It's not difficult to see that Oakland has fallen on hard times. Again. Walking out my front door on West Grand and Broadway, I can travel in any direction and see as many vacant storefronts as occupied ones, sometimes more.

Many surviving shopkeeps are just barely so, and left sleepless worrying what shift in the wind might finally push them over. Witness, for example, the panic caused when parking enforcement was extended two hours until 8 p.m. In more robust times, this would have been shaken off with a grumble and a bitter word or two, but in today's Oakland, the move felt like an eviction notice from City Hall.

In addition to the hours being rolled back, there is yet another ray of light. And since this is the Barfly speaking, you know that I'm going to say that ray of light emanates from Oakland's bars and taverns. It's true — we are right now living in a Golden Age of cocktails here in Oakland.

It's hard to say where it all started, but the current momentum is undeniable. Think of any major restaurant opening in Oakland in the past few years — Flora, Picán, Ozumo, Marzano, Bocanova or Sidebar, to name just a few — and you'll notice a pattern. At each establishment, the bar and cocktail menus are central to its identity. In Oakland, it's no longer enough to have a hot chef and great food; to succeed you've got to offer liquor service to match.

My vision of this Golden Age

crystallized recently while making my first visit to the new Grand Tavern on — you guessed it — Grand Avenue. If you haven't noticed Grand Tavern yet, don't fret; its opening hasn't been met with much fanfare. Unlike its neighbors down the road at Camino, the folks at Grand Tavern haven't been reviewed by Michael Bauer, San Francisco Magazine and Bon Appétit all in their first month of operation. Grand Tavern is much more of a neighborhood restaurant — the kind of place where the chef might be (and, in fact, is) the owner's mother.

Yet when it comes to the bar, this is no neighborhood restaurant — not by the standards applied elsewhere, at least. Want to enjoy a beer on one of the two patios? Grand Tavern offers two dozen bottles and six taps with styles ranging from Flemish red to German Helles to California IPA. A glass of wine perhaps? Grand Tavern offers 30 by-the-glass choices. Although, if I may be critical for a moment, the value-focused wine list errs on the side of quantity over quality. Perusing the wine list, I was reminded of a line from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" — "Water, water every where, nor any drop to drink." Well, I guess that's critical and pretentious, but you get my point.

But then there's the cocktail menu. With a focus on well-prepared classic cocktails and premium spirits, the Tavern's cocktail menu truly shines. Regular Barfly readers know that I recently have delved into the world of the old-fashioned and the mai tai. So I tried one of each, and both were as good as any I've had around town. Both were perfectly prepared according to the classic recipe — no muddled fruit in the old-fashioned, and no juice in the mai tai save a squeeze of lime. Mrs. Barfly ordered a Dark & Stormy. The balance of Gosling's rum, lime and house-made ginger syrup was spot on and refreshing on a hot afternoon.

I also noticed that Grand Tavern is the first bar around town to jump on the big ice bandwagon. Casual tipplers will be forgiven for not knowing that in industry circles, ice is the hot topic of the day. Today's crop of bar chefs (formerly known as bar managers) increasingly are eschewing the standard ice cube in favor of larger blocks of ice, occasionally chipped from even larger blocks stashed behind the bar.

The theory is that large pieces of ice keep drinks colder longer without diluting them. Car campers have known this for years — a five pound block of ice will cool your ice chest for a week without melting, whereas 10 pounds of ice cubes will turn into a watery arctic sludge in just a few days. It may sound overly fussy, but it makes a difference, and I hope the Grand Tavern's approach soon will become the industry standard.

Somewhere in the middle of my third cocktail, it hit me — the realization that the superlative has become standard in Oakland's new school bar scene. Sure, the city is broke, the real estate market is bottomed out and the local sports teams lead the league in losing, but this still is a great time to be an Oaklander.

Rick Mitchell owns Luka's Tap Room and Franklin Square. Reach him at theoaklandbarfly@yahoo.com.