So, newcomers embracing Prospect Heights (and 595 Dean) especially like McMahon's Public House. That's fine. Some, though, may remember O'Connor's.

So the real-estate publication Brick Underground offers a series called The Newcomers, which recently published Why we moved from London to NYC: We always wanted to live abroad and fell in love with Brooklyn.

Or, more specifically, Prospect Heights and environs. After all, "Brooklyn" is too big to generalize about.

Similarly, they say, "You see so much bad press and comments online about New York not being safe, but we have never felt unsafe here." 

Well, duh, they're in a pretty safe neighborhood!

Londoners Ian and Helen, who work in private equity, rent a $5,030 (with one month free) one-bedroom at 595 Dean Street, the new TF Cornerstone development in the southeast block of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park.

They chose the location for its transportation options to Manhattan, "nice bars and restaurants," and "real neighborhood feel." They love the building's amenities. (Extra fee, right?)

About the bar

"We really wanted a nice neighborhood bar. That was important to us," they tell their interviewer. "We found McMahon's Public House and that was it. Now we pop in multiple times a week. It’s an Irish bar with great food and vibes. We feel like we have friends here."

Photos: Google Street View

Well, nostalgia ain't what it used to be. If some fondly remember, or bitterly mourn, O'Connor's, the  dive bar (founded in 1931) predecessor to McMahon's, well, its successor is meaningful to others. 

(McMahon's is both a neighborhood bar and also an establishment catering to arena visitors, as the Barclays Center is a block away.)

It's worth noting that, when O'Connor's was up for sale, as new owner Mike Maher told Dan Myers of Here's Park Slope in 2011, he was the only one "who promised to keep the name, and the brand." 

He didn't.

As Myers wrote in 2014 of the emerging, expanded, and renovated McMahon's, "The new facade has been revealed, and it looks like just about every other standard Irish pub in the city. An improvement over the previous sparse black-panted brick? Sure. Anything special? Not really."

Atlantic Yards memories

Those with long memories might remember that Freddy's, the clubhouse of the Atlantic Yards resistance, at Sixth Avenue and Dean Street, was transformed when manager Donald O'Finn moved his artsy, rogue-ish crew there from O'Connors. (Freddy's, of course, was forced to close and relocated to what some call the south South Slope.)

When I lived in Park Slope, I rarely visited O'Connor's, but I remember walking there 1.2 miles from Downtown Brooklyn after the epic 7.5-hour-hour Atlantic Yards public hearing August 23, 2006, which ended at 11:30 pm, and winding down over a beer--on an empty stomach, since I hadn't anticipated the hearing would go so long--with a couple of journalists. (This was before Twitter.)

Then I walked home. After just a few hours of sleep, I got up, drank some coffee, consulted my notes--I'd hand-written everything on a notepad, no laptop yet--and wrote some 5,200 words. Today, nearly 19 years later, I'm not having a nightcap before writing.