But many of the customers were Japanese punks or art kids-as were most of the servers-and on occasion when it grew late you’d notice men there in what I’ll call transactional arrangements. In the mid-1990s, I’d go there on a date, or a would-be date, or with hacker friends who wanted to discreetly talk about how technology could make the world a better place (spoiler: it didn’t) or about the dystopian undercarriage of the dot-com era (spoiler: there was one).
#NYC HACKER BAR PROFESSIONAL#
Sake Bar Decibel, as it’s officially known, was a last stand of sorts before the East Village went the way of Whole Foods-and just as important, it was the place where many of the city’s professional eaters and drinkers learned about sake. But it was far more than that, at least to a generation of thirsty and often disillusioned New Yorkers. Inside, you would supplicate before a thin rope and eventually, hopefully, be ushered to a seat in a small back room with dim light, a few booths, a low bar with a maneki-neko (the ubiquitous beckoning cat) statue behind it, a tatami screen or two and graffiti on every wall.ĭecibel, which quietly celebrated its 25th birthday last year, proclaimed itself to be New York’s first sake bar. But the path was always the same: Walk down East 9th Street, find the “ON AIR” sign glowing above a flight of stairs, descend and ring the buzzer next to an otherwise unmarked, locked door.Įventually, someone would open it with a wary look, not because the place wanted to keep a low profile-often there was a line up the stairs-but because back then the East Village went bad pretty quickly east of 3rd Avenue. In those days, the bar didn’t even open until 8 p.m.
Almost always, we’d come late and stay late.
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