What should you tip when served these things?

Do you know where to go to get a $71,000 cocktail? Or, a $25,000 ice cream sundae, $1,000 bagel, $3,700 pizzas, $5,000 hamburger ...?

You can discover the paths you'll have to travel by checking a Trendhunter.com collection of 16 such things. Hint: New York City is one of the spots.

As the saying goes, "An extravagance is something that your spirit thinks is a necessity."

But, lest you jump to the conclusion this is all a wasteful extravagance, I should tell you that the majority of profits from sales of these items go to various charities.

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ON THE WEB
• Luxury Fever (book review)
• Extravagance Quotes
• Dowd's Guides

A beer before passing on

All About Beer Magazine has come up with a list of "125 Places to Have a Beer Before You Die."

Did your favorite beer place make the list?

Here are the New York State establishments that made the list:

(19.) Clubhouse box seats, Saratoga Race Course, Saratoga Springs.
(34.) Spuyten Duyvil, Brooklyn.
(48.) Blue Tusk, Syracuse.
(65.) F.X. Matt Brewery Tasting Room, Utica.
(86.) Brewery Ommegang, Milford, near Cooperstown.
(98.) Clark’s Ale House, Syracuse.
(99.) Mahar's, downtown Albany.
(102.) McSorley’s Ale House, Manhattan.
(116.) Anchor Bar (home of the original Buffalo wings), Buffalo.

Here's the top 10 from the global tally:

(1.) Great American Beer Festival, Denver, CO.
(2.) Grand Place, Brussels, Belgium.
(3.) U Fleku, Prague, Czech Republic.
(4.) Great British Beer Festival, Earls Court, London, England.
(5.) Oktoberfest, Munich, Germany.
(6.) Augustiner Keller, Munich, Germany.
(7.) Abbaye de Notre-Dame d’Orval, Orval, Belgium.
(8.) Gravity Bar, Guinness St. James Gate Brewery, Dublin, Ireland.
(9.) Monk’s Café, Philadelphia, PA.
(10.) The Great Canadian Beer Festival, Vancouver, BC.

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ON THE WEB
• New York City Beer Guide
• Beer, Breweries, and Breweriana of Upstate NY
• Dowd's Guides

NYC dwellers urged to go ... home

Staten Island: Tourist Destination No. 1?

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced a program to increase tourism for the borough, kicking off a larger, citywide program aimed at encouraging New Yorkers to vacation at home.

A new, daily Gray Line "hop-on, hop-off" bus tour through Staten Island will begin Monday, July 14, to take tourists through sites such as the Staten Island Zoo and Fort Wadsworth. It also will introduce the borough to Gray Line which does not now service it.

"Millions of tourists already ride the free ferry each year, but most stop short of actually getting out of the terminal and exploring the borough," Bloomberg said at a news conference. "With gas prices driving up the cost of air travel and driving, there's never been a better time to go local and vacation right here in the Big Apple."

The larger program for intracity tourism will be called "Go Local," and will include more than 200 summer discounts at restaurants, at shops, and on tours throughout the city's five boroughs.

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ON THE WEB
• New York City Tourism
• This Is New York
• Dowd's Guides

State shuffles alcohol laws

William M. Dowd photo

If you're a New Yorker, or plan to visit the Empire State, you'll find a slightly more relaxed legal attitude toward sales of alcoholic beverages. For one thing, wine tastings will be allowed to begin at 10 a.m. on Sundays, rather than having to hold off until noon.

That's sure to be popular with the state's wine industry, which ranks third in the nation behind only California and Oregon in wine production and is a major tourist draw. Previously, wineries could sell bottles of wine beginning at 10 a.m. on Sundays, but couldn't allow tastings.

It is one of a handful of changes signed into law this week by Gov. David Patterson. The others:

• The New York State Wine and Culinary Center (seen above) in Canandaigua in the Finger Lakes is allowed to sell beers and distilled spirits produced in the state rather than being limited to wine.

• Wine now may be widely sold at the annual New York State Fair in Syracuse. It had been restricted to certain areas of the fair even though beer could be sold anywhere.

• Ice cream flavored with wine may be sold up to 5% alcohol.

• Owners of microbreweries that manufacture and sell beer at wholesale now also may own restaurants that sell alcohol.

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ON THE WEB
• New York Wine & Culinary Center
• Dowd's Guides

Big Apple's big, pricey beer

The Gothamist is one handy Web site when it comes to keeping tabs on the many, many trends, fads and foibles in the Big Apple. Considering the size and activity level of the place, I can use all the help I can get in keeping up.

The latest drinking-related item it reports puts beer right up there with those ridiculously priced spirits and wines that crop up with great regularity. It's a $95 beer. Not for the keg or the case or the six-pack, but for "a" beer.

It's a 17-ounce Baladine Xyauyù being served at the Beer Table, an establishment in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reports The Gothamist:

"The beer ... cannot be found anywhere else in New York, and takes three years to brew; something that Paul Kermizian, beer connoisseur and co-owner of Barcade and The Gutter, tells us factors in to what may seem like an inflated price tag.

"Iy is an extremely rare beer from a tiny artisanal brewery in Italy. Many craft breweries brew small batch beers such as this that are extremely time consuming and labor intensive. That, plus the skyrocketing costs of ingredients, puts the brewery in a position to have to charge a good deal more than they would for a typical pale ale. Often, breweries brew these beers for enjoyment and will likely only break even once all of it is sold.

"One thing to consider is that if a brewery makes a beer that takes three years to age, the beer is probably taking up precious tank space in a brewery already working in too small of a facility. Of the 22 bottles made available at the bar, four have been purchased so far.

"And if you want a taste of the top shelf for slightly less, there's also a rotating collection of about 100 obscure and artisanal beers (that) also includes a $64 Danish beer that changes its ingredients with each new batch and a handful of $50 brews."

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ON THE WEB
• Dowd's Guides

Wine AND all this beer? What a festival!

You like beer, she likes wines. Or vice-versa. What to do during a busy summer festival season that offers one beverage-centric after another and you can’t hit them all?

Short of going your separate ways, you need to maximize your plannings.

On New York's Long Island, that quandry will be taken care of on August 9 when the “North Fork Craft Beer, BBQ and Wine Festival” is held at the picturesque Martha Clara Vineyard near Jamesport.

In addition to a variety of wines from the host vineyard, breweries listed to provide examples of their products include, in alphabetical order:

Blue Moon
Blue Point Brewing Co.
Boston Beer (Sam Adams)
Boulder Beer Co.
Brickhouse Brewery
Brooklyn Brewery
Butternuts Beer & Ale
Cape Ann Brewing
Clare Rose
Crop Circle
Doc’s Hard Cider
Flying Dog
Hacker Pschorr
Harlem Brewing Co.
John Harvard’s Brew House
Kona Brewing Co.
Lake Placid Pub & Brewery
Leffe
Legacy
Leinenkugel
Long Trail Brewing Co.
North Coast Brewery
Oskar Blues
Peak Organic Brewing Co.
Redbridge
Rogue Ales
Schwelmer Brewing
Shmaltz Brewing Co. (He’Brew Beer)
Sierra Nevada
Sly Fox
Smuttynose Brewing Co.
Southampton Publick House
Thomas Hooker Ales
Unibroue
Widmer Hefeweizen

Ticket details: VIP, $75 (advance purchase only). General admission, $50 (online purchase) and $70 (at the gate, if still available). Designated drivers, $10. Each attendee, except designated drivers, will receive a souvenir tasting glass. Each ticket also includes a BBQ sandwich choice and one side item. No one under 21 will be admitted.

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ON THE WEB
• Welcome to the North Fork
• Dowd's Guides