, happy holidays, and see you next year for what should be a very exciting Cal season, with all the talent that we'll have returning, plus some new faces. Go Bears!

Bear Republic Event December 16, 7 pm.

Sorry for the late notice, folks, but we just found out Bear Republic is coming to town in force in mid-December. There will be several kegs of Bear Republic beers that are almost never available in New York on tap, and the usual giveaways and specials. This is a really rare opportunity to sample a whole range of beers from one of the best breweries in America. More details to come.

Ace Perry Cider

is back. That's right. See you cider lovers soon.

Astounding reading December 11.

Chin Music at Pacific Standard – Yusef Komunyakaa, Idra Novey, Rick Benjamin -- Thursday, December 11th at 7:00pm

Yusef Komunyakaa's most recent book of poems, WARHORSES, was released in September 2008; he is the author of many books of poetry and criticism including NEON VERNACULAR, which won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize. Idra Novey's first book, THE NEXT COUNTRY, received the Kinereth Gensler Award and was published in November 2008 by Alice James Book. Rick Benjamin teaches poetry at Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, and in the Interdisciplinary Arts in the MFA Program at Goddard College.

Friday Teacher Specials.

For a while, we've been opening early, at noon, on Fridays to accommodate our ever-beleaguered teacher friends at the end of a long week of educating America's youth. We've decided to extend another privilege to teachers on Fridays: double-secret happy hour specials until 6 pm, with $2 off all drinks $5 and up. You just need to show some kind of teacher identification (like a card, or a bruise or scratch), and you're good to go. We'll see you around, and thanks for all the good work you do.

Poetry reading Thursday, December 4.

Chin Music: The Pacific Standard Poetry Reading Series
Featuring Quraysh Ali Lansana, Gregory Pardlo and Mytili Jagannathan

Thursday, December 4th @ 7:00PM

Pacific Standard Bar
82 Fourth Avenue
Brooklyn, NY
(between St. Marks and Bergen Streets)

http://www.pacificstandardbrooklyn.com

Please join us for our next evening of Chin Music, the Pacific Standard Poetry Reading Series. On December 4th, we are excited to present three fine poets: Quraysh Ali Lansana, Gregory Pardlo and Mytili Jagannathan. Our final reading of the 2008 Season, on December 11th, will feature Yusef Komunyakaa and Idra Novey. Series curated by Colin Cheney.

Please note our earlier reading time of 7:00PM.

Located on Fourth Avenue in downtown Brooklyn, near the Atlantic/Pacific subway hub, Pacific Standard is a literary bar serving up eighteen microbrews on tap and cask (including both West Coast and local breweries), fine wines and liquors, and tasty snacks like chips and salsa, and meat and cheese plates.


FEATURED READERS

Quraysh Ali Lansana is author of THEY SHALL RUN: HARRIET TUBMAN POEMS (Third World Press, 2004), SOUTHSIDE RAIN (Third World Press, 2000) and THE BIG WORLD, a children's book, (Addison-Wesley, 1999). He has edited and co-edited several anthologies, including AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE READER (Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2001) and ROLE CALL: A GENERATIONAL ANTHOLOGY OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL BLACK LITERATURE AND ART (Third World Press, 2002). He is Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University, where he is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing.

Gregory Pardlo’s first book, TOTEM, won the APR/Honickman Prize in 2007, and was a finalist for the Essence Magazine Literary Award in poetry. He the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a translation grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has received additional fellowships from the New York Times, the MacDowell Colony, and Cave Canem African American Poet’s Workshop. His poems, reviews and translations have appeared in American Poetry Review, Calalloo, Gulf Coast, Lyric, Painted Bride Quarterly, Ploughshares, Seneca Review, Volt, Black Renaissance/ Renaissance Noir, and on National Public Radio.

Mytili Jagannathan lives in Philadelphia, where she's been actively involved in the community arts work of the Asian Arts Initiative. She is the author of ACTS, a chapbook from Habenicht Press, and her poems have appeared in EOAGH, Rattapallax, Combo, Interlope, Mirage#4/Period[ical], Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics, and Fanzine. She is the recipient of an Emerging Artist grant from the Leeway Foundation and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.

Save the date: Lagunitas event in late January.

In late January, Wednesday the 28th to be exact, the boys from Lagunitas (or, at least, a boy from Lagunitas) will be here with brand-new 2009 releases and other rare and interesting beers. Actual beers TBA, but rest assured it will be interesting. That is all.

Updated beer lineup for the Rogue event December 9.

As you may have heard, we're going to feature six unique, limited-edition, and seasonal Rogue beers on Tuesday, December 9. The close-to-final lineup, which includes a couple changes from the original lineup, in the interests of pure originality:

Santa's Private Reserve
Imperial Porter
Morimoto Soba
Issaquah Rye IPA
Shakespeare Nitro
Dad's Beer

We'll be giving away t-shirts and so on at the event, and there will be brewery folks and beer specials. So re-save the date.

Big fiction reading on Tuesday, December 2.

The Pacific Standard Fiction Series Gets Cosmopolitan
featuring Joseph O'Neill and Hari Kunzru

Tuesday, December 2nd, 7:00 p.m.
82 Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn, New York (betw. St. Marks and Bergen)
hosted by Garth Risk Hallberg

Books available on-site!
Drink specials to be chosen by dartboard!
"Best New Literary Event of 2008" (New York Magazine)...now with
stylish new curtains!

Possibly the best-reviewed title of the year, Joseph O'Neill's
bestselling new novel, NETHERLAND, was praised by New Yorker critic
James Wood as "exquisitely written . . . and one of the most
remarkable post-colonial books I have ever read" and by the New York
Times' fearsome Michiko Kakutani as a "stunning" and "resonant
meditation on the American dream." O'Neill's previous novels include
THE BREEZES and THIS IS THE LIFE. His family history, BLOOD-DARK
TRACK, was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002 and a book of the
year for The Economist and The Irish Times. O'Neill contributes
regularly to The Atlantic Monthly.

Hari Kunzru's novel of the 1960s, MY REVOLUTIONS, "offers a historical
portrait of London that must be unparalleled in contemporary British
fiction," in the words of James Wood. Kunzru's previous books -
TRANSMISSION, THE IMPRESSIONIST and the story collection NOISE -
earned him a place on Granta's "Best of the Young British Novelists"
list. Kunzru is Deputy President of English PEN and is currently a
fellow of the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York
Public Library.

Iron Santa Challenge.

During the months of December and January, we'll be doing an Iron Santa Challenge to encourage people to try our excellent selection of winter seasonal beers. The challenge: drink a 16-ounce pint (or 12-ounce pint, depending on how we're serving a given beer) of six different winter beers in one day/night, and win a free Pacific Standard t-shirt and everlasting glory. The actual beers will change with our rotating tap selections, but will generally include beers like the Sierra Celebration, Anchor Christmas, Young's Chocolate Stout, and so on. Starting December 1, ask your bartender if you're interested in taking the challenge, and they'll provide you with a checklist of beers to drink over the course of an evening. Oh, and pace yourself. We don't want any messes.

Fancy-Pants Big-Money Quiz Night II Set for December 7.

Our second Fancy-Pants Big-Money Quiz Night will be Sunday, December 7. Each team member will pay in $10, so several hundred dollars will likely be at stake. The winning team will receive 75% of the pot, and the second-place team 25% (I think last time that meant roughly $500 for the winner, and $170 for second place). We also reserve the right to randomly distribute other prizes in the form of Pacific Standard schwag. All teams are encouraged to dress up to make it an enchanted evening by the Gowanus.

Teams who don't want to pay in can still play along and earn points towards the pub quiz playoffs, but they won't be eligible for the pot, of course.

Big Game Saturday at 3:30 pm.

Cal, sadly, lost to Oregon State in Corvallis last weekend, but we still have the chance to finish the season out respectably and get a nice bowl bid by beating Stanfurd on Saturday, and Washington afterwards. Any Bear fan worth his or her salt should be out to watch Big Game here on Saturday, when we will try to reclaim the Axe from the shifty-eyed, thieving bourgeoisie who inhabit The Leland Stanford Junior Farm. The usual giveaways and specials shall apply, though the unique pleasure of beating Stanfurd is like nothing else. As we often say, no Cal season can be called a true success unless Stanfurd is humiliated.

Russian River Blind Pig Now Here.

We've managed to get our hands on twelve bottles of Blind Pig, a multiple-award-winning, classic West Coast IPA from the ever-elusive Russian River brewery. Come here right away, because these will go fast. As usual, the price is high, because we had to give our first-born children to get it, but it's definitely worth it (and you can share with a friend if you want). Description below:

Russian River Blind Pig (Santa Rosa, CA; $12/16 oz). A beautifully pungent, aggressive IPA with citrusy, piney West Coast hops. Silver Medal, American-Style IPA, 2008 GABF. 6.0%.

Chin Music poetry reading next Thursday.

Chin Music: The Pacific Standard Poetry Reading Series
Featuring Patrick Rosal, Matthew Dickman, and Bianca Stone
Thursday, November 20th @ 7:00PM

Please join us for our next evening of Chin Music, the Pacific Standard Poetry Reading Series. On November 20th, we are happy to present three exciting poets: Patrick Rosal, Matthew Dickman, and Bianca Stone. Other writers slated to appear this season include Yusef Komunyakaa, Gregory Pardlo, Idra Novey, Mytili Jagannathan, and Quraysh Ali Lansana. Series curated by Colin Cheney.

--

FEATURED READERS

Patrick Rosal is the author of two full-length poetry collections, UPROCK HEADSPIN SCRAMBLE AND DIVE, which won the Members' Choice Award from the Asian American Writers' Workshop, and most recently MY AMERICAN KUNDIMAN, which won the Association of Asian American Studies 2006 Book Award in Poetry as well as the 2007 Global Filipino Literary Award. His poems and essays have been published widely in journals and anthologies including Harvard Review, American Review, The Literary Review, Brevity, The Beacon Best, and Language for a New Century. He has twice served on the faculty of Kundiman and has been a visiting writer at Penn State Altoona, Centre College and most recently the University of Texas, Austin.

Matthew Dickman is the author of ALL-AMERICAN POEM (APR, 2008), winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize, and two chapbooks, AMIGOS (Q Ave Press, 2007) and SOMETHING ABOUT A BLACK SCARF (Azul Press, 2008). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Missouri Review, Tin House, Boston Review, Lyric, and American Poetry Review. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin, The Vermont Studio Center, and the Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown. He is from Portland, Oregon.

Bianca Stone was born in Vermont in a family of writers and grew up down the road from Robert Frost's cabin. She currently lives in New York City where she is an MFA candidate at NYU's Creative Writing Program in Poetry. She is also a freelance illustrator and cartoonist of sorts. She has been published in Vermont Life, Two Review, and The Patterson Literary Review.

Reading on December 3.

On December 3, we'll be celebrating the release of Brooklyn writer Jaime Lowe's Digging for Dirt: The Life and Death of ODB with a reading and party. The book sounds fascinating, so you should come listen to Jaime talk about it and read from it. The official release:

In a compelling combination of personal narrative, biography, and cultural criticism, Digging for Dirt explores ODB’s life, career, mythology, and death by following the troubled trajectory of his public and private worlds. Jaime Lowe met with the people ODB affected and was most affected by—surviving members of the Wu-Tang Clan, other hip-hop contemporaries, his parents, followers, managers, neighbors, and friends—in an attempt to figure out the man behind the clown-prince persona and to dissect the issues of race, celebrity, mental illness, and exploitation that surrounded his rise and fall.

Jaime Lowe’s writing has appeared in The Village Voice, Interview, Radar, and Sports Illustrated.

Charity event on November 12.

Please stop by Wednesday, November 12th to drink for a great cause. All drink proceeds from 7:00 - 8:00 pm will be donated to help enable a local Brooklynite to volunteer in Cambodia at a grass-roots organization focused on post-conflict reconciliation.

Election Night Photos, Part II

Election Night Recap.

We all had a great time--thanks to all who came and made it a cathartic, joyous event. (And sorry to all whom I picked up and carried around in my ecstasy.) The evidence, Part I:

A couple Halloween photos

for your enjoyment:

Election Night Tickets Sold Out!

Sorry, but we've reached the magic number of tickets, so any of you who haven't bought them yet will need to look elsewhere for Election Night revelry. We'd love to sell more, but we just don't have the space to fit more people in comfortably. Those of you who do have tickets, see you on Tuesday.

Final Election Night ticket reminder.

Delegates, your final warning: we're down to only 15 tickets left for Election Night, so get 'em ASAP or be left out in the cold (literally).

And a beer specials update: we'll be having state-related $2 off deals, e.g., if Obama wins Virginia, Dogfish Head beer will be $2 off for the next 30 minutes. (The actual beers we'll have that night will be determined later; that's just an example). And we'll be giving away t-shirts and pint glasses to the best-dressed throughout the night. So your $10 ticket will be amply made up for with the free beer, specials, and giveaways.

Chin Music poetry reading next Thursday.

Chin Music: The Pacific Standard Poetry Reading Series
Featuring Matthea Harvey, Amber West and Rachel Rothbart
Thursday, November 6th @ 7:00PM

Pacific Standard Bar
82 Fourth Avenue
Brooklyn, NY
(between St. Marks and Bergen Streets)

http://www.pacificstandardbrooklyn.com

Please join us for our next evening of Chin Music, the Pacific Standard Poetry Reading Series. On November 6th, we are happy to present three fine poets: Matthea Harvey, Amber West, and Rachel Rothbart. Other writers slated to appear this season include Yusef Komunyakaa, Matthea Harvey, Matthew Dickman, Gregory Pardlo, Idra Novey, Mytili Jagannathan, and Quraysh Ali Lansana. Series curated by Colin Cheney.

Please note our earlier reading time of 7:00PM.

Located on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, near the Atlantic/Pacific station, Pacific Standard is a literary bar serving up over a dozen West Coast microbrews on tap (as well as choice selections from small and local breweries), a fine collection of wines, and tasty cheeses and meats.

--

FEATURED READERS

Matthea Harvey is the author of MODERN LIFE (Graywolf 2007), SAD LITTLE BREATHING MACHINE (Graywolf, 2004), and PITY THE BATHTUB ITS FORCED EMBRACE OF THE HUMAN FORM (Alice James Books, 2000). Her first children’s book, THE LITTLE GENERAL AND THE GIANT SNOWFLAKE, illustrated by Elizabeth Zechel, is forthcoming from Tin House Books. Matthea is a contributing editor to jubilat. She teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence and lives in Brooklyn.

Amber West is a poet, playwright and teaching artist from California. Her poems have been published in Red Wheelbarrow, Yerm Ahm, and Chinquapin, and two of her plays have been performed by San Francisco theater companies. She recently completed her MFA in Creative Writing at NYU. Currently, she is a Jacob K. Javits Fellow at the University of Connecticut, and a literacy tutor at the Brooklyn Public Library.

Rachel Rothbart grew up on Eastern Long Island and is now a resident of New York City. She makes her living as a writer and editor, is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College, and spends a fair amount of time wondering about whalesong, women who intrinsically know which way is north, and the lure of fine, wingtipped shoes. She has work forthcoming in Conduit and on FailBetter.com.

Our longtime buddies at Sixpoint

have hit the big-time with a front-page story in today's New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/29/dining/29beer.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Score another one for the craft beer revolution, and Brooklyn craft beer specifically.

NYC Marathon Watching at Pacific Standard.

On marathon day, Sunday, November 2, we'll be opening early, at 9:30 am, to host people who want to watch the marathon, which runs right by our bar. You can watch the leaders and the pack go by out of our big windows and enjoy the fact that you're not running 26 miles, via beer. We'll also have a barbecue station on the sidewalk outside, so you can grab some cheap hot dogs and burgers, or bring meat/veggies of your own to grill. A fun time is guaranteed for all.

An Encouragement to Dress Up on Election Night.

So we were chatting about our big election night party on Tuesday, November 4, and we decided it would be really fun if we all dressed up for the big occasion. Wouldn't it be nice to have a bar full of well-dressed, sharp-looking people acting like teenagers while watching the results of the biggest election of our lives?

We aren't going to enforce a dress code or anything, but let's encourage you by saying that the well-dressed people--for men, button-up shirts, slacks, and ties at the minimum, for women, nice business attire--will qualify for various giveaways that we're planning for the evening. Get your tickets ASAP from a bartender, and we'll see you, our faithful delegates, on the 4th.

Rogue event scheduled for December 9.

Save the date: we're going to feature six unique, limited-edition, and seasonal Rogue beers on Tuesday, December 9. The tentative lineup:

Rogue Brutal Bitter
Rogue Shakespeare Stout
St. Rogue Red Ale
Rogue Imperial Porter
Rogue Santa's Private Reserve
Rogue Morimoto Soba Ale

Pretty sweet, eh? We'll have the usual specials and giveaways as well (details to come closer to the event), so this will be a joyous holiday celebration, Oregon-style. See you then.

Pictures.

These are all apparently things that happened while I was gone. Do not ask me about the back stories for these pictures. I have no idea. There is a cute dog called Rocket in a few of them. She is our new dog. You should come meet her.

Consider yourself given advance notice

of the second of what should be three fall fiction events, on December 2:

The Pacific Standard Fiction Series Gets Cosmopolitan
featuring Joseph O'Neill and Hari Kunzru

Tuesday, December 2nd, 7:00 p.m.
82 Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn, New York (betw. St. Marks and Bergen)
hosted by Garth Risk Hallberg

Books available on-site!
Drink specials to be chosen by dartboard!
"Best New Literary Event of 2008" (New York Magazine)...now with
stylish new curtains!

Joseph O'Neill's bestselling new novel, NETHERLAND, was praised by New
Yorker critic James Wood as "exquisitely written . . . and one of the
most remarkable post-colonial books I have ever read" and by the New
York Times' fearsome Michiko Kakutani as a "stunning" and "resonant
meditation on the American dream." O'Neill's previous novels include
THE BREEZES and THIS IS THE LIFE. His family history, BLOOD-DARK
TRACK, was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002 and a book of the
year for The Economist and The Irish Times. O'Neill contributes
regularly to The Atlantic Monthly.

"[NETHERLAND is] the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most
desolate work of fiction we've yet had about life in New York and
London after the World Trade Center fell." - The New York Times Book
Review

Hari Kunzru's novel of the 1960s, MY REVOLUTIONS, "offers a historical
portrait of London that must be unparalleled in contemporary British
fiction," in the words of James Wood. Kunzru's previous books -
TRANSMISSION, THE IMPRESSIONIST and the story collection NOISE -
earned him a place on Granta's "Best of the Young British Novelists"
list. Kunzru is Deputy President of English PEN and is currently a
fellow of the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York
Public Library.

"An urgent and passionate piece of work . . . [MY REVOLUTIONS] is
fairly afire with an anger on behalf of the world's dispossessed and
powerless that is so conspicuously absent from much cozy and collusive
current fiction." -The Sunday Telegraph (UK)

Our next poetry reading is a week from today

and promises to be rock-solid. The skinny:

Chin Music: The Pacific Standard Poetry Reading Series
Special "Obsessions" Night Featuring Dan Beachy-Quick, Ammon Shea,
Alex Rose, and Catherine Barnett
Thursday, October 23rd @ 7:00PM

Please join us for our next installment of Chin Music, the Pacific
Standard Poetry Reading Series. On October 23rd, we are presenting our
second cross-genre night on the theme of "Obsessions," featuring poet
& essayist Dan Beachy-Quick, non-fiction writer Ammon Shea, short
story writer & filmmaker Alex Rose, and poet Catherine Barnett. Other
writers slated to appear this season include Yusef Komunyakaa, Matthea
Harvey, Matthew Dickman, Gregory Pardlo, Idra Novey, Mytili
Jagannathan, and Quraysh Ali Lansana. Series curated by Colin Cheney.

--

FEATURED READERS

Dan Beachy-Quick is the author of A WHALER'S DICTIONARY (Milkweed
Editions, 2008), and three collections of poems: MULBERRY (Tupelo
Press, 2006), SPELL (Ahsata Press, 2004), and NORTH TRUE SOUTH BRIGHT
(Alice James Books, 2003). A graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop,
Dan Beachy-Quick is an Associate Professor of Literature and Creative
Writing at Colorado State University. He lives in Fort Collins,
Colorado, with his wife and daughter.

Ammon Shea is the author of READING THE OED: ONE MAN, ONE YEAR, 21,
730 PAGES (Perigee Books, 2008) and two previous books on obscure
words, DEPRAVED ENGLISH and INSULTING ENGLISH (written with Peter
Novobatzky). He read his first dictionary, Merriam Webster's Second
International, ten years ago, and followed it up with the sequel,
Webster's Third International.

Alex Rose's debut short story collection, THE MUSICAL ILLUSIONIST
(2007), was described by Library Journal as "a potential cult classic"
and by the Village Voice as "uncanny." He is the co-founding editor of
Hotel St. George Press in Brooklyn, and has published stories and
essays in The New York Times, Ploughshares, Fantasy Magazine,
Obit-Mag, The Reading Room, North American Review, The Providence
Journal, The Forward, DIAGRAM and others. He has also directed a
number of short films, videos and animations which have appeared on
HBO, MTV, Comedy Central, ShowTime and the BBC.

Catherine Barnett is the recipient of a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship, a
2004 Whiting Writers' Award, the 2004 Glasgow Prize for Emerging
Writers, and a Pushcart Prize. Her first collection of poems, INTO
PERFECT SPHERES SUCH HOLES ARE PIERCED, was published in 2004 by
Alice James Books. Her work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Pleiades, The
Washington Post, Barrow Street, Shenandoah, The Massachusetts Review,
and The Iowa Review. Barnett teaches at the New School and NYU, where
she was honored with an Outstanding Service Award.

We're huge in Germany, apparently.

This link:

http://www.zoomer.de/news/topthema/harnasch--liefeldt/zweites-tv--duell/video/public-viewing-in-brookling

is to a report filed by a nice fellow from a German website about our most recent debate-watching party. Unfortunately for us monoglots, it's in German. If you can speak German, and know what everyone is saying, let me know. It doesn't sound too bad.

Reminder: Chin Music on Thursday.

Thursday night at 7 pm, we'll have a new installment of Chin Music, our poetry reading series, with D. Nurkse, Nathaniel Bellows, and Marcus Jackson. It will be awesome. You should come. That is all.

Debate-Watching Party Tomorrow.

Tomorrow night we'll be watching the second of the three presidential debates at 9 pm. As usual, you should get here very, very early if you want to be sure to get in and get seats. For the vice-presidential debate last week, we had to stop letting people in at 8 pm, a full hour before the debate started, so you should get here, at the very least, more than an hour in advance. We'll have the usual beer specials, and it should be another fun time.

Congratulations to Fine with Megan

who won Season III of our pub quiz last night, handily defeating Season I and II champions Slodeth in a clash of titans. We are taking this Sunday, October 12, off to relax after a grueling season, but will return with the first pub quiz of Season IV on October 19. Everyone will be back to zero, so it's a great time to join. We're also implementing some new improvements, like a bar tab for second place! Thanks to everyone who played last season, and see you later this month.

Photos of miscellaneous bar goings-on.

Here are a couple pictures of the debate watch party last Friday, and a couple pictures of our bar regulars enjoying themselves on their new Green Machines in and around the bar. Green Machines are crazy.

Next Debate Watch Party on Thursday.

Our first debate watch party was NUTS (think tons of people, Brazilian television crew, Swiss radio journalist), but at least we were prepared for the possibility, and employed our buddy/amateur doorperson Mike to keep us from being overcrowded. (And we thought debates were too wonky to attract such big crowds.) Sorry to anyone who couldn't get in, but fire codes being, umm, fire codes, our hands are tied. The lesson here for you folks is to get here EARLY if you want to get seats/space and watch the debates. You're probably not going to be able to waltz in half an hour before the debate starts.

Anyway, the next one will be Thursday at 9 pm, between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. This vice presidential debate is one of the most anticipated of the season, and should be a wild time. We'll have the usual specials and raucous crowd--be there and be square. Because honestly we could fit more people if you all were square instead of cylindrically shaped.

Russian River Pliny the Elder. Yes. Yes.

I don't know how we did it (which gives me plausible deniability, I guess), but we got our hands on a very limited amount of Russian River's Pliny the Elder, perhaps the best double IPA in existence, as evidenced by its gold medals at the Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup. It's brewed as a tribute to Pliny, who first identified hops and gave them their scientific name before meeting a fiery death when Mount Vesuvius erupted. We have to charge $12 for a 16-ounce bottle, because it was so damn costly to get ahold of them, but what's a few extra bucks when you can honor a great and rarely-seen-on-the-East-Coast California brewery and a great man? Come hastily, before we run out.

And fiction night returns on October 21st.

The Pacific Standard Fiction Series Rides Again!
featuring Paul Beatty and Matthew Sharpe

Tuesday, October 21st, 7:00 p.m.
82 Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn, New York (betw. St. Marks and Bergen)
hosted by Garth Risk Hallberg

Books available on-site!
Drink specials to be chosen by dartboard!
"Best New Literary Event of 2008" (New York Magazine)...now with
stylish new curtains!
Paul Beatty, author of SLUMBERLAND, has been hailed by The New York
Times and The Los Angeles Times as one of the best writers of his
generation. His previous novels are TUFF ("Unforgettable" - The Boston
Globe) and THE WHITE-BOY SHUFFLE ("Laugh-out-loud funny and
weep-in-silence sad" - The Nation). A former Grand Poetry Slam
Champion of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Beatty is also the author of the
poetry collections JOKER, JOKER, DEUCE and BIG BANK TAKE LITTLE BANK,
and is the editor of HOKUM, an anthology of African-American humor.

"Furiously written… [SLUMBERLAND] is another bravura performance from
the searingly talented Paul Beatty. A no-holds-barred comedic romp
that crushes through the Fulda Gap of Black/White, East/West
relationships like an M1 tank." -Junot Diaz

Matthew Sharpe's third novel, JAMESTOWN, was one of Publisher's
Weekly's Best Books of 2007 - "a work of hectic brilliance and immense
sadness," according to Salon.com. His previous novel, THE SLEEPING
FATHER, was a Today Show Book Club pick, and has been translated into
nine languages. Mr. Sharpe's previous books are the novel NOTHING IS
TERRIBLE and the collection STORIES FROM THE TUBE. His stories and
essays have appeared in Harper's, McSweeney's, and Bomb, among others.

"[A]n absurd hybrid of Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Walt Disney's
Pocahontas... JAMESTOWN is an anguished lament for the whole bloody
history of Western conquest, the stupidity and cruelty of invaders
then and now... Jamestown is packed with marvelous material, moving
and funny and deeply provocative." - Washington Post Book World

Host Garth Risk Hallberg is the author of A FIELD GUIDE TO THE NORTH
AMERICAN FAMILY and is a 2008 NYFA fellow in fiction. The Pacific
Standard Fiction Series aims to showcase the intense and varied
literary energies of Brooklyn by pairing writers from the borough and
beyond. We offer fine stories and appealing beverages in a civilized
setting. For more information, please visit
www.pacificstandardbrooklyn.com.

Another great poetry lineup on October 9.

Chin Music: The Pacific Standard Poetry Reading Series
Featuring D. Nurkse, Nathaniel Bellows, and Marcus Jackson
Thursday, October 9th @ 7:00PM

Pacific Standard Bar
82 Fourth Avenue
Brooklyn, NY
(between St. Marks and Bergen Streets)

http://www.pacificstandardbrooklyn.com

Please join us for our next installment of Chin Music, the Pacific Standard Poetry Reading Series. On October 9th, we are thrilled to present three fine poets: D. Nurkse, Nathaniel Bellows, and Marcus Jackson. Other writers slated to appear this season include Yusef Komunyakaa, Matthea Harvey, Dan Beachy-Quick, Matthew Dickman, Gregory Pardlo, Idra Novey, Ammon Shea, Mytili Jagannathan, and Quraysh Ali Lansana. Series curated by Colin Cheney.

Please note our earlier reading time of 7:00PM.

Located on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, near the Atlantic/Pacific station, Pacific Standard is a literary bar serving up over a dozen West Coast microbrews on tap (as well as choice selections from small and local breweries), a fine collection of wines, and tasty cheeses and meats.

--

FEATURED READERS

D. Nurkse is the author of THE BORDER KINGDOM (Knopf 2008) and eight previous books of poetry. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Writers’ Award, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, two grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Tanne Foundation award, and two awards from Poetry magazine. He has also written widely on human rights. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Brooklyn.

Nathaniel Bellows is the author of a collection of poems, WHY SPEAK? (W.W.Norton 2007/2008), and a novel, ON THIS DAY (HarperCollins 2003/2004; Harmon Blunt Publishers 2006). His poems have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and many other journals. His fiction has has appeared in The Paris Review, Post Road, Redivider, and THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2005, edited by Michael Chabon.

Marcus Jackson’s poetry has appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, Blood Lotus, Cave Canem Anthology 2007, Evansville Review, Heliotrope, The New Delta Review and Toledo Review. He received his BA from the University of Toledo and his MFA from New York University. He lives in New York City, where he has worked as a mover, a mailroom clerk and an adjunct lecturer. He is finishing his first collection of poems, entitled NEIGHBORHOOD REGISTER.

Presidential Debate Watch Parties

We'll be having debate-watching parties for all the debates: September 26, October 2 (vice-presidential), October 7, and October 15. Starting at 8 pm, we'll have beer specials, and we'll watch the actual debates on our big projection screens starting at 9 pm each of those nights. No need to RSVP; just show up early because it'll be first-come first-served as far as seating goes. (But we won't be nearly as crazy as the convention speech night, I think!).

Election Night, November 4

To avoid the kind of overcrowding we had for Barack Obama's convention speech, we've decided to sell tickets in advance for election night, which is Tuesday, November 4. We'll limit the total number of tickets sold, and close the bar to non-ticketed people on the night of the event, so we won't be overwhelmed by the masses. Each ticket will cost $10, but will include a free beer, so it's not a bad deal at all. Plus, we'll have all kinds of Election Night specials and giveaways. A cathartic, transcendent good time, or an angry, drunken, this-country-is-going-to-hell good time, is guaranteed for all. You can buy these tickets starting tomorrow at Pacific Standard--just ask a bartender.

Speaking of pint glasses...

we now have a collection of fine Pacific Standard logo pint glasses. To wit:



We're selling them for $5 a piece, and giving them away at various events (pub quizzes, Cal games, and so on).

Though the Cal-Maryland game

was a disappointment (in more ways than one: Jon and I sunburned the crap out of ourselves on a day that was supposed to be overcast with a chance of showers), true Bears are far too sturdy to let a silly out-of-conference early-season loss faze us. we shall reconvene on September 27 to watch Cal play Colorado State in Berkeley (thank God). T-shirts and pint glasses will be given away for said game, as well as cheap pitchers and beer buckets. Going into conference play at 3-1 would be a fine thing. See you then!

An encouragement

to buy some tickets for the first-ever Craft Beer Week, which continues Monday-Sunday this week. They're still available, are a great deal, and are a lovely and important way to support craft beer in general, and this excellent event in the future. Go to this site:

http://www.nycbeerweek.com/

and have some fun crawling bars in neighborhoods you don't know. Or ones you do know. Either way.

Ithaca Ten now on tap.

Just a quick note to let you all know that Ithaca Ten is now on tap. It's, to say the least, extremely rare to see this beer on tap in New York City, so get yourself down here before our very limited supply runs out. (It's ridiculously good.)

Cal game tomorrow!

At 6:30 pm, join us in the back room for our first conference game, against Washington State. We'll have real TV this time, plus all the usual bucket and pitcher specials. See you there--if we get through this one, our chances look good of going into the meat of our schedule with a 4-0 record.

Live photos from the first anniversary.

including one where Jon Stan shows off his talent for looking impossibly evil.

First anniversary live blog!

Hi, everyone, from our first anniversary! Everyone is here and it is fun! We are debuting Sixpoint's Double Belgian IPA, which is tasty! Photos to come!

Cal game wrap-up

Thanks to all who made it out for the Cal game last night. Many of our affordable $15 Miller Lite/High Life buckets were sold, many Cal cheers went up in the middle of Brooklyn, and many sturdy Golden Bears were pleased with our performance in beating a tough Michigan State team 38-31 (in my opinion, it wasn't really as close as the final score suggests). We apologize for having to use an Internet feed to show the game, but ABC (the devil, by the way) pulled a fast one in announcing its blackout of the game too late for us to get a DirecTV package that would include it. Don't worry--we vow to have all the other Cal games on actual TV. (I've checked, and the next several are on Comcast Sports Net or ESPN, both of which we already have). See you all again soon, and Go Bears!

T-shirt sales

by the way, are now open to the public. We have Pacific Standard t-shirts available in all kinds of sizes, as well as the official NYC Cal alumni club t-shirt available. Observe the samples on our walls and ask our bartenders if you're interested.

And a few more photos.

Je. Sus. Christ.

We thought our Obama convention speech night would be busy, but we were not prepared for this ridiculousness. Thank you, all who showed up. And sorry we had to start turning people away at the door, but our bartenders were about to combust, our bar was about to collapse, and (most saliently) people would have most likely incurred serious injuries if we let anyone else in. Anyway, all the people who came by had a fun and raucous time watching one of the best speeches I've ever seen. Photos:

Amazing poetry reading on Sept. 11!

Find details below on our first Chin Music reading of the fall season. It's ridiculously good, with one of the best poets in America, Phil Levine, headlining, and Tracy K. Smith to boot! Phil reading, for free, in a small venue, is a very rare event; if you like poetry at all, this is a must-be-here deal.

Chin Music Poetry at Pacific Standard, Tuesday, September 11, 7 pm: Philip Levine and Tracy K. Smith

Philip Levine, one of America’s most celebrated poets, is the author of sixteen books of verse, most recently Breath (2004). His other poetry collections include The Mercy (1999); The Simple Truth (1994), which won the Pulitzer Prize; What Work Is (1991), which won the National Book Award; New Selected Poems (1991); Ashes: Poems New and Old (1979), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the first American Book Award for Poetry; 7 Years From Somewhere (1979), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; and The Names of the Lost (1975), which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.

Tracy K. Smith received degrees in English and Creative Writing from Harvard College and Columbia University, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University from 1997-99. Her book The Body's Question was awarded the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and published in 2003 by Graywolf Press. She teaches Creative Writing at Princeton University.

New bottles, and old favorites back in stock.

We finally got another long-awaited bottle delivery today. Below is our current bottle menu. A notable new bottle is the Anderson Valley Poleeko Gold, a genre-defining California pale ale. And we've got Deschutes Bachelor ESB back, giving us a full complement of three Deschutes beers. More hard-to-find bottles will continue to come, and any suggestions are welcome.

AleSmith Old Numbskull (San Diego, CA; $20/25.4 oz). An amazing West Coast style barleywine, with a huge malt profile and a very aggressive dose of premium domestic hops. 11.0%.
Anderson Valley Poleeko Gold Pale Ale (Boonville, CA; $7/12 oz). Poleeko Gold is synonymous with California-style pale ale; its golden color and generous use of Pacific Northwest hops create an unusual lightness and dryness for such a full-flavored ale. 5.5%.
Deschutes Bachelor ESB (Bend, OR; $7/12 oz). An English-style extra special bitter. 5.3%.
Deschutes Black Butte Porter (Bend, OR; $7/12 oz). Black Butte Porter uses chocolate and crystal malts, crafting a rich yet easy-to-drink dark beer. 5.2%.
Deschutes Inversion IPA (Bend, OR; $7/12 oz). A phenomenal Northwestern IPA, dry-hopped for a week. 6.8%.
Full Sail Session Lager (Hood River, OR; $7/11 oz). A pre-Prohibition-style American lager. 5.1%.
Hair of the Dog Ruth (Portland, OR; $8/12 oz). A light and refreshing American ale. 5.6%.
Harviestoun Ola Dubh (Alva, Scotland; $14/11.2 oz). This limited release is Harviestoun’s famous Old Engine Oil matured in 16-year old Highland Park whisky casks. 8.0%.
Midnight Sun Sockeye Red IPA (Anchorage, AK; $12/22 oz). Outlandish portions of Centennial, Cascade, and Simcoe hops give this beer tremendous citrus and floral aroma and flavor. 5.7%.

Slight Clarification on the Baraffle Schedule

Though our evening of festivities begins at 8 pm on Thursday, Obama won't be speaking until 10 pm. We'll be raffling off prizes throughout the whole evening, and watching the other speeches (Al Gore and so on), culminating with raffling off our grand prize after the end of Obama's speech (around 10:30 or so). See you here on Thursday.

Oh, and

we also have the full NFL package, so you'll be able to watch any game you want on Sundays, and we'll do the same pitcher and bucket specials for those games. Fans with out-of-market favorite teams, rejoice!

First Cal Game on Saturday!

I can't believe it's true, but college football is back in six days! We'll have all the Cal games we can possibly show at the Standard, and we're now an official Cal alumni bar, which means we're donating 10% of proceeds during the games to the alumni association. So if you come here to watch the games, you can support Cal in more than one way. We've also got official NYC Cal Alumni Club t-shirts for sale, and t-shirts and pint glasses to give away, and so on and so forth. It will be festive, we vow.

And if all that's not enough we're doing bucket specials during the games, where you'll be able to buy 5 Miller Lites or High Lifes (mix and match) on ice in a bucket for $15. And we'll pour pitchers of microbrews for $2 off the cost of 4 pints of the beer.

Basically, get yourself here. Plus, the team looks to be pretty good this year (cross your fingers). The first game is a huge one, at home against Michigan State. The details:

Cal vs. Michigan State
Saturday, August 30
8 pm
ABC

If you're not a Cal fan, you can still expect us to show lots of the games you're interested in on our two big projection screens. Just ask.

The full Cal schedule:

Schedule (all times Eastern)

08/30/08 vs. Michigan State Berkeley, CA 8:00 p.m.
09/06/08 at Washington State Pullman, WA 6:30 p.m.
09/13/08 at Maryland College Park, MD 12:00 p.m.
09/27/08 vs. Colorado State Berkeley, CA 6:00 p.m.
10/04/08 vs. Arizona State Berkeley, CA TBA
10/18/08 at Arizona Tucson, AZ 10:00 p.m.
10/25/08 vs. UCLA Berkeley, CA TBA
11/01/08 vs. Oregon Berkeley, CA TBA
11/08/08 at USC Los Angeles, CA 8:00 p.m.
11/15/08 at Oregon State Corvallis, OR TBA
11/22/08 vs. Stanford Berkeley, CA TBA
12/06/08 vs. Washington Berkeley, CA TBA

Information on NYC Craft Beer Week

in which Pacific Standard will take part! We encourage you to sign up and try different beers at different beer bars all over the city. Go here:

http://www.nycbeerweek.com/

for all the info and to purchase tickets. The press release:

From September 12th through the 21st, New York's unique beer culture will be on display through the New York Craft Beer Week, a festival spanning ten full days touting libation education, neighborhood bar crawls and beer dinners throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. An estimated 30,000 participants will stamp their beer passports at over 50 of Gotham's favorite watering holes throughout nine neighborhoods.

The week kicks off at 5:00 p.m. on September 12th, with the Third Annual New York Brewfest at South Street Seaport. The festivities continue with one-of-a-kind beer dinners, bridging the gap between beer geeks and foodies, providing the chance to enjoy their beers alongside the brewers with top-notch food to match; and neighborhood crawls for those looking to discover the best of the city's beer bars and the regional beer selections that they feature.

Every night features events in each of the following neighborhoods: Manhattan's East Village, Lower East Side, West Village, Midtown and Upper West Side; and Brooklyn's Downtown, Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Park Slope. Many area breweries are planning special events at bars throughout the week. The ironically named ten day event concludes with the 2nd Annual Manhattan Cask Ale Festival at the Chelsea Brewing Company.

The NYC Beer passport, freely distributed at all festival venues, contains information on all events taking place. Participants will have the opportunity to stamp their passport at each bar as they partake in the neighborhood beer bar crawls. The fun can continue post-festival, as passport holders can continue to collect stamps and become experts on New York's best craft beer bars. The ten days of events have been scheduled to provide non-stop craft beer appreciation. For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit http://www.nycbeerweek.com/.

Probably, fery few will ever be here

at 11 am, like I am now (refrigeration problems; don't ask). But I think it's the nicest time at the Standard. Look at the late summer light:

T-shirt Ordering.

While our t-shirts won't be available to the general public until our anniversary party on September 5, Frequent Drinkers can get theirs now (using either $20 or 300 Frequent Drinker Yards), and those in remote areas who want them shipped can order them now, by printing, filling out, and sending to us c/o 82 4th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217 the form here:

www.pacificstandardbrooklyn.com/orderform.pdf

You also might be able to win one at our Baraffle on August 28.

Pictures of our newly arrived t-shirts!

Models include Pacific Standard owner John Rauschenberg, trying on his "Off-White Steel" look, and Pacific Standard bartender Ashley Stubblefield. I've also given you pictures of the shirts by themselves, in case the models are too distracting.

Women's:

Men's:

Robot update.

On our robot-building company, TellArt's, robot blog,

http://drinkingrobot.wordpress.com/

you can find an update from Alex, our previous robot worker, on the state of the robot. The update is pretty technical; the overall gist is that we're close, with several, but minor, remaining obstacles. The most important thing we need now is more labor in order to continue. Bottom line is, look for the robot in the winter. But there obviously can't be any guarantees, other than the one we have made, and will continue to make: the robot will be here, someday.

Star Trek pinball on its way soon.

After multiple headaches and delays, we decided to dump the incompetent entertainment companies we were dealing with and acquire a Star Trek: The Next Generation pinball machine ourselves. We've located one and are going to rent a cargo van and drive up to Rhode Island to fetch it either early this week or early next week, so it should be installed and ready for play by September 1, at the latest. We are excited, and you should be too. Resistance to this game will be futile.

More bar pictures!

These chronicle the debut of our latest canine friend, the Boston Terrier known as "Waffles".

Mystery fifth beer for our anniversary revealed!

For our first anniversary party on September 5, Sixpoint will be giving us a firkin of their Belgian IPA. (They temporarily thought casks of dry-hopped Sweet Action would be ready by then, but they and us have decided to play it safe and not go with a cask beer that isn't fully finished). Very good stuff. In short, on September 5, you should be here if you have legs and are thirsty.

Just a reminder

that on August 31, we'll be having a very special Big-Money Pub Quiz with approx. $600 for the winner, and $200 for 2nd. (Everyone participating will kick in $10, with 25% going to the second-place team and 75% going to the first-place team.) This quiz will be damn serious, and we have some damn serious and really good rounds prepared. It is not to be missed.

Our first anniversary party.

Good news! Sixpoint, our buddy brewery in Brooklyn, has been generous enough to offer to provide us with five (yes, five) IPAs for our anniversary event, including one brand-new beer and one special cask never seen before on our fair planet. The list follows. There will be specials. There will be Sixpoint personnel. There will be T-shirts. Is there any reason that you shouldn't be here on September 5?

Sixpoint Bengali Tiger IPA. The Bengali Tiger is Sixpoint’s tribute to the bounty of American hops—four different hop varieties grown in the Pacific Northwest provide this ale with a robust citrus flavor and aroma that is balanced by a generous amount of malt.

Sixpoint Gemini Double IPA. A full-frontal bouquet of lemon citrus zest and caramel candy. The flavor evolves into a full-bodied malt assault flanked by bitter and flavorful hops from the rear. It coats your tongue like cotton candy and wipes it clean with bitter citrus sorbet.

Sixpoint Belgian IPA. This Belgian-style ale pours a hazy amber color. Floral hops are present in the smell and on the tongue; sweet malts provide a nice support for the citric hops. A lighter bodied Belgian ale with a nice amount of carbonation.

Double Belgian IPA. No description is available yet, since this beer will be brand-new when we serve it on the 5th. Simply imagine the glory that this beer shall be, hold that hallowed image in your head, and then drink the damn thing, and be fruitful, and multiply.

Mystery Cask IPA. One of the four beers above will be altered in alchemical ways by Sixpoint staff and made into a completely unique firkin offering. We won't tell you what unearthly machinations are currently happening in Red Hook at the brewery, but you will be pleased to try this cask, trust us.

Look, people totally have fun at our bar.

See? See?

Grand Prize for the Baraffle.

Since voting between the bike, the lifetime $1 Sixpoint discount, and the keg of Hop Obama was so close, and we didn't want to stick the grand prize winner with something they didn't want, we've decided to make the grand prize a choice between the three. That's right, the winner of our Baraffle on August 28 at 8 pm will get to choose between:

1. A bike from a local store! We'll work with you based on your preferences, though of course we have to stay in a relatively modest budget (no fancy road racing bikes, folks).
2. A lifetime, any-time discount of $1 off any Sixpoint beer at Pacific Standard. (The usual caveats about this deal depending on the existence of Pacific Standard and Sixpoint, and the fact that you can't combine this with any other discount, or use it to buy beer for your friends, apply).
3. A keg of Hop Obama, which can either be consumed at the bar with your friends at a party (in which case we'll also spring for delivery food), or at your apartment (but you gotta leave us a keg deposit).

Cool? Keep collecting tickets and we'll see you all for the big speech and the raffle.

Two Brothers Oh, Brother! on tap

We managed to get our hands on a rare 1/6 keg of Two Brothers Oh, Brother!, a Belgian Tripel that has a really unique, fresh taste--in other words, not purely syrupy, like a lot of other Tripels. I don't often trumpet a single beer coming into stock, but this beer is amazing and unlikely to be available anywhere after the next few weeks. The official description:

Two Brothers Oh Brother! (Warrenville, IL; $8/12 oz). Oh Brother! is one of a series of limited-run beers in styles that are extreme or unusual. This crisp, straw-colored Tripel is blessed with a host of spicy and fruity aromas. It’s brewed from pilsner malt, candy sugar, and some untraditional hop choices. 8.5% ABV.

Pacific Standard T-Shirt Pre-Ordering

As many of you know, Pacific Standard's first official t-shirt will be debuting at our First Anniversary Party on September 5. A lovely Red Hook company, Quist, will be silkscreening the Pacific Standard coat of arms onto some nice cream-colored American-made shirts (no sweatshops!). Mock-ups/photos will come when I have them, but until then we thought we would give you all a chance to pre-order shirts, in case you can't make the party or don't live in our fair city. Here's how it works:

1. Go to the following site to view/print the Official Order Form:
www.pacificstandardbrooklyn.com/orderform.pdf
2. Fill it out, indicating the size and type of shirt(s) you'd like (we have small, medium, and large sizes available in both men's and women's styles), and whether you'll pick it up at the bar or will need it shipped.
3. If you're paying by credit card, you can fax or e-mail the form to us. Our fax number is 718-858-2050 and our e-mail is pacificstandardbrooklyn -at- gmail.com.
4. If you're paying by check (or credit card, and you don't want to fax or e-mail your information), you can print the order form out and mail it to us at 82 Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217.

We'll put everyone on a waiting list, and the instant we get the shirts (which should be in three weeks or so) start shipping them out.

Got it? Any questions, just ask.

Growler Discounts Now Extended to Everyone!

In the past, it cost the general public 4 times the cost of a 16-ounce pint of a given beer to fill a growler here at Pacific Standard (since growlers are 64 ounces). Not a bad deal, but nothing special. Frequent Drinkers, on the other hand, get a spifftastic discount of $4 or $5 off that cost.

But we've been doing some thinking, and we've decided that getting tap beer to go is a basic human right, and we want to make it affordable for everyone. So from now on everyone gets $4 or $5 off their growlers (making many of our beers a mere $16-$20 per growler fill). Come by, grab a growler for the one-time $5 cost if you haven't already, and start enjoying great tap beer at home!

Reading on Tuesday, August 5.

A Killing-the-Buddha Revival in Religion Stories
featuring Andrew Boyd, Ashley Makar, Tobias Van Buren and Emily Weinstein

Tuesday, August 5, 7:00 p.m. hosted by Meera Subramanian, Ashley Makar and Marissa Dennis

Drink specials!
Books available on-site!

ANDREW BOYD is the author of Daily Afflictions and Life's Little Deconstruction Book (both W.W. Norton). He is founder of the satirical grass-roots media campaign Billionaires for Bush and a founding partner of Agit-Pop Communications, which creates flash animation and online video for environmental and social-justice campaigns. He lives in New York City with his wee laptop.

ASHLEY MAKAR, a contributing co-editor of Killing the Buddha, is a poet, non-fiction and (trying fiction) writer. Her work has appeared in American Book Review, The Birmingham News, Science and Spirit magazine, and The Revealer. She has taught writing and Middle Eastern literature at Hofstra University. This fall, she's off from her happy home in Brooklyn to study Religion and the Arts, at Yale Divinity School's Institute of Sacred Music.

TOBIAS VAN BUREN is retired from his day job, but feverishly writing. "My Homeless Experience," his current work-in-progress, was written mostly while he was homeless, from Dec. 23, 1995 - December 4, 2000. He is a seasoned participant in the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen Writers' Workshop, which Ian Frazier featured in "Hungry Minds," his May 2008 New Yorker article.

EMILY WEINSTEIN writes the web site superlefty.com. Her work has been published in The Brooklyn Rail, the Huffington Post, Identity Theory, killingthebuddha.com, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, McSweeney's Internet Tendancy, The Morning News, and Venus.
She is currently working on a book about the travels and travails of a punk rock orchestra, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

MEERA SUBRAMANIAN, who will emcee KtB's August 5 Revival, writes about culture and the environment for The New York Times, Audubon, Salon, Grist, Science & Spirit, and others. Based in Brooklyn, she seeks out the wild world hidden within the urban landscape and can be seen sneaking around the city with binoculars as she works on a book about the peregrine falcons of New York City.

MARISSA DENNIS, a contributing KtB editor, is a Ph.D. student in the media, culture and communication program at NYU, where she is studying the role of the medical interpreter in New York hospitals. With a background in cultural studies,
she spent several years in Latin America studying cross-cultural issues in mental health and sexuality. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and new baby.

Official Schmaltz Night Poster and Beer Lineup

To wit:

Used dartboard available for free!

We just replaced our old dartboard with a brand-new one, which means we have a used board available, which we'll offer to you, blog readers, before we put it out on the street. It's definitely worn, and darts don't stick in it as well as they used to, but it's a good board, and works just fine--our customers were happily using it in the bar up until Wednesday. It'll probably last several months more, especially with lighter home use. And, hey, just think--it's your very own piece of Pacific Standard history. E-mail, call, or come by the bar if you're interested.

Cheese leftovers!

As with the last cheese night, we have a few leftover plates, which we'll be selling at the bargain rate of $5 for a plate until they run out. Don't miss your chance to eat expensive cheese on a freelance budget.

Barack Obama platform meeting here on Thursday at 8.

Barack Obama has encouraged supporters to have "platform meetings," where they discuss possible ideas for Obama's platform. Results from these meetings, held all over the country, will be transmitted to the Obama campaign. Will the meetings make a difference? We don't know. But hey, you got to give it a shot. So Pacific Standard is hosting one in the hope it will encourage a little bit of participation in the political process, and beer-drinking, too. (Hop Obamas will be $1 off for meeting attendees.) Everyone is free to come and talk.

General Information about Obama's Platform Meetings
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/listening/

Pacific Stnadard's Platform Meeting
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/44yxt

Yeah, more kitten photos.