The urge to drink at a place classier than it sounds is a natural one. Slurring your words too closely to somebody else's face as specks of saliva shower like sparks from a blowtorch to finally nestle in your beard as you simultaneously grow more gregarious and cynically introspective seems so much sophisticated when you're doing it in a place called a "yacht club" as opposed to just another "shitty bar." Thus the landlocked Gowanus Yacht Club in Carroll Gardens imbues a certain degree of elegance to the hot dog and PBR aficionados who gather there. Now, as FloFab mentions in the Times the East Village will get its own yacht not-yacht club, the East Village Yacht Club. This outfit promises to be genuinely, or at least earnestly, high class: a menu ripe with lobster, a raw bar and an answering machine message promising champagne. The club is housed in the restaurant deathtrap on 1st street where Chez Es Saada (and before after that the horribly named Ludo) recently shuttered, but instead of cheesy Middle Eastern decor and thick-necked asshats in vertically striped shirts, it'll be all done up with knots, maritime prints and thick-necked asshats in nautical stripes. Ahoy!

East Village Yacht Club