• Duff’s

  168 Marcy Ave., nr. Broadway, Williamsburg; 718-599-2092

  Brooklyn’s got countless new bars of the reclaimed-farmhouse-wood and late-nineteenth-century-detail variety. But it only has one Duff’s, which nails the dive-bar triumvirate of heavy metal, horror movies, and $1 PBRs (till 9 p.m.; after that, they’re $3). Jimmy Duff relocated his lair, formerly stuffed into an old check-cashing joint near the waterfront, last winter to a sooty South Williamsburg tenement, recognizable only by the flickering neon sign advertising THRILLS!! Consider that an understatement. Inside is a skinny, booth-filled dive with a jukebox blaring Pantera, TVs playing footage of Dancin’ Dominick—the bar’s deceased septuagenarian mascot—and, occasionally, a bar top splattered with fake blood (the result of Slayer’s recent record-release party).

From the 2010 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine