Betty Crocked

Cake Shop

152 Ludlow St. (betw. Stanton & Rivington Sts.)

212-253-0036

The Lower East Side is lousy with rathskellers, subterranean beer dens shielded from meddlesome sunlight. The list of iniquity includes the Delancey, subTonic, Rothko, Dark Room and, now, Cake Shop.

Yet to call Cake Shop just a rathskeller would deny its triple-headed business plan. While crowds stumble underground, the upstairs bustles with a record store and a combination cafe and coffee counter. It's a one-stop indie-rock Wal-Mart. The cafe serves a sturdy cup of caffeine and the record store stocks equal parts Built to Spill and esoteric seven-inches, but for me, these are speed bumps while traipsing downstairs to the L.E.S.'s only establishment to honor Isaac Newton.

Entering Cake Shop's drinking arm feels like waltzing into a funhouse. The room is graded on a gentle slant, so much so that a feather could send a ball careening down the sleek, black concrete floor.

"It's for handicap access," says co-owner Nick Bodor, 35, who's wearing a white T-shirt and a smile.

Or for handicapping a drinker. I gingerly sit at the bar, afraid gravitational force, not abundant grog, will send me tumbling toward the ground. Yet my chair sticks to floor like frog's tongue to fly. I order a $5 pint of Brooklyn Lager, a pleasant buy-one get-one free during happy hour. Thriftiness could be amplified with a $3 Busch pint, but reliving high school is never a good idea.

Like my Brooklyn Lager, Cake Shop is cool and refreshing. Contrasting most dank and mildewy basements, the space is clean, sleek and unclaustrophobic. A roulette wheel adorns the bar's mirror along with several cat pics. Rectangular stools line one wall; salvaged theater seats, another. Nearby, one of the city's finest jukeboxes offers an eclectic stew of Naked Raygun, the Homosexuals, Pere Ubu and "The Ultimate Rod Stewart Mix." In the rear sits a drum riser where on the weekend bands bash out five-buck shows. Thanks to the sloped floor, sight lines are excellent, even for shorties like myself thwarted by five-foot-eight giants.

I replace my beer on the dark-stained bar, drawing Nick's attention. "When you've been working on a bar this long," he says, sliding a coaster beneath my glass, "you want to use a coaster."

Understandable. You see, Cake Shop's early-May opening was, oh, only about nine months late. Nick and his brother, Andy (co-owners of Avenue A's Internet cafe alt.coffee and Library Bar), along with Greg Curley, signed a lease in January 2004.

The storefront and basement-located inside "sterile, weird" Gotham Court, a seven-story apartment complex built on a former button factory-were blank boxes requiring a start-from-scratch build. Contractor delays and licensing problems (securing a certificate of occupancy was a hellish navigation of red tape) pushed the opening back.

"When we started building we thought, worst-case scenario was that we'd pay rent for a couple months," Nick says, pausing for a second. "We paid rent for eight months."

When both floors finally opened, it was such a sweet rush that the triumvirate dubbed their labor Cake Shop. (Actually it's stolen from a song by Swell Maps, an obscure new-wave British band.)

This appealed to music-geeks Greg and Andy, and Nick thought it would be a "cool name for a rock club. Like, 'Let's go see a band at Cake Shop!'" The name stuck, raising another question: Would they sell cake? "It would've been a little too ironic if we didn't sell cake," Nick admits. In came sweets by Tribeca bakers Umanoff & Parsons. They were a hit. As has been Cake Shop's music arm, with brisk sales depleting the inventory.

"People like having a few beers and going record shopping," Nick explains.

Mixing alcohol and commerce can be hazardous, I remind him. When the Hanger first opened in the East Village, they sold both clothes and whiskey into the wee hours-until a tipsy patron vomited on the inventory. The owners wisely started storing clothes downstairs at night.

Nick laughs. "I certainly don't want to clean vomit off jewel cases," he says. As co-owner of a throwback L.E.S. business (opening as likeminded ilk Luna Lounge and Sound & Fury become rubble), the battle to survive could get messier than a palmful of puke.