« Court hearing scheduled for Thursday, concerning DDDB motion for legal costs, is postponed | Main | For the Nets, a Brooklyn Stars Can’t See »
February 2, 2011
Freddy’s Revenge
Beloved ProHi bar finds a new home in South Slope
New York Press
by Joyce Hanson
"ProHi?"
Dipsomaniacal doomsayers might find it hard to believe that anything good can happen bar-wise. But this month in Park Slope they would be wrong, because Freddy’s is coming back to life Feb. 4.
Yes, that Freddy’s, the brave little dive bar in Prospect Heights that stood up to the wrecking ball of Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards development ambitions and lost in 2010. The old bar disappeared last May after a seven-year-long fight that gathered artists, musicians, politicos, activists, locals, Freddy’s groupies and good old-fashioned drunks in a united front against eminent domain and The Man.
But the spirit of Freddy’s stayed alive, and the bar is reopening at a new location at 627 5th Ave. That stretch of the avenue now provides prime territory for a proper pub crawl, as Freddy’s joins neighbors including Black Horse Pub, Buttermilk Bar, Sidecar Bar & Grille and its next door neighbor South.
“It’s Freddy’s rebooted,” says Matt Kuhn, who owns the new bar along with Donald O’Finn and Matt Kimmett. All three have a history of managing and bartending Freddy’s going back over a decade when the joint was a cop bar at its original location across the street from the 78th Precinct. When previous owner Frank Yost got his Ratner payoff and then backed out of financing the 5th Avenue location, the new owners scrambled to do all the work that needed doing along with a Freddy’s-friendly community of artists, carpenters, designers and crafts people.
“It’s Freddy’s on steroids,” says O’Finn. “Everybody wants it to be the same Freddy's. They think, ‘Oh, you've got another space. Good. Now you can just move everything from the old space to the new space.’ And I'm like, ‘Well, no, that's not the way it's going to happen. This is going to be so much better.’ Now the inmates run the asylum.”
Photo: New York Press
Posted by eric at February 2, 2011 10:29 AM