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February 5, 2011
Freddy's Bar and Backroom Re-Opens In South Park Slope
WNYC
By Abbie Fentress Swanson
South Park Slope residents walking down 5th Avenue don't seem to notice the new and improved Freddy’s Bar and Backroom. But inside, the reopening of Freddy's means a lot to bartender Eva Korzan. "This used to be the bathroom graffiti art of the old bar that an artist took, re-interpreted and etched it into granite," Korzan says, pointing to a piece of stone on a wall inside the bar. "It’s post-modernism at its best."
Korzan did everything at the original Freddy's at the corner of Dean Street and Sixth Avenue—from tending bar to booking live music to balancing the books. For more than 70 years, the dive art bar sat on that Prospect Heights corner. But after the city gave the green light to the largest development in Brooklyn's history, the Atlantic Yards project, Freddy's found itself in a stand-off with the project's developer Bruce Ratner. The workers went so far as to chain themselves to Freddy's mahogany bar.
The manager then was Donald O'Finn. He says after seven years of fighting, the bar's owner Frank Yost cut a deal with Ratner. "We got steamrolled by millionaires and politicians, and the most amazing thing is how the community came out to support us," O'Finn says. "We almost won and we almost beat them and we should have. But we almost did, which was amazing. It was definitely a David and Goliath story."
Related coverage...
AP via the Wall Street Journal, NYC bar, focus of eminent-domain fight, reopens
The Brooklyn watering hole where patrons chained themselves to the bar during the eminent-domain battle over the Atlantic Yards project has been reborn in a new home.
Freddy's Bar and Backroom is officially reopening Friday in south Park Slope. It's about two miles from the Prohibition-era locale that became a focal point of community ire over the demolition of local homes and businesses. The 22-acre project includes an 18,000-seat Nets arena.
The new owners are all former staff members. They brought some items from the old spot, including a red mahogany bar, some old booths and the chains that patrons used to chain themselves in protest as seizure of the property approached.
City.com, Freddy’s Bar Re-Opens in South Slope
Freddy’s, a beloved dive bar shoved out of Dean Street by Bruce Ratner’s dick, gets reborn today in South Slope in the old Ellis bar space at 627 5th Ave (between 17th and 18th).
It joins a friendly little family of bars—literally: the owners of Black Horse, South, Buttermilk, et al. are all best buds and frequent each others’ places…which you might notice if you also liquor up there. It’s really kind of cute. I imagine Freddy’s will do the same, or risk shunning by the in-crowd. The new owners are former employees of the old place, but they’ve got the same name and a lot of the old interior (including the “chains of justice” used in the Atlantic Yards fight).
Anyway, a big old dive party happens today, Friday the 4th, with music, art and probably a lot of people slant rhyming “Bruce” with a female hygienic device.
Metropolis (Wall Street Journal Blog*, A Displaced Dive Bar, Reborn in Brooklyn
Brooklyn Based, Freddy’s Rises Again
Here's Park Slope, Freddy's 2.0 Opens Tonight
Fucked in Park Slope, Freddy's Bar Re-Opens in South Slope
Posted by steve at February 5, 2011 1:41 PM