Pearl's Social & Billy Club

Gotta love this place. Reasonable drinks, awesome friendly bartenders, chill vibe, candles, photobooth, conversation!

Pearl's is my favorite bar in the neighborhood. board games, beer & a shot deal, tasty cocktails, good tunes, and the best bartenders in bushwick hands down. what's not to love?

When I moved to NY from Colorado in late-February, I knew no one and had nothing.  I was a usual 23-year-old; equal parts confusion and enthusiasm.  With the plastic I had in my pocket I caught an early evening train ride from Bed-Stuy to Bushwick so that I could get to an apartment showing.  After seeing the loft, I ventured through an unremarkable downpour and stopped into Pearl's Social and Billy Club with the intention of spending my final non-credit dollars on the last cold beer I would have for a while...

After creaking open the heavy dark wooden door affixed with a cold iron handle and hand-painted, gold signage circa 1947, I was transported to a place far calmer than the streets I was surviving.  Some vaguely familiar yet oddly spiritual scent wafted past me as I entered, begging me to wonder if I was in Bushwick, Boulder or Kathmandu.  Staying focused on the ideal corner bar seat where a patron can bounce between self-contained anonymity and selective engagement with others, my periphery was flooded with knickknacks, Paddywhacks and dog bones all quietly suggesting a far grander aesthetic.

Securing my prime seat, I was quickly greeted by a man named Rybo.  A prototypical Bushwickian, Rybo was covered in the type of tattoos that I imagine sailors, soldiers and senators would respect.  Each piece on his arms seemed totally disjointed from the rest while simultaneously lending to a larger, more mystic story.  This quality would manifest itself in many of the bartenders at Pearl's--a cast of characters with equally apropos Bushwickian names like Gordie, Myra, and Betsy rather than Brad, Megan or Katie.  While Rybo began to inquire about my alcoholic preference, my head jerked to his right.  Yanked like a freshly hooked cutthroat trout, my eyes had caught sight of a very important tap handle.  A black fist reached up above the beer lines clawing in its grasp a disk marked "Left Hand."  Up the tap's forearm was tattooed "Milk Stout Nitro."  To a Colorado boy far from home, lonely, and broke, this symbol of a brewery from back home, and the accompanying smooth, nitro-beer texture that would follow, was more than a cleverly designed tap handle-- it was a reinvigorating call from home that comforted me so that I could keep fighting for the greatness I sought in the city of roaches and riches.

Having a bit of time to reflect as I sipped my dark brew, I sat gazing through each carefully selected item throughout this bar that had become my quiet oasis.  Each newspaper clipping that adorns the back bar mirror suggests a news story that had lent hilarity to the patrons and barmen responsible for sloppily taping it there.  Each bit of miscellany scattered about the space seems to have been put there for a very special reason and seems to contain within it a clever story of a distant past.  It's as though an old woman, long surviving the rest of her generation, could walk you around this place for hours telling you how she had come to personally acquire the many toys, trinkets, and books around you.

Now, some months later, having moved to that loft I toured those many nights ago (due in no small part to Pearl's) I have come to know Pearl's and some of her folks a bit better. Betsy, one of two proprietors of Pearl's Social, is the type of woman who seems to have popped out of a dark comic book carefully crafted as a conundrum of kindness and punk-rocker. Betsy, along with the rest of the members of this non-exclusive social and billy club, are really what make Pearl's what it is.  They make this place more than a bar.  They make it a local.  They make it a daily destination for many a hard worker to decompress.  They make it a home.  And Bushwick is fortunate to have them.

Summary:  Without exaggeration, Pearl's is the best bar in all five boroughs. The beer is cold, the cocktails are unique, the prices are very reasonable, the vibe is perfect and the bartenders are what I've always wanted bartenders to be-- immediate friends. All my base are belong to Pearl's.