Larry Lawrence Bar

LARRY LAWRENCE 295 GRAND ST. (BETW. ROEBLING & HAVEMEYER STS.), WILLIAMSBURG, 718-218-7866

ON THE TOPIC of the 20-foot window framing the elevated smoking patio, bartender Joel weighs in:

"When people get drunk, they start flashing us. Guys always drop their pants and moon the bar," he says, pouring my early-evening Guinness. "As a general rule we try to keep people from touching the glass. It's a big window and it's sure not fucking cheap."

I take a foamy glug and keep two months ago to myself. Later, my roommate Andrew and his female friend, Howard, were inhaling Camels on the smoking deck. Seven beers down, their legs were warm yogurt. To steady, they leaned ass against glass.

It took two smokes before the bartender's mortification motivated her. She climbed the steel steps, joined us beneath the stars, and said, "Excuse me, but the whole bar is laughing at your, umm… "

She pointed to their plumber butt-affected rumps. Reddening cheeks led to hiking pants and planting butts on benches, ceasing the drama that, for once, was all it was cracked up to be.

Larry Lawrence is located on a southern stretch of construction-thick Grand St., camouflaging a camouflaged locale. It is located in a concrete alcove, its only sign the red-stenciled lowercase word, "bar."

Once inside, stroll down the long, wood-hewn hallway and you enter a room that my companion called "a silly-ass rustic hunting loft."

This is not slander. Rather, it's homage to Larry Lawrence's liberal use of wood. The former bodega's walls combine exposed raw brick and wide, dark wood planks. The tables, big enough for a sixer of Bud, are tree. Slanted booths too. The entire effect is elevated woodshop.

On weekends, Larry Lawrence is bait for the coffee-straw-thin hipsterati. Tonight, the bar is filled with corduroy men and their intelligent women. Several leave to smoke on the "sun deck," as they call the smoking patio, leaving Dan and me at the bar.

Conversation shifts to mutual acquaintances.

"I was hanging out with your neighbor Margey last night," he says, speaking of the drug educator who lives several floors beneath me. "She's a 90-day friend. I can only handle hanging out with her every three months."

"Why?"

"Well, last night she told me, in specific order, that she has to become vegan, get a real job, move back to the Bay Area and adopt a Chinese girl."

"A Chinese girl?"

"A Chinese girl. She said, 'The universe told me this is the way to live, and now I have to follow.'"

"What'd you say?"

"So, that's the universe."

To that, we drank.