By Bret Liebendorfer
bret@nypress.com

By now, everyone has heard of Dan Freeman’s quest to visit 1,000 bars in a year, a feat he accomplished on Dec. 30 and documented throughout the year on his blog, Thousandbars.blogspot.com. We met on a surprisingly mild January afternoon. 

Like any good night of barhopping, the drinks tasted better, the bars got livelier and the stories got crazier the longer we were out. The extended drink-a-thon not only led us to the best bar in New York, but also uncovered the best alcohol-related stories of Dan’s life. 

O’Keefe’s

We met in Brooklyn Heights at O’Keefe’s, Bar #4 of 2005, and the one closest to where Dan lives. The Court Street establishment is an inviting and happening sportsbar that’s dependent on the various government offices from the surrounding Borough Hall area. Dressed in pinstripes with slightly loosened ties, the suits were calling it a day at 2 p.m. on a Friday. 

Most were alone, drinking to postpone Monday. Dan, however, was already thinking about next year. 

“For 2007, what I think I’m going to do is go to Amsterdam. I’m going to focus on a variety of beers as opposed to bars,” Dan said between sips of his Brooklyn Lager. “I would say I’m going to do a 1,000 different types of beers, but I don’t want to set that kind of goal because everything starts to get weary after a while.”

Dan had experienced this weariness during 2005’s challenge. He said there was never any doubt that we would finish his quest, but the adventure did eventually become tiring.

“It did feel like a chore—more so once it went on, but not because of the number of bars,” Dan said. “As more and more people started reading it, they started asking for more and more information. They wanted to see pictures. That got to the point where I would spend two or three hours each day just writing on my blog and posting the pictures.”

Brooklyn’s Best Bar 

Montero’s is the ideal dive bar. It has a rough appearance that only conceals its friendliness for a moment. 

The no-frills en-vironment is captivating, and history oozes from the walls. The bar’s nautical theme is a step back in time to when beer-thirsty sailors ruled Atlantic Avenue. 

The nearby Brooklyn waterfront, which is within sight but now blocked by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, has mostly gone condo, taking the sailors and longshoremen with it. Montero’s, however, remains devoted to their culture. 

Model ships crowd the dusty shelves, and framed sailing photos compete for space on the cluttered walls. Faded-orange life preserves dangle over your head at the bar. The tavern even once had a parrot that was grandfathered in after New York passed a law banning animals in bars. 

It was quite a departure from O’Keefe’s. While not the closest in proximity, it was a bar Dan had been to many times.

“I danced with either the strongest woman or the most feminine man in my life, right there,” he said, motioning to an uninhabited section of the bar between our seats and the forlorn pool table in the back. “This is one hell of a bar, and it will never go away.”

After returning from the bathroom, I was greeted with a Bud and a sipping glass of Ezra Brooks whiskey—perfect for this type of establishment. Montero’s lacks fancy drink specials, but the maritime atmosphere and relaxed prices were a welcome departure from Williamsburg’s hipster bars. 

Besides Dan and myself, there were only a young, female Hispanic bartender and an 84-year-old woman named Pilar, who was drinking wine and filled with wisdom. Her family had owned the bar most of the 20th century, and now it was her son’s turn. Despite the connection, it failed to earn her special treatment. 

“I never come down here if I can’t pay for my own drinks,” she said. Later, she would warn me to not become a drunkard like Dan. 

Montero’s had a calming effect on the four of us, despite the mindless babbling of “Family Feud” in the background. Dan began telling alcohol-related tales that far surpassed ones he encountered during his 1,000-bar quest. Standouts included the rum-drinking zombies of Belize and his numerous booze accounts of Vietnam. 

Rum-drinking Zombies 

He had seen them with his own eyes. They weren’t Hollywood’s version of rotten corpses that walk around with outstretched arms in a stupefied state, always in pursuit of their next human snack. 

In Belize, tough times called for forgotten natives to be turned into zombies and used as a source of slave labor. When they got a work break, they went to the bar. In the zombie world of Central America they preferred rum. 

“Zombies don’t care, they would work all day long. Afterwards, they all go to bars and they drink rum,” Dan said. “They don’t talk much.”

How did the natives become zombies? Was it a parasitic disease, voodoo or a medical experiment gone wrong? 

“They do it with an extract of a blowfish, the same blowfish that’s served as delicacy from Japanese restaurants, but if you don’t eat it correctly you can die from it,” Dan said. “You’re basically paralyzed and they bury you for three to six days. You can’t move. When you come out, you’re whacko. I got drunk with the zombies. They’re not flesh eating, they’re basically comatose.”

Vietnam Bootlegging

Frequenting 1,000 bars in a single year may make Dan an alcohol legend, but Dan began accumulating booze tales at a much earlier age when he volunteered for the Vietnam War. 

“I actually kind of liked Vietnam. I made a lot of money, and I had a lot of fun,” Dan said. “I used to be able to walk into Saigon and go into any bar, and nobody had any problems. It was actually kind of a friendly war. There was an off side.”

But hindsight is 20/20. Despite the easygoing nature of the Saigon bar scene, he remembers drinking with a fellow soldier. The soldier brought a rifle, but was distracted while being hustled in billiards by a young boy. 

“A Vietcong walks in with an AK-47, and our jeep is outside so they know we’re inside. I’m thinking we may die,” Dan said. The Vietcong let Dan finish his beer and his buddy, the game of billiards. Nobody died. It really was a different war. 

Another time Dan experienced Vietnamese hospitality in a bar was in 1968 when a hooker gave him credit the day before the Army paid him. 

“I’m sitting in this bar, having this discussion with a hooker, and we’re negotiating the price,” Dan said. “I don’t have the money and she says, ‘Don’t worry about it, you’ll be paid tomorrow.’ She knew the army’s schedule. That’s why we lost in Vietnam.”

Dan disparages today’s warfare. “I think Iraq is one of the biggest messes we’ve ever gotten into in my entire life, and on top of that, you can’t make any money. I bet you can’t drag your Jeep into Baghdad and buy booze. I made a fortune doing that.”

Dan was able to operate his Vietnam bootlegging side-business because he traveled around Vietnam fixing radio equipment. “Fixing radios and being able to drive—I would always pick up the booze. One of the first times I went anywhere, I thought, isn’t this strange, it looks like someone put a screwdriver in here, and they said, ‘Yeah, so we could get you up here.’”

From then on out, he taught the soldiers how to blow a power supply so they weren’t permanently destroying the equipment. 

The Finale: Drunk

on the Lower East Side

Drinking with a professional for so long left this lightweight in bad shape. The stories were as intoxicating as our perpetual supply of Buds and whiskey. The friends I had stood up earlier showed at Montero’s and were tugging at my sleeve to go to another bar. 

The rest of the night is sketchy. Our Romanian cab driver left us somewhere on the Lower East Side’s Essex Street. I think. For reasons still unclear, a cabbie behind us honked at me, so I kicked his car. He came out, I acted tough despite a broken thumb and left. 

Fueled by my machismo-induced second wind, I bought our group of four a round of drinks and it hit me: my camera equipment was missing. It had to be in the cab. Was the offending honker part of a scam? 

Frantically, I called 411, asking for Brooklyn cab companies. Several calls to the help hotline left me with the same few numbers scrawled on my arm from a borrowed bar pen. It was pointless—my camera was lost. 

Dejected, I threw my phone (my friend claims it dented an unmanned cop car). Disheartened and alone (because my friends were sick of my antics), I took a nap in a park. No, it was a library. Or maybe a church. 

My night of drinking with Dan had wrecked me. 

I had gone to three bars that night, which was slightly higher than the 2.7 daily average it would take to visit 1,000 in a year, but this pace would have killed me after a week. 

Dan was in much better shape—he had only broken his promise to take his wife out to dinner that night. 

But Dan turned out to be the hero. The following morning I got a call from him saying he had rescued my camera from Montero’s where I left it. He then asked if I wanted to meet at O’Keefe’s around noon, to exchange the camera. And get a drink.