30 to Midnight

Bungalow Bar, Rockaway Beach

Sunday, 6pm

Bungalow Restaurant & Bar
327 Beach 92nd St., Far Rockaway, Queens

First night (for us) of the season (summer, we mean) at Bungalow Bar so we're reposting for 2010. A bit windy for the loverly deck, and the enclosed outdoor area was a bit smokey, but the main bar was hopping, and baseball was on the tv's. If that's not summer we don't know what is. We can't wait to get back to the beach.

From 2009 but still true: Sundays are the night to hit Bungalow, another Jamaica Bay-side restaurant and bar (think: music, drinking, sunned AA's). But if you're looking for a post-beach beverage, or want to watch a sunset, any afternoon-evening here will do, and you'll be among peers, wondering how to get yourself a bungalow in this New York City beach 'hood. Bungalow Bar, btw, is not just a summer location. In the winter, Sunday Funday (their name) is all about football. And $2 drafts. And music.

More about the Rockaways.

Adrienne's Pizza Bar, Stone Street

Thursday, 5:50pm

Adrienne's Pizza Bar
54 Stone Street, Manhattan

Open toMidnight, Adrienne's had one of the oldest crowds on Stone Street, which we attribute to the presence of food. Inside, at the bar, there were people actually born in the 60's. Ha. It's funny when we make it sound like that's old. There were some 50's-born too. Well, maybe two.

Pure Food and Wine, Gramercy

Friday, 6:15pm

Pure Food and Wine
54 Irving Place (17th St.), Manhattan

Raw Food sounds like a reality our pre-fire ancestors suffered, or a snack a schoolchild can make unsupervised, or a trend come and gone. Yet, as Pure Food and Wine demonstrates, Raw Food can be a gorgeous, delicious, fine dining experience, missing only the scent of cooking. Literally; nothing but the perfume of the woman at the next table in a restaurant without baking, blanching, braising, browning, burning. We're not suggesting you fill your stomach with difficult-to-digestibles on a regular basis (or that you can afford to, or that anyone physically close to you wants you to), but we do think your aged body deserves the treat (yes, it's not about deprivation here). And, most importantly, the scene is most always AA. 

Thunder Mountain Skeet Shooting, NJ Day Trip

Sunday, 12pm

Thunder Mountain Skeet Range
Ringwood State Park
Ringwood, NJ
973-962-6377

Sometimes friends go to Miami, leave their cars, and need help alternating sides of the street. To these people we say, thank you very much for enabling us to drive out to Ringwood State Park to enjoy the gorgeous weather and shoot some clay pigeons, an activity that is both Age Appropriate and Age InAppropriate. That said, we highly recommend it, especially to you womenfolk; the place is overflowing with menfolk.

You don't have to know a thing about guns or shells to play here. Yes we said play in a sentence about guns. The guys who Pull the skeets are incredibly friendly and helpful. We did, however, wonder if there should be more safety instructions. But we all survived unscathed. In fact, we had so much fun we're planning to return in a couple weeks. It's $9 for 25 skeets, plus shells, etc., which means $17 plus tip. You can bring your own shells if you have a clue what to get. Sara used a 20-gauge gun while the boys used a 12, and by "boys" we mean the four other people at the practice (read: beginner) area during her turn.

The final scores:
Greg - 23/25
The Dad - 19/25
Daniel - 14/25
Sara - 14/25
The Son - 11/25

Outdoor activities are Appropriate! If Sara didn't close her eyes for most of her first round, or use the wrong eye for most of her other rounds, she think she'd have shot 19/25. Seriously. Click on the picture to make it big to see the bright orange skeet flying by.

Palace Gate, Gilt, Midtown East

Tuesday, 7pm

Palace Gate, Palace Hotel
455 Madison Ave. (51st St.), Manhattan

Only open for a few more weeks (weather is in charge here), Palace Gate is the lovely courtyard of the Palace Hotel (the picture is looking west). We really enjoyed sitting out here with our peers (not an AI in sight) drinking generously-poured Aligoté and Durigutti Malbec, and we encourage you to run out and take a seat here before the season ends.

One caveat: Madison Avenue is undergoing some sort of nearby construction which means considerable banging as cars and buses hit-and -runover those large street-covering things. You know what we mean. Those square plates that aren't quite manhole-covers. Anyway, focus on your companion and your intimacy will mostly drown out the noise. Then get a pizza; food by the Gilt people; it's all quite good, and reasonably priced. Speaking of price, we may have found the City's most expensive glass of champagne: $75 for Dom. Are you surprised to hear we were tempted? But $16-17 wine means multiple glasses without regret.

Acela Club, Citi Field, Queens

Thursday, 7pm

Acela Club
Citi Field, Excelsior Level, Queens

Forget a barrel, fishing for AA men in Citi-Field’s Acela Club restaurant would be akin to dropping a hook into a shot glass. Made for dwarves’ hands.

On the Club level of CitiField (aka Excelsior Level,) sits a closed-off, by- reservation-only bar and restaurant, overlooking the field. We entered the spacious, glassed-in bar area and found it teeming with men. Of all shapes and sizes. It was like a Chinatown fish market, only filled with testosterone and polyester jersey material.

There were women too, about ten of them, three of whom worked there and three others seemed to have a wavering attachment to a small but rowdy group of Wall Street freshmen, who hadn’t yet scrubbed the frat boy from them.

But most everyone seemed to be in a good mood and that made for a pretty lively pregame hang. Fortunately, the food was plentiful and after we sampled beers from the varied menu, we were ready to watch the game. (The result? Never mind.)

-Tony G.

The Speakeasy at 1220 Fifth (Museum of City of NY), Upper East Side

Wednesday, 6-9pm (through August 26th)

The Speakeasy at 1220 Fifth
Museum of the City of New York
1220 Fifth Ave. (103rd St.), Manhattan

The Museum of the City of New York is running a speakeasy on their Fifth Avenue Terrace. They tell us there were more than 32,000 speakeasies in NYC from 1926-1932 (later part of Prohibition when Mayor Walker ran the town). These days, $12 gets you into the museum's first floor galleries, and buys you one drink ($10 for members). We love this part of the world, across from the top of the Park. Apologies for announcing speakeasy Wednesdays two weeks from closing, but that means there are still two weeks to go.

Note: If you want to visit the museum another time, it's open 10am-5pm every day but Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day, and non-holiday Mondays (which means it's closed, say, Monday August 24th, but open Labor Day).

Danny & Eddie's, Upper East Side

Sunday, 9pm

Danny & Eddie's
1643 1st Ave. (85th St.), Manhattan

"Are they selling that candy?" our 36-year-old friend asked, referring to the three Age InAppropriate blondes in the window. Their other half (three, dark, also AI) were faux-shooting an animated Buck when we entered the bar. There were AAs in the back, on the appealing little patio, but we stayed up front (with two borderline AAs) to admire the Little House on the Prairie decor (pictured). Bartender says the scene is generally 21-35, weekends skewing to the bottom end of that range. We're deeming Danny & Eddie's AI with the disclaimer that as with most of the City, Sundays and Mondays are AAllright.

Bar 30, Rockefeller Center, Midtown West

Wednesday, 12:30pm

30 Bar
30 Rockefeller Plaza, Manhattan

Clearly a site called 30 to Midnight needs to visit a venue called Bar 30, especially when we have an Age Appropriate (43!) birthday to celebrate, and we think it's fun to swim through humidity and tourists at lunchtime, and said venue is across the street from a dental appointment. That reminds us, a hygienist says the happy hour is Age Appropriate (beer $7, wine $8-16, cocktails $11). 

Bar 30 will be open in the space where the Tree goes until September 4th. Now they're serving sliders (hamburger $10, lobster $12, crab cake $16), salads and snacks from 11am to 10pm. Next week the offerings will be in the steak family (different restaurant doing food service). Either way, we like the plastic cutlery: long, 4-pronged forks. Okay, we love the cutlery (we hate short stubby sppon-like forks). 

B Bar, Greenwich Village

Sunday, 9:30pm

B Bar (aka Bowery Bar)
40 East 4th St. (Bowery), Manhattan

If it's impossible not to call this place Bowery Bar, you know you're Age Appropriate. It was raining when we took this wonderful photo and sat at the outside / back bar of the large patio, and everyone in sight was AA. We know that's a Sunday thing, but we also know B Bar well enough to say it's an Appropriate Before Midnight, and often after. You know you can sit outside in winter too, right? We like that. And food's decent here too, though we recommend coming for drinks.