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Midwest Transplant Opening Bar Called "Bad Old Days" In Ridgewood
By
Jen Carlson
Published Jun 15, 2015
Modified Jun 15, 2015
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Jun 15, 2015
Modified Jun 15, 2015
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"So now, you can go up on a steep hill in the Cemetery Belt and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
You had a good run, Ridgewood. Your rents were reasonable, you had just the right number of bars, you were a comfortable distance from Williamsburg... but this past year you really blew up. The NY Times wrote about you, several new bars opened, a venue was announced, Quooklyn happened... and now, Sonja, who was "raised on a farm in the Midwest" and received her "higher level education at the University of Utah," is opening a bar with her friend Rina. It's called Bad Old Days.
They announced some details on their website and Kickstarter: "We will be offering late night food, easy drinking cocktails, and plenty of sass. We are working hard to give you all a new place to rest your feet and wet your whistle. Look out for us in Summer of 2015!" But will there be broken windows and graffiti and real life danger? Needles? Staged muggings? Three-card Monte scams? Will there be authentic grit? Just how method are we going here?
Not very. The bar will have an aesthetic from a pre-pre-pre Giuliani era—they're going for "a mid-century den with a great book collection... living room vibe."
Bad Old Days is located at 1684 Woodbine Street, between the Myrtle-Wyckoff L and the Seneca M stop. THE Bad Old Days were located somewhere between a peep show in Times Square and the East Village squats in the 1980s.
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Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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