The Brooklyn BBQ Psyop of 2018

If you’ve spent as much time on social media as I have in the last decade, you’ve watched the psyops come and go. Witnessing every regime news outlet in America adopt the term “horse paste” for Ivermectin after Joe Rogan announced Ivermectin was one of the medications he used to treat his bout with COVID was eye-opening for many. Watching the switch from “masks won’t prevent the spread” to “if you don’t wear one, you want to kill grandma” also woke up a lot of people. I was too busy to fall for the mask psyop because I was down in Chinatown hugging random Chinese people.

Psyops come and go, and most are forgotten. Thankfully! One that needed to be “dead on arrival” was the great “Brooklyn BBQ” psyop of 2018. I first encountered it when Twitter arch-troll Michael Malice retweeted a Vice article entitled “Why Is Brooklyn Barbecue Taking Over the World?” adding his comment, “y’all can ratio all you want, yes that pic sucks, but Brooklyn BBQ is world-class. Many such places!” As someone who grew up in NYC but had been living in the South—the only location on earth that can claim to have the best BBQ anything—for almost 20 years, I smelled a NYC subway rat.

Being the intrepid investigator that I am, I reached out to Mr. Malice and informed him that I was scheduled to be in NYC shortly after the Vice article dropped and asked him to recommend a location with this so-called “world-class BBQ.” After I informed him of the neighborhood I would be staying in, he provided me with a name that I won’t mention here for legal reasons (I was shocked to discover the establishment is still in business as of this writing). I made my reservation a week before heading to NYC.

Upon arrival, I was greeted with the kind of hospitality you would get from the average DMV office in the South Bronx. Fine, in NYC, that’s to be expected. If the food is good, who cares, right? Yeah, about that. I ordered the brisket and was presented with a round cut that looked as if it had been beaten with a hammer and then sliced in the manner most brisket is. I am normally easy on sauce when the brisket is good, but they chose to douse this “brisket” in their house sauce, which appeared to be a combination of ketchup and A-1 yellow mustard. My first foray into the arena of “world-class Brooklyn BBQ” was not going well. But at least they couldn’t mess up the side dishes, right? Wrong. The roasted potatoes were basically widgets from a 19th-century sawmill. The beans were out of a can. As much as I was itching to get out of Atlanta at the time, I couldn’t wait to get back down south and have some real BBQ.

If you find yourself in the Atlanta area and are a brisket-first person, check out Community-Q in Decatur. Yes, it’s in a hipster neighborhood, and much of the clientele and staff are as well, but the food more than makes up for it. If you desire pulled pork, and I know this will upset some of the “experts” who know the area, go to Fox Bros. Yes, their BBQ sauce is sold in stores, and they may be a little too popular for the hipsters among us, but there’s a reason their business is always booming. While you’re there, try the Frito Pie which is, in my opinion, their best side.

I lived in Auburn, Alabama, for over a year, and I can tell you that hands down, the best BBQ there is Bow and Arrow. I don’t care if you order the pulled pork, fatty brisket, or cheesy sausage; it’s all good. And their sides will have you going back multiple times to try them all. My experience with most BBQ places is that either their sides are excellent and the meat is so-so, or vice versa. Bow and Arrow goes above and beyond for both. You will thank me.

While psyops continue and we struggle to navigate social media without seeing the latest purple-haired wildebeest screaming on our timeline, we can rest assured that some of the ops are obvious. When an outlet that has fallen as far as Vice declares that Brooklyn is taking over as the world headquarters of BBQ and infamous Twitter trolls are promoting it, those of us who know better just look on and laugh. Me? I have to be the moron who has to investigate these claims firsthand and suffer a triple-digit price tag for something I could have prepared at home for under $10. Some psyops don’t affect us directly, such as the “horse paste” fiasco. That probably didn’t influence you at all. But bad food? That can potentially lead to the end of civilization. Be discerning. Be vigilant. And never settle for sub-par BBQ. You’re better than that.