Nevertheless, the event was a rousing success: it turned out that the appetite for atavism was robust among the drinky class in New York.

“Just because we’re older doesn’t mean we don’t like the same things as when we were kids,” explained Tim Donnelly, who helped organize the event. “We can just be drunk while doing it now.”

He restated the problem, “If there were a Chuck E. Cheese for grownups, I would totally go.”

As it turns out, there is; in fact, there are many of them. In the past half-dozen years or so—at an increasing rate—bars with children’s games have been opening in New York, particularly in the garland of yuppie Brooklyn extending from Gowanus to Greenpoint.

At Red Hook’s Brooklyn Crab, there is mini-golf and cornhole, a beanbag-tossing game. In Clinton Hill, there is the Brooklyn Tap room, with foosball and Ping-Pong tables. In Williamsburg, one finds Barcade, with its vintage video-game machines; Full Circle, a skee-ball-themed bar, and Bushwick Country Club, which features a down-at-the-heels putt-putt course out back. In Manhattan there is Susan Sarandon’s SPiN, a boozy table-tennis club, and the West Village’s Fat Cat, the apotheosis of the phenomenon, which features a myriad of games, including Ping-Pong tables for “$5.50/per person/per hour (prorated .09/min) Sun-Thu.”

And they have done very well catering to the new alco-lescent crowds.

But whatever happened to just having a drink and a lively conversation? The idea that intelligent, interesting adults could gather over some glasses of one fortified thing or another and carry on an exchange of sentiment and ideas while getting somewhere between reasonably and blindingly drunk? While such things do still happen in some corners of the city, there is an annoying emergence of these establishments that not only cater to but encourage patrons who prefer to behave like their much younger selves.

“Everyone knows this—it’s not something I think—there’s a very prolonged youthfulness now. It really seems to last forever!” author and conversationalist Fran Lebowitz told The Observer recently. “Their idea of being sociable is not to sit around and talk. Their idea of being sociable is to sit around and play games. To me, this seems childish. Whenever people ask me to play a game, I say, ‘I don’t play games.’ And they say, ‘Why?’ And I say, ‘Because it’s a game ... There’s been a general disappearance of adulthood.”

To Ms. Lebowitz, who will be in conversation onstage with Frank Rich at Town Hall later this month, there is little in life more important than the verbal arts.

“Conversation to me is something that requires lot of time. I don’t want to sound conceited, but I think you’d have to look long and hard to find someone who has wasted more time than me. I mean, I’ve wasted decades of my life—mostly talking! Talking to me is something that fills my life.

“When our current and perhaps endless mayor, when he was only in his like 10th term, whenever he made that smoking law in bars—which actually really shocked me—I actually said to him—although if you were questioning him, he would not recall this—I said, ‘Do you want to know what sitting around in bars and restaurants talking and smoking is called? The history of art, that’s what it’s called.’”

Indeed. It’s hard to imagine many great ideas have been hatched over a microbrew and a foosball table.

Nevertheless, The Observer and a companion decided to take a tour of these atavistic drink shops on a recent Sunday evening, starting with Williamsburg’s Barcade, to witness this Never Never Land of liquor and perpetual children.

A cavernous, characterless room with 1980s arcade games lining the walls, Barcade is a dystopian version of a teen hangout, Blade Runner meets Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

After securing a drink, our companion left to survey the room. The Observer approached a 20-something couple visiting from London, Amy Chapman and Chris Curd. They were huddled around a Frogger machine, by their account faring “piss poor” at the game.

Ms. Chapman was particularly impressed by the concept of Barcade. “It makes me want to go home and start one myself. It’s such an amazing idea,” she enthused.

“It’s awesome,” Mr. Curd concurred.

Agree to disagree. But did they not have similar diversions in London?

“Not in bars. It’s mostly gambling machines,” responded Mr. Curd

“It’s mostly a thing for kids,” added Ms. Chapman.

Fancy that. We rejoined our companion at the bar. He informed us of his attempt at regaining the gaming prowess of his youth. “I just made it 30 seconds into Contra and just died. I just blew a dollar on Contra,” he said. “Fucking Contra.”

But what of the vibe, the boozy teenageness of the joint?

“There’s something very nonthreatening about this place,” the companion mused. “There’s no one attractive. It’s like, ‘Let’s just go and play some video games.’ I mean, I guess they’re just nerds ... Alright, I’m getting some change.”

In addition to being childish and silly, there was something decidedly unsexy about the superimposition of adolescent accoutrements into the context of a bar. It took away the potential, the edge and the libidinous quality that the best boozing joints give off.

When we reached him by phone, Jason Kosmas, co-owner of the swank bar Employees Only, went even further, pointing out that games of this sort, while ostensibly sociable activities, are actually kind of antisocial.

“You go out with your friends and you spend time with your friends,” he explained. “You know, it’s a wagon train. You go out with your friends and you sort of form a little fortress, and nobody else really comes in.”

As opposed to his establishment, which he said is structured around possibility. “Ultimately, in those places [like his own], people are going to get laid,” he explained. “The word ‘laid’ has different connotations for different people. It might be that they want a great drink, or they might want to see someone famous, or they might want to make a business connection. Something’s gonna happen to them that is out of their ordinary life. Or, most importantly, get laid.”

Imagine as part of this metaphor getting the day’s high score on Galaga. Doesn’t work, right?
Cocktail guru Jim Meehan found that his bar PDT had so much sexual charisma—and such drinkable concoctions—that he had to institute a “No PDA at PDT, hands on the table, tongues inside your mouth” point of etiquette.
“It’s bizarre to me,” he said of the gaming bars. “I work all the time, so going to a bar with my friends to catch up is actually a luxury. I would never go to a place to play lawn darts.”
From Barcade, The Observer and our companion ventured next to the Bushwick Country Club, whose mini-golf course the bartender humbly described as “six holes which you can put a ball into with a club.” It did, however, have a windmill made of entirely of PBR cans. (Go Bushwick!)

There were no golfers present, so we asked the bartender about the proliferation of games in bars.

He responded with consternation that his friends had signed him up for a cornhole league.
Had anyone ever gotten laid by playing in a cornhole league?

“Probably,” he said. “Every team has to have at least one girl on it. I’m sure that someone can get laid from cornhole. You end up with a lot of guys with their shirts off. But those same guys would probably have their shirts off anyway.”

We headed over to Full Circle, a bar so wedded to its skee-ball-centric identity that its name is the term for rolling an expert-level round of the “sport.”

The crowd, if that’s the word, was exclusively male, save the bartender.

(After sinking $10 into the skee-ball alley in about five minutes, we realized another incentive for bar owners to feature games.)

We encountered George McNeese, co-owner of the buzzy Bed-Stuy eatery Do or Dine. He comes to Full Circle about once a week and is even in a skee-ball league with his girlfriend.
He apprised us of the tyranny of small differences within the alco-lescent demimonde.

“If you go to Barcade, it’s going to be filled with people who are more or less looking for a bar scene. You know, it’s going to be filled with hipsters and all sorts of shit that I don’t want to deal with,” said Mr. McNeese, who was wearing oversize clear-framed glasses, a tote bag that looked like a Nintendo controller and a phone cord as a necklace. “It’s gonna be packed, and the drinks are gonna be overpriced. You know, I just want to have a couple beers and play some skee-ball.”

This last reminded us of something Jim Meehan had pointed out. “In a city like New York,” he said, “where there are so many bars and so many people, each bar can fill a specific niche, because they don’t have the collective responsibility. For instance, I just got back from Michigan—there were like two bars in town. If you’re one of two bars, there’s probably more pressure to appeal to a broad audience, whereas if there are like a million bars for 6 million people you can, and especially if you’re small, you can fill a specific niche and be successful.”
Unfortunately, he was right: there is clearly a market for bars catering to nostalgic activity-philes.

Of course, the infantilizing of the bar-going experience is lent a kind of dismaying symmetry by the recent contretemps at the Park Slope beer garden Greenwood Park, where among Yelp reviewers there has been considerable outcry not about grown-ups behaving like kids, but about them actually bringing kids.

“It’s not daycare it’s a BAR,” groused one.

“Too many kids, and I don’t mean 20-somethings, I mean actual children,” bitched another.
And a third noted, “Bars also don’t have proper entertainment for kids.” Erroneously, it turns out. You guessed it, Greenwood Park has games!

As Fran Lebowitz pointed out, “Any environment devolves to the youngest person in the room.” So, why not gather around the bocce courts, young and old alike, and collapse the distinction? In no time, one could look from child to adult, and from adult to child, and from child to adult again, and already it would be impossible to say which was which.
bgallagher@observer.com

This October, Soho nightlife is turning green. Jon Bakhshi, impresario of meatpacking district hot spots Home and Guest House, is set to open his third club: a new eco-friendly space called Greenhouse. Mr. Bakhshi, known as “Jon B.” along club row, envisions an environmentally friendly venue with guests dancing on flooring made from recyclable material. Gyrating ladies, with their blown-out hair and glittery tops, will shimmer under low-voltage lights. Guys, lounging on buttery couches made from recyclable material, will sip on organic alcohol mixed with fresh juices. In early designs, Mr. Bakhshi pictured two floors, with a gigantic waterfall and a ceiling bursting with live plants. (He’s since scaled back.) The toilets? They’d flush efficiently.

“People can’t wait for me to open,” said Mr. Bakhshi, 31, the promoter turned club owner who escorted the bridge-and-tunnel masses into the meatpacking district in the mid-’90s. “For me, I just want the perfect venue.”

During Fashion Week in Paris last fall, leggy supermodel duo Jessica Stam and Carmen Kass hosted a celebratory party for Greenhouse at swanky Parisian club Le Baron. “I’m not sure an eco-friendly nightclub is gonna fly,” Ms. Stam told a Women’s Wear Daily reporter at the party, “but it’s raising awareness.”

Nearly a year later, with gas prices soaring and the words “energy crisis” tumbling off even the most un-Gore-like lips, the whole project of greening up nightlife seems perfectly prescient. The typical club—with its blasting sound systems, sweat-cooling air-conditioners and lights blazing three nights a week—gobbles up 150 times more energy than a four-person family every year, according to Enviu, a Netherlands-based, environmental nonprofit group. In New York City, dance spots tend to be open five to six days a week, making their consumption that much higher. And consider the thousands of bottle-service remnants and beer cans to recycle, cocktail napkins to toss and thousands of toilets flushing the night’s debauchery away. We may never see the end of tacky string-tie tops and gold chains, but our clubs, at least, can get makeovers.

For some clubs and bars, greening up has been a gradual process. The Village Pourhouse on Third Avenue, a spot near the N.Y.U. dorms that attracts a frat-boy crowd, uses certified green cleaning supplies, proffers organic beers and vodka and uses recycled paper products. (The bar’s laundry is also done in-house to reduce carbon emissions.) Fort Greene’s Habana Outpost, a chill-out spot famous for its margaritas, has tables made from sawdust and recycled plastic, and a composting system. There’s also a solar-powered cell-phone charger to juice up iPhones and BlackBerrys. But for others, replacing the Clorox with Seventh Generation isn’t enough: People like Mr. Bakhshi want to start from scratch and get LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design ) certification, a kind of gold star of approval for environmentally friendly construction practices from the U.S. Green Building Council. With LEED certification, an owner can market his club as a hip, organic sanctuary for the environmentally conscious. (Paging Leo! Adrian! Cameron!)

And with some clubs donating part of their profits to green charities, clubbers can, literally and figuratively, dance to save the world.

SWEAT-POWERED NIGHTLIFE

But might it be possible for club owners to take eco-consciousness too far? At London nightspot Club Surya, which takes its name from the Hindu sun god, even partiers’ sweat helps power the place. The floor is designed to harness the energy of its dancing patrons, which is used to power the club. As partygoers bop around on the spring-loaded floor, it dips about 2 centimeters, which sends a flywheel spinning to capture the resulting kinetic energy (think of how spinning on a bicycle can light an attached bulb). Press materials for Club4Climate, the nonprofit launched by British real estate mogul Andrew Charalambous that runs the club, claim that the floor powers 60 percent of the place. The rest is supplemented by solar panels and wind power.

But that’s not all. The aforementioned sweat turns temperature-sensitive walls different colors, toilets flush with rainwater and bartenders serve aloe-vera-infused “bio-beer.” An idea we especially like: Bouncers offer free admission to clubgoers who traveled there by walking, bicycling or using public transportation.

And Club4Climate, which donates profits to the Friends of the Earth foundation, has an office in New York City. Organizers are currently scouting for new club sites.

Club4Climate representatives did not return several phone calls for comment (and an e-mail sent to an address published on their Web site bounced back). Their mascot, a bald-headed, pale man in a white suit called Dr. Earth (just throw a Persian cat on his lap and you’d have Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies), urges clubgoers in an online video to have a “spiritual experience” while dancing the night away. In Dr. Earth’s 10-point plan to being a “greener self,” he claims that “passion and hedonism is your ecologically friendly right. Do it. Don’t be frightened of it.”

But until we have our own Surya-like space, Galapagos Art Space should satisfy the most eco-conscious among us.

Galapagos, which first opened in 1995, has been in the process of relocating from North Sixth Street in Williamsburg to a 102-year-old, 10,000-square-foot former horse stable at 16 Main Street in Dumbo for the past year. In late 2005, Galapagos’ rent on North Sixth Street was raised by 30 percent, resulting in a $10,000 increase to their monthly costs. That, along with increasing electricity fees and maintenance problems, meant that Galapagos couldn’t afford to stay in the neighborhood it helped establish.

But the move offered an opportunity for club owner Robert Elmes to give his business an eco-makeover. The new warehouse-style space on Main Street includes a “hyper-efficient” air-conditioning system for hot summer nights. Instead of oil-powered heaters, hot water pumps through pipes in the walls to keep the dance floor warm in the winter. A 1,600-foot decorative “lake” is fed by a water well that Galapagos drilled for the new building. The toilets use less water than the average john, and there’s energy-efficient lighting, too (only 7.5 watts per square foot!). The new venue has been open sporadically this summer, showing films and hosting small events, but it should be fully operational by next Tuesday and open full time by September.

Mr. Elmes is currently seeking the much coveted LEED certification for the building.

“Certainly, we’re at a crisis with energy and climate,” said Mr. Elmes. “Our idea has to be to participate as much as we can in creating solutions. If we can lead by example, we will.”

Galapagos plans on holding tours to explain how they made the building more environmentally friendly.

Mr. Elmes explained that every detail of the construction has to be considered for LEED certification. The entire process, he said, makes entrepreneurs think more creatively, not only about their clubs, but about the institutions as cultural venues. “We’re not in the same kind of thinking model as a regular business,” he said. “If the artists can’t pick up their heels and lead, who can?”

Aaron Levinthal, a partner with environmentally friendly events production company GreeNow, said that when companies are thinking of getting eco-friendly, they should consider that other kind of green, too. “It’s an easy thing to market,” Mr. Levinthal explained. “You say your event is more green, it’s easier to get sponsors, and you can start getting tax breaks.” He said it’s also cheaper to use energy-efficient generators. “It’s almost stupid not to do it.”

GreeNow, which is only six months old, organizes recycling programs and powers outdoor events with generators that use 99 percent biodiesel. They even use biodiesel-fueled forklifts and trucks to transfer equipment. One prominent client is the city’s River-to-River concert series; GreeNow also powered the lights that lit up the Pope in Yonkers when he visited the city in the spring.

Mr. Levinthal, a technical director and producer of corporate events for 18 years, said Al Gore’s documentary on the climate crisis, An Inconvenient Truth, changed everything. “That stupid movie was such a baseball bat to the face to what is going on. My wife and I changed the way we lived when we were at home, and me and my business partners became much more eco-aware.”

WINDY CITY

Barcade, a Williamsburg bar lined wall-to-wall with old-school video game machines, looks like a monster of energy consumption, with its Rampage and Ms. Pac Man flashing all over the place. But at the bottom of the beer menu, patrons might see a curious note about the venue: The bar runs on 100 percent wind power. Owner Paul Kermizian said that customers’ first reaction is to look up into the skylights and search for some kind of wind turbine in the dingy ceiling.

“I have to explain to them that that’s not how we get it,” Mr. Kermizian said. Barcade purchases their electricity through ConEdison Solutions, a subsidiary of ConEd that offers “green” energy. So when a customer operates one of the 28 arcade games in the club, their Donkey Kong character is lit up with electricity coming from 20,213-foot-tall wind towers on Fenner Wind Farm in Madison County, N.Y.

Barcade also exclusively serves craft beer, made at independent breweries in the States, which usually run on wind power or have alternative energy sources.

“We use quite a bit more electricity than regular bars,” Mr. Kermizian explained. “We wanted to try to do something that lessened our impact, looking into alternative providers. It’s a little more expensive, but it evens out with the amount of goodwill we feel and good publicity that we get.”

Chuck Hunt, executive vice president for the New York Restaurant Association’s metropolitan chapters, said that the city’s clubs, bars and restaurants consider greener practices “one of the most proactive situations going on right now” in the industry, and added that the association plans on setting up a hot line and information program on how to be more environmentally aware owners.

But not all clubs have been keeping on top of more eco-friendly practices, said Mr. Hunt. Or if they are, “they aren’t bragging about it yet.”

Except for one.

“You’re talking about the world, and the water is melting and the temperature is changing,” said Mr. Bakhshi, the club owner who plans on opening Greenhouse. “This is something we can do to change things. I think that everybody in every business and in everybody’s lives are going to have to adapt to things like this. I think that’s going to be the way of life.”

Greenhouse has already held publicity parties at the Cannes Film Festival and Sundance, in addition to Paris Fashion Week. Mr. Bakhshi plans on throwing a huge opening bash in New York when the club opens in the fall, and to donate a portion of the proceeds to green charities. “The whole idea of giving back,” he said, “we’d like to really focus on that. We’re a green club.”

Mr. Bakhshi added that he’d like Al Gore to host the party. “I definitely have to reach out to him for sure.”

greagan@observer.com