Passing the Bar: The Minor Arcana

On a dark, vacant block of Washington Avenue in Prospect Heights, the deep red storefront of the month-old The Minor Arcana glows like something out of an Edward Hopper painting, a solitary spark of life in an otherwise empty universe. The first bar on the block (though there is at least one other slated to open), The Minor Arcana stands as the avant-garde of what will surely be the larger development of the area.

Inside, tattooed locals crowd around a bar inlaid with homemade dioramas set under Plexiglas. These strange little worlds, meant to be “conversation pieces,” reflect the greater bar. The walls are adorned, if sparsely, with antique carnival posters and some black-and-white striped fabric. By the door you’ll find a jukebox filled with everything from Marvin Gaye to The Ramones. It’s as if the bar is itself a box filled with all the things that are supposed to be in bars, glued in their proper places.

It’s an anachronistic place, reminiscent of the bars that populated less gentrified boroughs a decade ago. The owner, Jesse Levitt, plans to host burlesque dancing and DJ events, that, coupled with the bar’s nod to carnivals, will no doubt add to the feeling that one is drinking at the bottom of an oubliette in Williamsburg circa 2001.

With 12 beers on tap, none more adventurous than Guinness, and the standard selection of spirits, The Minor Arcana provides guests with what all bars are charged with providing their guests: alcohol. But in the age of the $16 cocktail, prices that never hit double digits make staying for a second, third or ninth drink an easily imaginable outcome.

Though it may not offer much in the way of décor—and I wouldn’t expect to see a classic cocktail list gracing the bar any time soon—The Minor Arcana may have what a lot of more polished bars lack: The feeling that when you sit down, you have been welcomed into a tight-knit (if dysfunctional) family. Within five minutes of finding a seat, I knew the names of the bartender and the people sitting on either side of me. All happily engaged my date and I in conversation for the remainder of our time there. The Minor Arcana is the kind of place where this isn’t forced or uncomfortable, where after an hour you’ll find that you’ve been talking to complete strangers about topics as widely varied as stealth bombers and Greco-Roman wrestling.

Per Levitt, The Minor Arcana—the numbered suits in a deck of tarot cards—are meant to provide insight to the Major arcana that represent major life themes. His bar, he hopes, will allow guests to do the same. I don’t know that I would travel far for the revelations I might find at The Minor Arcana, but I know that if I were in the neighborhood, I’d stop in for a drink, sit with the regulars, shoot the breeze and be quite happy about it.

>> The Minor Arcana

709 Washington Ave. (betw. St. Marks Ave. & Prospect Pl.), Brooklyn, 718-399-7722.