This blog post is coming at you live from the Brooklyn Bar in  Newark Airport’s Terminal C, where I sit awaiting a flight home to Rochester after  a weekend in New York City and Yankee Stadium.

It was most likely my final trip to the old Yankee Stadium, the greatest park of the greatest game. The least the Yanks could have done was put up a struggle against the mighty Tampa Bay _____ Rays. Alas, the Bombers did what they always do against the patsy team of the AL East: they took them for granted, swung the bat at half-speed, and generally sucked up a storm as we fans moaned and screamed from the himalayan precipice of the upper deck.

The beer at Yankee Stadium sucked as well, but that’s to be expected. I wasn’t gonna pay $9.50 for a Becks, so it was Miller Genuine Draft quaffed from 22-ounce paper cups.

As far as Manhattan beer bars go, a quick beeradvocate.com search found us a couple of gems. The Blind Tiger on Bleecker Street is everything I like in a beer bar: a great selection on both bottles and drafts, friendly, knowledgeable staff, and a complete lack of pretension. My standout pick: The Chelsea Rye IPA, which doesn’t get a very good rating on Beer Advocate, but has an appealing earthiness that I thought served as a fine foil for the beer’s  hop bitterness.

The next night found us at Zum Schneider, a near-perfect replica of a Munich Bierstube, but with fewer Americans. I know I’m going to like a place when I walk in and people are drinking Mass glasses of Hofbrau. The food was fantastic too, some of the most authentic Bavarian food  I’ve seen outside of Bavaria. Apparently, NYC’s German expat population agrees; they were clustered around us sipping prissily away at their little tiny glasses of mineral water the whole time.

All the more reason to quaff a mug of beer the size of your head.

-Mark