Pearl's Social & Billy Club

Pearl's Social & Billy Club opened on St Nicholas Avenue in Bushwick in June 2011 and marks fifteen years in the community in 2026, which in that neighbourhood makes it an institution. Its own description of what a bar is for is the best sentence any venue in this guide has written about itself: in New York City, our bars are our living rooms — that is exactly how Pearl's was built, a place for everyone, and whether you are on or off the wagon you will find something that hits just right. It is a dive-adjacent local rather than a cocktail destination, open from 2pm and running to 4am from Thursday through the weekend.

The phrase would be marketing at most bars. Here it is backed by a separate, printed Zero Proof menu — a dedicated card, produced in May 2026, not a line at the bottom of the cocktail list. Six named drinks sit on it. The Dark & Stormless rebuilds a Dark and Stormy on Three Spirit Nightcap with fresh ginger, ginger beer and lime. The Booze Free G&T pairs non-alcoholic gin with Roots Divino Blanco and a house-made lemon, rosemary and thyme tonic, and donates a dollar from every one to local charities. Kala Khama runs Three Spirit Livener with passionfruit and lemon; the Sherita is a non-alcoholic passionfruit margarita; the Bucatini uses non-alcoholic Corona with a Lapos aperitif and lemon; and there is a bottled St. Agrestis Phony Negroni. The genuinely rare thing, though, is on the tap list: Athletic IPA on draft at $8. Almost no bar in New York pours non-alcoholic beer from a tap rather than handing over a can, and the difference matters more than it sounds — you get a pint glass, a head on it, and the same ritual as everyone else at the bar. Budweiser Zero, non-alcoholic Corona, Guinness 0, Asahi Dry Zero and Athletic Cerveza fill out the fridge from $5 to $9, and fourteen non-alcoholic spirits sit on the back bar, from Lyre's and Seedlip through Roots Divino, Gnista, Pathfinder and both Three Spirit expressions. One small caveat: the bar's two current PDFs disagree by a dollar on the price of Budweiser Zero.