The Best Dive Bars in Brooklyn
Three Jolly Pigeons
6802 Third Avenue, Bay Ridge
When we started drinking here 10 years ago, the crowd was mostly older—what you’d expect at a dive. Then we started bringing our friends, and they brought their friends, and soon enough the median age had dropped 10 or 20 years. Claiming to be one of the oldest bars in Brooklyn, this spot has changed a lot over the years—gone is the lunch counter, and the speakeasy-era buzzers in the back room (that’s what those are, right?) don’t work—especially after a fire in the 90s destroyed the front area. It was rebuilt to look much nicer than it appears in a tax photograph from the 80s, with large windows in front that let in streaks of dusty sunlight during mornings and afternoons, when they show the horse races on a back TV screen. Marvel at the extant details—the tin ceiling, the stained-glass atop the men’s room, the astounding woodwork—while enjoying some of the least expensive drinks in the borough as you sit at the bar with not a few stalwart elderly regulars.
