It's almost time to choose our duly elected head of state, which means enduring four televised debates full of pregnant sighs, numbing platitudes, and weird chiming noises. Sure, Jim Lehrer's moderating this first one on Wednesday, but the real moderator is and always will be Booze. This year, stop dressing your cats up as the candidates and making a ship's horn sound through an empty bottle of Old Grand-Dad and get out of the house. Lamenting the futility of our modern political machine is always more fun with your fellow man, so here are a few debate party options.
92Y Tribeca is hosting a viewing party for the first debate on Wednesday night featuring Daily Show creator Lizz Winstead, MSNBC's Krystal Ball, Richard Wolff, MST3K's Frank Conniff and former Onion scribe Baratunde Thurston. Tickets are $10 and drink specials should keep things bipartisan.
The Pine Box Rock Shop at 12 Grattan Street in Bushwick is hosting a series of parties entitled Three Sheets to the West Wing. Hang out for each of the three presidential debates (and one VP debate) and break the tedium of political theater with raffles, "Boozy bingo," and drink specials. Atavistic misanthropes and indifferent imbibers BEWARE: "All funds raised from Three Sheets to the West Wing activities will benefit Obama for America." Hopefully one of those raffle prizes is a drone target of your choice.
Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO is hosting parties for each of the three presidential debates on screens the size of Mitt Romney's car garages (well, 14' x 12'). Each debate is free, and cocktails will be flowing. It's the ideal first date event for those "Digital Dumbo" drones who want something engaging and low-pressure right after a long day of selling anti-Romney buttons (YOU'RE WELCOME).
Drinking Liberally is taking over the Village Pour House on Wednesday with pre-debate drink specials and a food menu. Because this is co-hosted by DFNYC, you'll probably have to talk about how much better the dating scene is in NYC as opposed to Capitol Hill with a bunch of single people who "spent one crazy summer at CAP."
The New York Young Republican Club's monthly social is down the street at SideBAR this Wednesday, and although it's not officially a debate party, we're confident the flatscreens will be tuned in to the right channel at this "upscale sports bar." Whether you're genuinely interested in the Republican platform, or a strident contrarian, or just looking for that special someone to hunker down with before Obama sends us all to work in the arugula camps, we're pretty sure someone will pull out their Bass Pro Shops hat with the little metal clip on the bill and point out how utterly biased the whole debate is.
