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Bay Ridge Getting A Hipster Bar To Deal With All Those Hipsters
By
Garth Johnston
Published Sep 19, 2012
Modified Sep 19, 2012
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By
Garth Johnston
Published Sep 19, 2012
Modified Sep 19, 2012
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If you've never made the trek, beautiful Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, has some great food, great views and a quirky Brooklyn/Staten Island personality all its own. But at least one bar owner thinks those days are numbered—now that the hipsters have taken note. So he's turning lemons into lemonade and opening up a bar, which he calls a beer garden, to cater to them.
"A lot of different-looking people have been coming into the Kettle Black and they are definitely not from Bay Ridge," Tommy Casatelli, who owns the Kettle Black and Ho’Brah Taco Joint told the Brooklyn Paper. "We’re getting people from Nebraska, Ohio, California, and they were all wearing the hipster uniform."
So he's opening a place just for them, a bar inside the now shuttered Bridgeview Locksmith on Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street that will focus on microbrews from the Midwest. He's calling it The Lockyard. "It’s really going to be about Americana," he says. "It’s going to look like somebody’s backyard," Casatelli, who had some tax problems a few years back, said before "promising an interior design reminiscent of the classic 'Sailor Jerry' tattoos and a menu of hot dogs, sausages, and knishes."
Still, Casatelli promises that locals shouldn't feel out of place in the new bar: "I’d never want to alienate what I am and where I come from. When I was a kid, bars had Bud, Coors, Heineken, Corona, that’s it. If a place had Smithwick’s or something, that was a big deal." Which is good, since from the look of the BP comments, some locals are already ready to bring out the torches:
Wow, one man is single handedly going to ruin Bay Ridge. Shame on him. I don't think I'll ever go to Kettle Black again because of this. I can't wait to see how the normal people around there react to these bearded culdesacians nasally shrieking into the night. May every last Caleb and Josh get a beat down the moment they get off that R train. This is so sad. I hope this fails miserably.
Us? We're cool with this if it means we can expect at least one massive NYPD/FDNY brawl when it opens next spring.
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bay ridge
brooklyn
hipsters
kettle black bar
tommy casatelli
Garth Johnston
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