Caveat is a Bar for Nerds

Down a flight of black-painted stairs in an unremarkable building on the Lower East Side, Caveat is a bar-cum-edutainment space that aims to cater to the discerning nerd. The cavernous basement, decorated with ribbed dark wood and wallpaper printed with esoteric, vaguely scientific symbols, has an array of circular tables, gathered in clusters, as if at a cabaret. But what takes place on the broad stage is a nightly enticement of the intellect. A “Pregame Your Brain” happy hour offers the chance to learn about subjects like famous female scientists; the more musically inclined can take in an “improvised ‘hip-hopera’ ” in the style of “Hamilton,” by the group North Coast, which seeks to “quench the people’s thirst for historical raps.” At a recent event, the journalist Atossa Abrahamian described accompanying a Luxembourgian delegation to an asteroid-mining company’s headquarters and listening to a sales pitch on legal loopholes. At one point, her fellow-panelist Denton Ebel, a geologist with a focus on meteorites, asked if anyone in the audience could explain the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. So many hands shot up there were hardly any left to clasp cold beers.

From “Nightly Intellectual Enticements at Caveat,” by Talia Lavin for the New Yorker; Photo courtesy of Caveat (@caveatnyc) 

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