Otto’s Shrunken Head is a tiki bar in the East Village that opened in 2002. You can tell. Everything is a little sticky, the whole place has the faint smell of two decades worth of beer spills, and if you want your tiki drink in a fun glass, you’ll have to put down a deposit for it. (Years of stolen glasses will do that to a place.) But none of this seems to be a problem for the regulars—who mostly drink beer, and flock between the bar up front and the windowless room in the back. The back room is also where people who look like The Beatles (except slightly greasier) do open mics and host shows. If you’re looking for a well-concocted tiki drink and a little camp, you’re better off going to Paradise Lost, a newer, flashier tiki bar nearby. But for a piña colada that’s only sort of on fire and a dip into the old East Village, it’s always Otto’s.
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