Saturday, March 8, 2008
Harviestoun Ola Dubh is here.
We've got some exciting new beers here, the first of which is our first-ever import, which we've chosen for damn good reasons. Harviestoun is a great Scottish brewery that just collaborated with Highland Park, a great Scottish distillery, to create a beer called Ola Dubh. They took Harviestoun's award-winning Old Engine Oil, a rich, dark 8% ABV beer, and aged it in 16-year-old malt whisky casks. It's the first ale to be aged in casks from a named distillery, and with traceable casks and numbered bottles, the first with genuine provenance. Retaining the appearance of used motor oil, from which the beer gets its name, it's deep dark brown, dense, and oily, with burnt and bitter notes and fragrant smoke. It was launched in the US in February 2008. It'll set you back $14 for 11.2 ounces due to its rarity, but it is worth it.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Poetry reading a week from today!
Chin Music: The Pacific Standard Poetry Reading Series
Featuring Monica Ferrell, Cathy Park Hong, and Brian Carey Chung
Thursday, March 13th @ 8:00PM
Pacific Standard Bar
82 Fourth Avenue
Brooklyn, NY
http://www.pacificstandardbrooklyn.com
Please join us for Chin Music, Brooklyn's new reading series at
Pacific Standard bar in Park Slope. Established and rising poets and
writers from near and far are featured during each of our seasons. Our
March 13th reading will feature three great writers: Monica Ferrell,
Cathy Park Hong, and Brian Carey Chung. Future readers this season
include Brenda Shaughnessy, Kathleen Graber, Craig Morgan Teicher,
Reif Larsen, Meehan Crist, Richard Levine, and Evan Eisman. Series
curated by Colin Cheney.
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 Writers:
Monica Ferrell's poems have appeared in The New York Review of Books,
Fence, Paris Review, Tin House, and other magazines. A former
"Discovery"/The Nation winner and Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford
University, she is the author of a novel, THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS YES ,
forthcoming from Random House in May 2008; her first poetry
collection, BEASTS FOR THE CHASE, was selected by Jane Hirschfield to
win the 2007 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, and will be published
by Sarabande Books in October. She lives in Brooklyn.
Cathy Park Hong's first book, TRANSLATING MO'UM, was published in 2002
by Hanging Loose Press. Her second collection, DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION,
was chosen for the Barnard Women Poets Prize and was published in 2007
by WW Norton. Hong is also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Village Voice
Fellowship for Minority Reporters. Her poems have been published in
American Letters & Commentary, Denver Quarterly, Verse, Chain,
Jubilat, and other journals, and she has reported for the Village
Voice, The Guardian, and Salon. She now lives in Brooklyn and teaches
at Sarah Lawrence College.
Brian Carey Chung, a choreographer and poet, is currently an MFA
student and adjunct professor in creative writing at New York
University. He is a member of Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and
has been published in Open City, Spoon River Poetry Review, Fourteen
Hills, Modern Words, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian where he was a
winner of its 13th annual competition. He performed as principle
dancer and soloist in the companies of internationally acclaimed
choreographers Karole Armitage, Alonzo King, and Dwight Rhoden. He has
taught master classes and guest lectured on dance at New York
University, University of Arizona, Stanford University, and University
of Hawaii. As a choreographer, Brian has created ballets for the Santa
Barbara Ballet, Cedar Lake Ensemble II, and Luna Negra Dance Theatre.
This summer, Brian will be the assistant choreographer to Karole
Armitage in the Public Theatre's production of HAIR.
--
Directions:
Pacific Standard is located at 82 Fourth Avenue in Park Slope,
Brooklyn, between St. Marks and Bergen Streets. It's a short walk from
a dizzying array of subway and commuter rail lines at the
Atlantic/Pacific station, namely, the 2, 3, 4, 5, D, N, Q, and R, as
well as the Long Island Railroad. New York subway map. After you exit
the Atlantic/Pacific station, just walk four blocks south on Fourth
Avenue to get to our bar. We're not too much longer a walk from the F
and G stop at Bergen Street, and are also close to the B61, B63, and
B65 bus lines.
Featuring Monica Ferrell, Cathy Park Hong, and Brian Carey Chung
Thursday, March 13th @ 8:00PM
Pacific Standard Bar
82 Fourth Avenue
Brooklyn, NY
http://www.pacificstandardbrooklyn.com
Please join us for Chin Music, Brooklyn's new reading series at
Pacific Standard bar in Park Slope. Established and rising poets and
writers from near and far are featured during each of our seasons. Our
March 13th reading will feature three great writers: Monica Ferrell,
Cathy Park Hong, and Brian Carey Chung. Future readers this season
include Brenda Shaughnessy, Kathleen Graber, Craig Morgan Teicher,
Reif Larsen, Meehan Crist, Richard Levine, and Evan Eisman. Series
curated by Colin Cheney.
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 Writers:
Monica Ferrell's poems have appeared in The New York Review of Books,
Fence, Paris Review, Tin House, and other magazines. A former
"Discovery"/The Nation winner and Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford
University, she is the author of a novel, THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS YES ,
forthcoming from Random House in May 2008; her first poetry
collection, BEASTS FOR THE CHASE, was selected by Jane Hirschfield to
win the 2007 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, and will be published
by Sarabande Books in October. She lives in Brooklyn.
Cathy Park Hong's first book, TRANSLATING MO'UM, was published in 2002
by Hanging Loose Press. Her second collection, DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION,
was chosen for the Barnard Women Poets Prize and was published in 2007
by WW Norton. Hong is also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Village Voice
Fellowship for Minority Reporters. Her poems have been published in
American Letters & Commentary, Denver Quarterly, Verse, Chain,
Jubilat, and other journals, and she has reported for the Village
Voice, The Guardian, and Salon. She now lives in Brooklyn and teaches
at Sarah Lawrence College.
Brian Carey Chung, a choreographer and poet, is currently an MFA
student and adjunct professor in creative writing at New York
University. He is a member of Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and
has been published in Open City, Spoon River Poetry Review, Fourteen
Hills, Modern Words, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian where he was a
winner of its 13th annual competition. He performed as principle
dancer and soloist in the companies of internationally acclaimed
choreographers Karole Armitage, Alonzo King, and Dwight Rhoden. He has
taught master classes and guest lectured on dance at New York
University, University of Arizona, Stanford University, and University
of Hawaii. As a choreographer, Brian has created ballets for the Santa
Barbara Ballet, Cedar Lake Ensemble II, and Luna Negra Dance Theatre.
This summer, Brian will be the assistant choreographer to Karole
Armitage in the Public Theatre's production of HAIR.
--
Directions:
Pacific Standard is located at 82 Fourth Avenue in Park Slope,
Brooklyn, between St. Marks and Bergen Streets. It's a short walk from
a dizzying array of subway and commuter rail lines at the
Atlantic/Pacific station, namely, the 2, 3, 4, 5, D, N, Q, and R, as
well as the Long Island Railroad. New York subway map. After you exit
the Atlantic/Pacific station, just walk four blocks south on Fourth
Avenue to get to our bar. We're not too much longer a walk from the F
and G stop at Bergen Street, and are also close to the B61, B63, and
B65 bus lines.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
A note on beer prices.
You may have noticed that our beer prices are drifting towards $6 recently. Though I don't get out as much as I used to, I bet other bars are also raising beer prices. This price ascent isn't due to sheer bar owner money-grubbing; it actually has a complicated backstory. I wanted to give a brief economic-historical explanation as to what's going on.
Several years ago, a hop surplus drove down hop prices and left many hops unsold, hitting growers hard and causing them to reduce their hop acreage in order to use the land for other purposes. But the microbrew industry kept expanding rapidly, and beers that packed in massive amounts of hops were the most successful. Nearly every microbrewery began competing to out-hop each other to win the hearts of hopheads. The reduced US hop acreage couldn't keep up. Hop prices soared, doubling, tripling, and so on. It's now so bad that many brewers simply can't get the hops they want. Hop growers are maxed out just honoring their existing contracts; they can't even sell to new microbreweries. So you can imagine how much the breweries that are actually winning the fierce competition for hops are paying.
Not about to take a fiscal soaking, most brewers have recently decided to raise keg prices. Distributors (the middlemen between breweries and bars), no less desirous of eating extra unit cost, have raised their prices in turn. So bars like ours are now paying much higher keg prices. The end result is that, while we'd like to keep most of our beers at $5, the profit margins just don't work any more. Welcome, consumers, to the $6 beer. At least it's not as bad as the gas situation.
The good news is that US hop growers are madly increasing acreage again. In a couple years, it's very likely that hop prices will drop significantly. At that point, it's up to the brewers and distributors to drop their keg prices; if they do, I think bars will happily follow suit and drop pint prices, hoping to make beer more affordable to their customers. For our part, we promise we will. Hopefully your newfound knowledge of hop scarcity will encourage you to savor every precious hop as you drink your beer in the meantime. Ask us if you have any questions.
Several years ago, a hop surplus drove down hop prices and left many hops unsold, hitting growers hard and causing them to reduce their hop acreage in order to use the land for other purposes. But the microbrew industry kept expanding rapidly, and beers that packed in massive amounts of hops were the most successful. Nearly every microbrewery began competing to out-hop each other to win the hearts of hopheads. The reduced US hop acreage couldn't keep up. Hop prices soared, doubling, tripling, and so on. It's now so bad that many brewers simply can't get the hops they want. Hop growers are maxed out just honoring their existing contracts; they can't even sell to new microbreweries. So you can imagine how much the breweries that are actually winning the fierce competition for hops are paying.
Not about to take a fiscal soaking, most brewers have recently decided to raise keg prices. Distributors (the middlemen between breweries and bars), no less desirous of eating extra unit cost, have raised their prices in turn. So bars like ours are now paying much higher keg prices. The end result is that, while we'd like to keep most of our beers at $5, the profit margins just don't work any more. Welcome, consumers, to the $6 beer. At least it's not as bad as the gas situation.
The good news is that US hop growers are madly increasing acreage again. In a couple years, it's very likely that hop prices will drop significantly. At that point, it's up to the brewers and distributors to drop their keg prices; if they do, I think bars will happily follow suit and drop pint prices, hoping to make beer more affordable to their customers. For our part, we promise we will. Hopefully your newfound knowledge of hop scarcity will encourage you to savor every precious hop as you drink your beer in the meantime. Ask us if you have any questions.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Awesome reading on March 25.
The Pacific Standard Fiction Series: Locals Night
featuring Colson Whitehead and Christopher Sorrentino
Tuesday, March 25th, 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!
Colson Whitehead is the author, most recently, of APEX HIDES THE HURT - "a brilliant, witty, and subtle novel, written in a most engaging style, with tremendous aptness of language and command of plot." (The New York Times Book Review). His previous novels, JOHN HENRY DAYS and THE INTUITIONIST, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Hemingway Award, respectively. Whitehead's nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Granta, Harper's and Salon, and in the essay collection THE COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK. He has been the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Whiting Award. He lives in Brooklyn, and will be reading here from his next book.
Whitehead is making a strong case for a new name of his own: that of the best of the new generation of American novelists." - The Boston Globe
Christopher Sorrentino's second novel, TRANCE, concerning would-be revolutionaries in the early 1970s, was a finalist for the National Book Award. "This sprawling work is so ambitious and irreverent that it doesn't fit easily into any genre...full of descriptions sublime in their precision," wrote The Los Angeles Times, which named it one of 2005's best novels. Sorrentino's first book, SOUND ON SOUND, established him as a "funny, perceptive, and dead-on" novelist (Publisher's Weekly), and a writer of formidable ambition. Sorrentino is also the author of collaborations with the novelist Jonathan Lethem and the artist Derek Boshier. He lives in Brooklyn.
"[Sorrentino] remains a virtuoso...an insightful, sensitive writer who makes you believe you're seeing what he's describing." - Harvey Pekar, The Baltimore Sun
Host Garth Risk Hallberg is the author of A FIELD GUIDE TO THE NORTH AMERICAN FAMILY, a PRINT Magazine Editor's Choice. 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.
featuring Colson Whitehead and Christopher Sorrentino
Tuesday, March 25th, 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!
Colson Whitehead is the author, most recently, of APEX HIDES THE HURT - "a brilliant, witty, and subtle novel, written in a most engaging style, with tremendous aptness of language and command of plot." (The New York Times Book Review). His previous novels, JOHN HENRY DAYS and THE INTUITIONIST, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Hemingway Award, respectively. Whitehead's nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Granta, Harper's and Salon, and in the essay collection THE COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK. He has been the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Whiting Award. He lives in Brooklyn, and will be reading here from his next book.
Whitehead is making a strong case for a new name of his own: that of the best of the new generation of American novelists." - The Boston Globe
Christopher Sorrentino's second novel, TRANCE, concerning would-be revolutionaries in the early 1970s, was a finalist for the National Book Award. "This sprawling work is so ambitious and irreverent that it doesn't fit easily into any genre...full of descriptions sublime in their precision," wrote The Los Angeles Times, which named it one of 2005's best novels. Sorrentino's first book, SOUND ON SOUND, established him as a "funny, perceptive, and dead-on" novelist (Publisher's Weekly), and a writer of formidable ambition. Sorrentino is also the author of collaborations with the novelist Jonathan Lethem and the artist Derek Boshier. He lives in Brooklyn.
"[Sorrentino] remains a virtuoso...an insightful, sensitive writer who makes you believe you're seeing what he's describing." - Harvey Pekar, The Baltimore Sun
Host Garth Risk Hallberg is the author of A FIELD GUIDE TO THE NORTH AMERICAN FAMILY, a PRINT Magazine Editor's Choice. 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.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
In a busy March, also keep in mind
that St. Patrick's Day is coming up on the 17th. We'll be having some fun here on the block, and all the usual enticements apply (drink specials, drinks, further drinks). Include us in your pub crawl on that call-in-sick-to-work tomorrow Monday.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Next Beer and Cheese Night: The Cheesening!
A lot of you have asked when our next beer and cheese night will be. We've tentatively scheduled it for March 18 at 8 pm. We're hoping to have a lot more cheese next time to avoid shortages, and to pre-proportion said cheese in order to avoid cheese-related greed incidents (CRGIs). More details on the cheese, etc., soon.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Six-Month Anniversary Party!
If March 5 rolls around without any acts of God, we'll have made it six months since we opened with, like, four beers on that auspicious September 5. We'll be celebrating at Pacific Standard with all kinds of crazy beer specials, a slide show documentary of our history, and general merriment. Triple frequent drinker yards for all! See you soon.
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