Long Branch Tavern

It’s my understanding this place has closed. A moment of silence please.
I graduated Suny Albany four score and way too many years ago but when I speak of it, I speak most fondly of the Long Branch Tavern and most of my classmates, even if you didn’t know me, would probably remember me as a «Branch rat». Yes, my housemates and I spent every weekend and many weekday nights at the far end of the bar, often waxing philosophical with the ‘older’ bartenders (Gary and Dave in our earlier years) and believing they actually thought we were 21. I learned how to drink ass beer thanks to the cheap Busch on tap.
Back when I went to Albany, there was no beer-​pong and there was no dance floor (see review above mine). There were just hordes of underage college kids getting hammered and singing along to the same music, night after night — ‘Cecilia, you’re breaking my heart!’ and if, like me, you closed the bar before making your way to WTs, the swan song was always «Summer Winds».
Thank you to Gary, Dave, Fat Tony, Fergie, Walt, Jesse and Christine and the many random boys I sucked face with in the corner after doing 25 cent tequila shots. My favorite bar in all the land deserves no less than 5 stars.

For all intensive purposes, the Branch deserves one star. The beer on tap includes Keystone, Keystone Light, and Bud Light. Five dollar pitchers, shots in medicine cups, no real beer, beer pong on the patio, action only on the weekends… yeah, it’s an underage UAlbany bar.
But, for a few months, it was the best. Which is why I just cannot give it one star.
I would drive from my community college on weekends and hit up this place with the Albany crew. Rolling twenty deep, we would take over the dance floor drunkingly dancing to Bön Jovi, Biggie, Journey, and any other cheesy 80’s or 90’s song that was played. We were young, we were drunk, but mainly… we really wouldn’t have been able to get in anywhere else. We eventually aged a few years, came back once (for old times), and vowed never to come back again.