The Impossible Quest to Find a Quiet Bar on the Weekend Somewhere Along 14th Street

Has this ever happened to you: It's Saturday night and you miraculously find a cool bar that's peaceful enough to drink and talk with friends. Until, after an hour, a band of drunk, raving Vikings invade the place and force you out? No? Well, I swear to Thor it has happened to me.

It was a typical Saturday night in the city. As usual, it seemed the entire populations of the five boroughs along with southern New Jersey, Connecticut and Long Island had made the sacred pilgrimage into the middle third of Manhattan to drink and/or dance themselves blind. Every bar, restaurant and crack in the wall overflowed with people.

My friends and I squeezed through the crowds along 14th street until we got to the emptier east end to meet my cousin and her friends at Otto's Shrunken Head Tiki Bar and Lounge on Avenue B. The bar itself goes a bit overboard with their design: painted mermaids on the windows, disgruntled wooden masks inside and straw hatches dangling over the counter. Nevertheless, it is a comfortable, relaxed setting where you can lay back in plush leather booths, order a cold beer or a drink that looks like lightning simmering in a glass, all while holding a solid group conversation. For nearly an hour, we did just that.

Then, without warning, a dozen supercharged men stormed the bar wearing viking helmets. In their first ten minutes, they swarmed around our table, cutting off all our breathing room and spilling a large mug of beer on my friend's dress shirt. We decided to leave the bar quickly after (though not before taking one of their viking hats as a souvenir). As we walked out the bar down 14th street, passersby asked us if the Viking Party had ended already. We sighed and trudged on.

It was just past midnight and we were unsure how much longer the night should go on. So we decided to stick to 14th street, working our way westward, to keep near all the subway lines. We wandered into the Crocodile Lounge but only made it far enough inside to smell the pizza in the back before getting fed up with the density of people there. Later we walked into the Beauty Bar, which combines my three least favorite things: crowds, techno music and beauty parlors.

The truth is there may not be a bar worth going to on that street that isn't in a state of chaos. If you want to succeed in this environment, you may have no choice but to act like a viking. Yet, as I found later, the best option may be to take a grand voyage to 13th street and go to Professor Thom's. The downstairs is your typical busy, loud sports bar. But the upstairs is a quiet lounge with comfortable chairs and a balcony to look out at the East Village. Buy your cheap drinks downstairs and chat in style upstairs in the lounge.

- Seth