Cheap Shots @ Cheap Shots, FREE Shots If It’s Your B-Day

There is a bar in the East Village that diligently carries the torch that so many others have let extinguish, where  kinda transient, tatoooed patron types collect their paltry earnings and hand them over in exchange for cheap shots, or better yet, glory.

Cheap Shots is one of those simple, honestly named bars that turn’s a cold, St.Mark’s style rebellious adolescent shoulder to cyptic reorganizations of addresses, owners’ names, and stupid tangentially related translations of foreign words.  As the name states, they  serve cheap shots ($3), and other alcohol.  They have darts and hockey.  They also serve glory, dolled up and renamed a “Truck Bomb”, but glory nonetheless.  A bell is rung and ooglers stand to slack-jawed attention, like Nascar fans, awaiting the carnage as some Nebraskan line-backer (they don’t make em that big in Manhattan folks) tries to down half a pitcher of Guisness infused with a dropped shot of Jameson and Bailey’s.  Murmurmings of envy, awe, and congratulation provide a fraternal backdrop as the bartender reduces the world’s existing stock of polaroid film to capture the accomplishment before pasting it on the resident Wall of Fame.  Black Sabbath rocks in the background.

Throw in a few $7 pitchers on my behalf, a couple of trips to the graffiti’d bathroom, and a long conversation about Smashing Pumpkins and you can call it my Friday night.  For all the ladies out there, according to sources on site, the male bartender here is the hottest thing since the needle exchange program, with his shaved head adorned with a brow slung bandana, muscular tatooted arms, and mesh tank-top.   Don’t let any of the snark fool you: I had a blast.  And you can too!  And if it is your berfday, you drink for free. All night.

Cheap Shots is located @ 140 1st Avenue (nr. 9th)