Neighborhood #2: Beer Garden

Every bar with a patio claims to have a beer garden. But this one -- the 100 year-old Czech Bohemian Beer Hall in Astoria -- is no exaggeration. Serving mostly imported European beers and potent liquors (including the recently banned Czech absinthe...), the place is about as legitimately foreign as the rest of the neighborhood (read: very) and makes drinking outdoors seem like the only proper path to inebriation (as it should be). Nothing more complicated than trees, gravel, and picnic tables adorn the fortress-like space (its perimeter is made up of thick stone walls), and the only thing you can do to get yourself kicked out is to lie unconscious on a table (thank Don for that one). It goes without saying that this is one of my favorite places in Astoria.