Tel Aviv, Israel — Once they did a speakeasy on Gossip Girl, the trend was doomed in New York. The Medusa stare of Blake Lively’s horrific excuse for acting has the power to play something out immediately, despite how good of an idea it may have been. Luckily for us, the speakeasy trend has come to the White City and is protected from the reach of subpar CW television soap operas. One such Tel Aviv establishment, safe from the death-touch of Gossip Girl, is called Bartleby.
Now, you may ask how a bar can be a speakeasy in Tel Aviv where the outside of every drinkery comes equipped with a stumpy Russian bouncer to check your baggage. These cyrillic hobbits would kind of give away the secret nature of the speakeasy, right? Well, to this I contend that I’ve seen stumpy Russian bouncery-looking folk all over the city, and sometimes when I unzip my purse for them to check it for suspicious contents, they just look confused because they’re not actually bouncers. So with the amount of stumpy Russians, I think that the one outside the Bartleby alley on Dizengoff near Arlozorov could simply be thought by those less in the know hangin’ around, being stumpy.
Bartleby is really the jackpot of bars for those lucky enough to know about it. There aren’t a ton of places in Tel Aviv that specialize in cocktails, but Bartleby has a solid offering that even includes my father’s favorite old man drink, the Rusty Nail. There aren’t a ton of places in Tel Aviv that consistently play great music, but my ears don’t burn in Bartleby’s; they positively dance. There aren’t a ton of places in Tel Aviv that give out wasabi peas and other Whole Foods-esque fare as bar snacks, but Bartleby is apparently altruistically watching out for your trans fat intake — so nice of the! There ARE a ton of places in Tel Aviv with cool light fixtures, but I’m convinced Bartleby’s electric rods are especially awesome.
The cherry on top, though, is that Bartleby is one of the select few Tel Aviv bars that actually offers happy hour. For those of us who can’t end a work day without increasing significantly our BAC, there are sadly not enough options in the White City to do so by saving a pretty penny/shekel. At Bartleby’s: two for one beers until 9:30. Brings a tear to my eyes, God bless ‘em.
So there you have it: Bartleby’s with its little hat on the R secretly has it all. Like the great poet of our time Christopher George Latore “Biggie Smalls” Wallace once said, if ya don’t know, now ya know.
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