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Two huge horizontal banners is all that cues Pratt students, housing project-dwellers and adventurous rockers down a deserted side street, where they find better-than-average bar grub and one of Brooklyn's most underrated performance venues. Past the space-age plastic bubble window in this Soviet-themed bar's entryway, a hodgepodge of Art Deco-meets-Ikea hanging fixtures cast a dim red glow over the loft-like ground-level lounge. Clips ranging from Fellini to Popeye play silently on a bare brick wall. And a tome on Stalin from the bookshelf may have you feeling all glasnost in your modern-era, low-lying leather couch, but American bar staples, like PBRs, remind you what country you're really in. Downstairs, pass through a corrugated metal doorway into the expansive, prom-worthy basement where wall-to-wall murals of proletariats and Lenin himself salute touring indie rockers, reggae bands and local DJs who glisten beneath a great sound system. It's easy to imagine Laika from Sputnik II sitting in the clusters of podular, plastic-backed chairs, or the Jetsons grabbing a drink at the cinder-block bar. — Elizabeth Cline