PlanJam!From your screen to the scene

All of the action and excitement in Brooklyn’s Park Slope happens along its wide avenues, and as the neighborhood has developed, the action has moved steadily West towards the shore. Prospect Park forms a natural Eastern border to the neighborhood, and nearby Seventh and Eighth Avenues dominated the scene up until around the late 90’s. Since then, Fifth Avenue has undergone a radical transformation from one interminable, impoverished strip mall to the new center of the neighborhood. Trendy bistros replaced 99 cent stores, and dilapidated brownstones were whisked away, only to be replaced by construction zones, their wooden fences plastered with idealistic renderings of architecturally-confounding condominiums.

Some of the bars, stores and restaurants on Fifth Avenue predate the Avenue’s ‘hip’ status, however, and The Gate is one of them. It benefits from its prime location at the heart of Park Slope, across from Byrne Park, a popular park and playground surrounded by upscale restaurants and boutiques. Just like nearby Commonwealth, The Gate is a neighborhood joint through and through, a place where the regulars look more like your cool middle-aged college professor than your typical shrieking sorority girl (the staple resident of New York bars). If anything, the walk-in business generated by the street’s newfound popularity has turned off a lot of longtime loyal customers, who liked the place back when they could sit down with a Scotch and work on their novel in relative peace any night of the week, or strike up a lively debate with the bartender and the handful of other locals who haunted the place.

But whether they like it or not, The Gate has acquired a lot of new fans, and during the warmer months, when the bar’s large patio is swarming with after-work tipplers, mingling under clouds of cigarette smoke, the place becomes a great place to chat up cute locals. The bar has become a place for local residents to meet people who are actually interesting and literate and don’t harbor plans to start a hedge fund, and that is a rare thing indeed.

The bartenders at The Gate are great at what they do, and they’ll give you expert opinions on any of their fine selection of beers, both draft and bottle, as well as their carefully chosen Scotches, Whiskies, and whatever else your liver is craving. A constantly rotating selection of beers, focusing on smaller breweries (Rogue, Brooklyn, Blue Point) gives regular customers the chance to try things they might otherwise never taste on tap, if at all. The taps switch over to a new theme every few weeks, whether it’s beers made in the state of New York, Winter-themed brews, or beers that start with the letter A (OK, I made that last one up). Tech-savvy brewhounds can check The Gate’s blog to find out what’s on tap (http://thegatebrooklyn.blogspot.com/).