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The Brooklyn Paper / Daniel Krieger

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At Pacific Standard, state flags — California, Oregon, Washington and Nevada — adorn the walls and baseball cards of Bay Area legends lay encased in wooden tables. Where are we? Not Berkeley, surprisingly, but Brooklyn.

The bar, which opened in September, is the brainchild of Jon Stan and John Rauschenberg, two refugees from Northern California who decided to bring a bit of the Golden State to the borough.

It seems like there wouldn’t be much to add to the increasingly boozy stretch of Fourth Avenue between St. Marks Place and Bergen Street, but the California boys saw a hole in the market: there was no place to grab a West Coast microbrew — Lagunitas, Stone and Bear Republic are popular — and catch an A’s game.

“It’s not a gimmick,” Stan stressed. “We just really missed the beer, but you could hang out here and have no idea — it’s not a ‘theme bar.’”

He’s almost right. At a brief glance, the bar could be like any other in Boerum Hill; there’s a dartboard, a projector TV and yupsters playing board games. But the details — UC-Berkeley games projected on the wall for a frightening number of excited alumni, “It’s It” ice cream served to cultish devotees — are exactly where Pacific Standard shines.

It allows all of us to like something about California (without having to actually go there, heaven forbid!).

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper

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