Scary Bar Project:

69 Lounge & Bar 38-21 69th St. (@ Roosevelt Avenue) No phone

Scorpion Lounge 69-08 Roosevelt Avenue (betwn. 69th & 70th Sts.) No phone

When I’m a sourpuss, I don’t spoon up Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey and eyeball reruns of “Arrested Development.” No, I search for frightening bars to down dirt-cheap beer beside scarred, tattooed folks. Nothing snaps my funk like the threat of a rusty shiv inserted into my kidneys.

So on a recent woe-is-me Wednesday, I took the 7 Train to the MTA’s sexiest stop: 69th Street, baby, where polyethnic Jackson Heights rubs against Irish Woodside. Here, main drag Roosevelt Avenue—shadowed by screechy, overhead train tacks—is an assemblage of taco stands, bakeries and terrifically terrifying bars. Namely, Scorpion Lounge. Its cracked, red and yellow awning uses nature’s warning colors, alongside a couple of scorpions, stingers at the ready.

Sadly, for my sadness, Scorpion’s interior was far from poisonous: While the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Under the Bridge” played, a crowd of sagging-eyed after-workers—brains likely singed by computer screens and repetitive drudgery—sat at the zigzagging bar, drinking Coors Light and Bud Light ($3.75 each) and nursing tequila shots. Well-scuffed wood floors were clean. Tee-clad guys shot pool (prohibido hacer apeustas, warned a sign: no betting). Walls were decorated with a NYC mural displaying World Trade towers and wine-bottle wallpaper flanked by two busty Betty Boop statues.

They were testament to the brunette bartender. Her flowery perfume scent preceded her as she sauntered toward me wearing a micro miniskirt, chunky heels and a lacey top that my lady only wears during intimate encounters.

“You wanna beer?” she asked.

Bud Light. The lone wolves at the bar stared hungrily as she bent over to grab my beer, then wiggled to a salsa song.

“Lemme know if you need anything else,” she said, delivering my napkin-covered anesthestizer and sashaying away. No, no, I was fine; I stared at a listless soccer game on TV. I watched men shoot pool. Then I scooted down the block to 69 Lounge & Bar.

The narrow room was dark and lit with black lights, causing my T-shirt’s pills to pop bright white. Faux cobwebs and spiders served as seasonal decorations, while a diminutive dollhouse sat on a shelf. The bathroom was speckled with misaimed urine, but the bar itself was spic and span. Men kicked soccer balls on the flat-screen TV. One dude sat beside me. He wore a ball cap and a drunken smile, courtesy of the milky-brown white Russian ($6) and the Bud ($3.75) he held in each hand.

I considered ordering liquor, but empty plastic cups capped bottles to fight evaporation. It’s so penny-pinchingly tacky. Then again, I wasn’t exactly at the Ritz: The bartenders here wore cinched corsets causing their breasts to stick out like faces on Mount Rushmore.

“Un Bud Light, por favor,” I said, receiving another icy bottle wrapped in napkins. The cost was $3.75, exactly the same as Scorpion. Is there a cartel of bar owners employing busty bar maids and selling $3.75 domestic beer? Or is this the neighborhood going rate, like $1 dumplings in Chinatown.

These were my thoughts as I sat at the bar, bored to tears—that is, if I ever learned to cry. Was it too much to ask for someone to scream at me? Perhaps threaten to rough me up? Tonight’s bars were the worst kinds of booze huts: Promising slanderous words and wanton punches, they revealed themselves to be plain ol’ drunk pits serving watery beer paired with off-limits sex appeal. My Bud disappeared in a jiffy and I shuffled outside, wandering the darkened blocks for enough fear to make me happy.

Perceived Scariness (on a scale of 1 to 10): 8 Actual Scariness: 4 Summary: Big-breasted bartenders and cheap bottled beer ain’t all bad. Or good.