Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

Despite a media-friendly plan announced last December to install "chains of justice" so bar-goers could chain themselves to the bar to resist condemnation, Freddy's Bar & Backroom , the much-lauded Prospect Heights dive bar and no-cover eclectic art space, will close for relocation after a April 30 event and celebration, and prepare for relocation. Patrons and supporters of Freddy's will laud the spirit of resistance--fighting a government and developer with far bigger resources--but must confront a fundamental hurdle. "Unfortunately, in order to assure our capacity to keep Freddy's alive in another location, and keep people employed," manager Donald O'Finn said, "we have to move the contents of the bar in a particular timely fashion to 'lock down' the next space, and thus we will not be facing an eviction situation in which a protest by chaining ourselves could happen." (I took the above photo Saturday. Note the word "ho...

Also see a time-lapse portrait of Freddy's by Tracy Collins. For a long time, I wasn't much of a fan of Freddy's Bar & Backroom , which closes its Dean Street location tonight, having taken a settlement in the wake of eminent domain. Until the mayor banned smoking in bars and restaurants, I wasn't a fan of any bars, actually; they were just too smoky. And I'm not a big bar-goer. But a lot of people who live in walking distance have their own Freddy's story, and here's what I'll remember most: Freddy's is where I discovered John Pinamonti. Pinamonti is a Brooklyn-based roots musician--rock/country and a tinge of folk--who deserves much more notice than he's gotten. "The Burrow" I first heard Pinamonti at Freddy's nearly three years ago, playing his haunting Atlantic Yards anthem/elegy "The Burrow" as part of the quite variable "Ratnerville Singout." (One song presciently warned, "Freddy's is an ...

Someone asked me if Freddy's Bar & Backroom , fated for demolition after a court approved eminent domain, could be landmarked, and the answer is, of course, no: it's not a building of particularly architectural merit inside or out and, if the terra cotta Ward Bakery couldn't be landmarked , Freddy's sure can't. But Freddy's, which in its Backroom last night held an opening for an art retrospective over 13 years, does deserve a spot--anyone can enter it--in the Census of Places that Matter, the very democratic list published as part of the Place Matters project created by the cultural organization City Lore and the Municipal Art Society, a design/planning organization. (Photos by Steve Soblick. Most of the pieces in the collection are not related to Freddy's, but these two--a photo by Dan Sagarin at left and a mixed-media piece by Steve de Seve--do portray Freddy's.) Origins of the Census The project came out of a 1997 conference called History Happe...

With low prices, no cover for its eclectic events, and a low-key vibe, the much-honored Freddy's Bar & Backroom , slated for demolition for the Atlantic Yards project, probably qualifies as an "authentic" place as delineated in sociologist Sharon Zukin's new book Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places . And the bar, located at Dean Street and Sixth Avenue, stands in stark contrast to the plans for the Barclays Center , where as many spaces and elements are "branded" with corporate logos as possible. Freddy's on Sunday opens a retrospective on 13 years of art, a sign that its current incarnation--morphing from a true workingman's bar to a neighborhood bar for a diverse neighborhood--is well less than 20 years old. Freddy's II Manager Donald O'Finn told the Village Voice (in an article that doesn't acknowledge a judge's ruling approving condemnation) that he expects to establish a successor bar: Yep. Freddy...

It was a little like a wake, the first showing Wednesday of the compelling new documentary ( Freddy's ) on the now-closed Freddy's Bar & Backroom, a chance for some of the regulars and staff to remember a unique Brooklyn place, a product of a particular time and place, Prospect Heights preceding and riding a wave of gentrification. And like some wakes, it was a mix of remembrance and release and raucousness, with some knowing, hearty laughs punctuating certain scenes, responses that likely wouldn't be elicited from a mostly civilian audience. "Freddy's was a hub of wonderful people, musicians and lovely weirdos," director Vicente Rodriguez Ortega observes (as cited in Found in Brooklyn). "I only man aged to scratch the surface what it was, what it is, what it will be because in many ways it's timeless." As one regular says, "It's a precious cultural meeting place--and there's alcohol." Freddy's, an aut...

Less than six weeks after Freddy's Bar & Backroom closed in the wake of eminent domain for Atlantic Yards, an intimate documentary (titled Freddy's ) about the noted Prospect Heights watering hole will debut this week at the Brooklyn International Film Festival . The film will be screened (tickets) on Wednesday June 9 at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema (7 pm) and on Friday June 11 at indieScreen in Williamsburg (6pm). The director is Vicente Rodriguez Ortega . Having seen the film, I highly recommend it--it hits deeper than the whimsical trailer below, with lots of (engaging) talking heads, music, and some intriguing filmic composition. And I learned a bunch. I have some questions and quibbles, of course, but I'll save them until after the first screening, where manager Donald O'Finn and other Freddy's staffers will be present for the Q&A. The trailer The official synopsis: Freddy's Bar & Backroom was a thriving cultural hub situated in Prospect Hei...

Sure, it's no big deal, but it's another example of what I call "Atlantic Yards down the memory hole," when fuzzy observations turn into mistaken assumptions. In an essay in last Sunday's New York Times Sunday Review, headlined online as  The City of Lost Love  and in print as "The City That Belonged to Us," novelist and contributing writer  Kaitlyn Greenidge reflected: If you live in New York long enough, and date and make friends here, you have your own secret map of the city and the places that make you nostalgic... Freddy’s hasn’t been on the corner of Dean Street and Sixth Avenue for years but every time I pass the place where it used to sit, I think of the night a few writer friends and I got into a tiff with some poets from N.Y.U., left a bar in the West Village to buy $60 worth of Gray’s Papaya for friends who stayed at the bar, returned to find the place closed; stood for a moment on the corner wondering how we’d get nine people and 25 hot d...

In the new documentary on the now-closed Freddy's Bar & Backroom--I'll have a review tomorrow before its second showing Friday at 6 pm--manager Donald O'Finn explains how the bar operators tried but failed to buy the building in which they had a lease.   "[Developer] Bruce Ratner owns the buildings that Freddy's is in," O'Finn says. "We had tried to buy it... the price kept going up and up and up. And then it was purchased suddenly by some real estate speculators who then sold it to Ratner."   Really? Yup.  While Forest City Ratner will gain an enormous increase in the land's value thanks to a state override of city zoning, the biggest beneficiary until that sale was not a longtime landowner but an ownership group that flipped the property.  That group made a deal in October 2003, two months before Atlantic Yards was officially announced on 12/10/03. (Word of the project had emerged publicly in July 2003, and surely others knew befor...

Last week the staffers and regulars at Freddy's Bar & Backroom , slated to be demolished for the Atlantic Yards arena, installed "chains of justice" so resisters can handcuff themselves to the bar to protest the anticipated eviction. This week came another media event, the guillotine , a creative structure made out of Pabst beer cans, used to execute an effigy representing "eminent domain theft." And yes, the media came out--far more than at some of the important legal arguments or governmental meetings. Everybody loves a good metaphor. At left above, executioner Steve de Sève (producer of video at Freddy's Brooklyn Roundhouse ) and Death, portrayed by Elliot Crown, in action. (Photos on left by Amy Greer/No Land Grab .) The action begins Bar manager Donald O'Finn read from a scroll, declaring a revolt against eminent domain law and criticizing the role of ACORN, the British bank Barclays, which bought the arena naming rights that the state gave aw...

According to reports from Eater and OTBKB (which got the press release I didn't get yet), the operators of Freddy's Bar & Backroom , displaced after some 15 years from the northwest corner of Dean Street and Sixth Avenue due to eminent domain (which led to a settlement), aim to reopen 1.6 miles away. The location: the old Ellis space at 627 5th Avenue near 17th Street, just below the Prospect Expressway in an area some call the South South Slope and others call Greenwood Heights. According to the press release, Frank Yost, who held the Freddy's lease, is not part of the new bar, which will be run by former manager Donald O'Finn and former bartenders Matt Kuhn (the press release had "Khun," but I think that's a typo) and Matt Kimmett. What next? The bar still needs approval from the community board, State Liquor Authority, and the Department of Buildings. "We will still feature our popular videos, art exhibitions, live music and a few surpri...

The Steven Bochco TV drama Brooklyn South , which lasted for just one year (1997-98), is appreciated by loyal fans for its multiple plot lines and large cast and denounced by then-Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden for its graphic portrait of crime. For those interested in Atlantic Yards, the show is fascinating because the mythical 74th Precinct uses as a stand-in precinct house the 78th , at 6th Avenue and Bergen Street in Prospect Heights, a block from the AY footprint, and there are other shots of footprint blocks. (The interiors were filmed in Los Angeles.) Even though the vision of Brooklyn as crime-ridden can seem a cartoon, it's still notable how renovations and lowered crime have reduced "blight" both in Brooklyn and specifically Prospect Heights--even as the Empire State Development Corporation persists in its dubious claim that, absent Atlantic Yards, the project footprint would remain blighted. Unwinding at Freddy's One constant in each epi...