We launched our bar-hopping escapade during a thunderstorm.
Sheets of lashing rain shrouded the southbound lanes of Route 4.
“This is going to work,” I said tomy friend and former colleague, Karen Ziner, sitting in my pickup cab.
“This is going to work,” she reassuringly repeated.
Privately I worried the truck wipers would whip off.
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When your editor orders you to get on that summer bar story – and offers the sweetener: “you can expense it” – well, seize the day.
In truth my editor faced no trouble signing off on the expense voucher because no alcohol would be consumed on this assignment. That was the ... twist. The plan: With the popularity of non-alcoholic beer growing, where in Rhode Island could someone go in summer and enjoy such a beverage while sitting literally over the water.
Not by the water’s edge; there are plenty of such places. We wanted to be over the water. And not in Newport, where sitting on a wharf stool is just, well, old news.
We came up with four great spots. There are others, as well as some private haunts where a member can get you in as a guest. For instance, the Elks Club on Bristol Harbor and the private Squantum Association,in Riverside, both offer chances to blow the head off your beer and into the drink.
Our first stop: The Ocean Mist
The venerable beach bar and music venue clings like a wood-shingled barnacle to the eroding shoreline along Matunuck Beach Road in South Kingstown.
On a good high tide, its deck of high tables and chairs hangs over the waves rattling over the beach pebbles.
“There’s no other place that I know off where the actual Atlantic Ocean is splashing under the deck,” says operations manager Patrick Mullen.
The Mist, which serves brunch until 2 p.m. seven days a week, attracts neighborhood grandmothers to college kids. And big ocean storms always bring sightseers, says Mullen.
“We call them Lookie-Lous. Any time we get a storm they come down and look at the ocean doing its thing from the deck.”
Years ago, during a hurricane, one surf fisherman famously stood on the deck and launched alure. And the beach had more sand in front of the bar then.
The Mist also routinely attracts visitors who have ventured to the legendary pub and are adamant about experiencing the deck despite the weather.
“Some people make it very clear they want to sit on the deck and then we watch as some woman opens her menu and it goes flying over the side,” says Mullen.
On this soggy day, the lunchtime patrons ranged from suit clad to blue collar. The Mist offered two staple beers of the non-alcoholic movement: green bottled Heineken 0 and Guiness Stout 0.0 which comes in special blue and black can and pours as creamy as the real thing.
But the idea of enjoying a pint out on the soaked deck seemed foolish. So, after lingering for a time out there beneath an overhang, we packed up, zipped up, and trekked toward my pickup.
Karen had her head bowed so low against the wind and rain she ended up knocking on the locked passenger door of the wrong pickup. I turned back when I heard her shouting: “Mooney, let me in!”
Next on the list: Blu on the Water, East Greenwich
As we first drove down into South County, Karen and I had reminisced about past story assignments we'd had as Journal writers.
Karen recalled her visit to Federal Hill for a mob boss’s funeral and behind the prison walls to interview a death-row serial killer.Then there was that feature story on the guy who mastered the felonious art of the perfect slot machine slug.
But at the Blu, a more upscale restaurant with a dress code, our conversation turned to that second most popular topic of ink-stained wretches: free food.
I had let it slip that this trip was being expensed. Karen chuckled as she searched for lobster rolls on the menu.
The Blu boasts of having Rhode Island’s largest waterfront deck, built over the shoreline of Greenwich Bay. Here, little things falling through the cracks are nothing to scoff at.
Like credit cards.
“My sister works here, too, and during one of her first servings she dropped a customer’s card through the [deck] cracks,” said our server, 22-year-old Sara Steinkamp. “She said, 'What am I supposed to do?’ And I said, you have to tell them!’”
It was still raining so Sara had sat us as close to the famed deck without getting wet.
More customers are asking for non-alcoholic drinks, said Sara. But while the Blu has a nice selection of craft beers on its menu, it lists only one non-alcoholic beer, Samuel Adams’ Just the Haze. We both ordered one – with a glass, of course. Sailboats bobbed in Greenwich Cove beyond the glasses.
Sara said the Blu has different atmospheres depending on when and where patrons sit. The restaurant can be quiet during the day as visitors enjoy their fish tacos with the sights and sounds of the marina literally feet away. The seating under the adjacent tent in summer can get loud with nightly music.
Then Sara touched on an emerging theme we would hear along our waterfront visits:
“We had a girlunder the tent who dropped her phone in the water once,” Sara said. “They had a friend who was a scuba diver and the next day he came down and found her phone!”
It wasn’t known before press time the retrieved phone’s condition, but we could guess.
Next: The Hot Club, Providence
Speaking of things going over the side.
C.J. Kelly, a bartender for 22 years at The Hot Club, in downtown Providence, can tell you about the clan of Scottish guys whojumped off the deck here once in an apparent race to the Hurricane Barrier.
“I can’t tell you how many; it was a pretty busy night,” she said. We looked out at the looming Hurricane Barrier and noticed the sun finally burned through the clouds. “It’s not like an everyday occurrence. I personally haven’t seen it since before COVID but, yeah, it happens.”
It’s not that swimming in the Providence River is that appealing but the Hot Club is.
For 40 years now the riverfront bar, with its industrial-strength view of a power plant across the way, has drawn young professionals, lawyers from nearby courts and College Hill students.
History saysThe Hot Club’s owners named it after a hotspot in Paris, and because the original brick building served as the boiler room for the Corliss steam engine factory across the street.
Besides Heineken 0, The Hot Club also serves a rather unremarkable non-alcoholic brew called Al’s. Best stick with the Heineken.
The last stop: Thames Waterside Bar & Grill
251 Thames St., Bristol
Like the Blu across the Bay, Thames Waterside Bar & Grill attracts the same diverse summer crowd, from day tourists to night partiers.
The number of customers asking for non-alcoholic beers “is like doubled in the last three years,” though still a fraction of regular beer sales, said manager Ben Wachter, sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs over the water.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal story, nonalcoholic beer sales in U.S. grocery, convenience and liquor stores have nearly tripled since 2019.
Beers like Heineken 0.0, Guinness 0.0, Peroni 0.0, Budweiser Zero, Stella Artois Liberte, Corona Cero, Blue Moon Non-Alcoholic and Dos Equis Lime & Salt Zero didn’t even exist a decade ago.
Last year, the popular non-alcoholic beer brand Athletic reported more than $90 million in sales.
An Athletic “Run Wild” IPA seemed the perfect beer to enjoy while relaxing in one of those Thames Waterside chairs over the water.
And yes, said Wachter, a couple of those chairs have ended up tossed in the water, “although I prefer to think it was the wind.”
Contact Tom Mooney at: tmooney@providencejournal.com
