Anyone who has ever worked in a bar will tell you that Thanksgiving is one of their busiest days of the year- what they don't tell you is that the day, like Black Friday, also begins the Christmas drinking. We thought that there was no better place to start drowning the sorrows that sing Christmas carols than at a bar so festooned with tinsel and lights, it actually makes us wonder if they are hiding elves. From the windows filled with Nutcrackers and angels posed in from of domestic beer signs, to the tiny Christmas trees on every table and the tinsel hanging off every ceiling fan there isn't an inch of the place that doesn't look like the holiday exploded all over it. Our favorite table had a mini-pointsettia jockeying for space with a selection of Quikdraw lottery forms, right under the Budweiser digital clock.

Ordering, we stared at the giant Santa Claus on a shelf above the bar that waved every minute- one wave to us, one wave back, closer to another beer sign- and our change, much more than we expected. Well drinks were $4 and a Brooklyn lager $4.25, with no mention of a happy hour. The games on the four televisions were loud and the regulars were serious about them but there were still plenty of tables open, a pool table, a shooting game in the back and pretty up to date jukebox (we heard almost the entirety of the newish White Stripes album while we there). Past the pool table, the bathrooms marked "Turkeys" and "Turkettes" repectively are pure dive bar, not smell per se but tiny and in dire need of some cleaning and something to cover the bare bulb on the ceiling. It may be cheap to get drunk at the Turkey's Nest but there's something about the rough edges that remind you that that feeling won't last through to January.

Turkey's Nest
94 Bedford Street at North 12th Street
(718) 384-9774