Two Boots Brooklyn is closing for good this weekend. I haven’t been there in quite a while. In fact, last time I went, it was in a desperate attempt to get Cara something resembling a decent shrimp poboy. Attempt failed miserably. (Sorry, Two Boots! But the pizza was always good.)
But almost all of my other memories of the place are golden. Back when I first moved to Brooklyn, when the South Slope was mostly barren of bars, my friend Jason and I would go there for a little touch of home. Many nights, it was Jason, his wife Beth and me. This was back before they had kids, so it was easier. And I was happy to be a third wheel.
We’d drink a few beers, listen to some live music and have a good time. This was also back under different management. And there were plenty a week night when Jason and I would stick around so long, the bar tender on duty would lock us in and keep giving us beer while he got stoned — which always seemed to surprise the Park Slope parents who saw Two Boots as simply a pizza place to take the kids for a few hours on the weekend. But the fact was, Two Boots was pretty rock n’ roll.
Other memories. I met Jason and Beth there after my very first internet date. “We thought you were on a date,” they said. “Yeah, well, it’s over,” I responded.
Met another woman there once. She was wearing a Coney Island shirt and I was all smoove and said, “I was just there today.” We danced — or tried to. She actually knew how to swing dance and kept laughing at me. We exchanged numbers and went on an actual date that involved dinner at a restaurant and a concert in Manhattan. Kim Deal, I believe. And that was it. I went home. She went home. Never saw her again. But it was one of those times where I thought, “Huh, so that’s how a person meets a person in New York.” Christ, there was a time I had the energy to go to a concert in Manhattan for a date? And Kim Deal? What?
During the blackout — I was living in Prospect Heights at this point — I wandered into Park Slope and landed there. It was packed, since it was basically the first place other people from Prospect Heights were running into. God, that hangover was brutal. Didn’t help that I was helping Jason and Beth move that next day.
The Halloween party in the picture above. I was a cowboy. That’s real facial hair. Jason was a, uh, Mardi Gras person I believe?
Lots of good country and rock-a-billy acts, which opened my eyes to a different sort of music scene in New York, hiding right there in Park Slope. Check out The Hackensaw Boys. Go on. Do yourself a favor.
Anyway, the place is closing as of Sunday. These things happen. So tonight, we’re going to head there for one last Abita, maybe even a Hurricane served in a glass boot.
KEN WHEATON 