‘Faux-ghetto schtick’ sparks outrage against Canadian restaurant owner
In recent days, the online reviews for Becca Brennan’s fledgling restaurant and bar in Brooklyn, N.Y., have not been kind.
“Embarrassed that this place is in my neighbourhood,” reads one post on Yelp.
“Can’t wait to see this business close,” says another.
The backlash started last week when Summerhill, which describes itself as a “boozy sandwich shop” with a “surf shop vibe,” began promoting itself in a way that, critics said, seemed to glorify the gritty past of its Afro-Caribbean neighbourhood, Crown Heights.
The bar sits on a corner that used to be occupied by a bodega with a “rumoured backroom illegal gun shop,” a press release boasted. Customers were invited to sip “bright cocktails” and munch on “unpretentious sandwiches” against the backdrop of what it claimed was a “bullet hole-ridden wall.”
The marketing blunder worsened when Brennan, 31, a Toronto native and former corporate tax attorney, said in an interview the bar would serve 40-ounce bottles of rosé wine in brown paper bags.
The backlash on social media from local residents and anti-gentrification activists was swift. Brennan was accused of perpetuating “faux-ghetto schtick” and being a privileged “colonizer,” who was “tone deaf ” to the history of violence and poverty in the predominantly black neighbourhood.
A 2012 New York Times story reported that Crown Heights, which in 1991 had erupted in riots between blacks and Hasidic Jews, had in recent years seen an influx of artists, young professionals and families, all mostly white. But there remained an “undercurrent of unease, suspicion and resentment from some longtime residents, a legacy of the riots.”
A followup article in 2015 noted surging rents caused by the influx of people fleeing Manhattan were driving out many of the neighbourhood’s black residents.
Over the weekend, more than 100 protesters — some holding signs saying “This Is What Gentrification Looks Like!” — gathered on the sidewalk outside the bar and called for a boycott.
“You’re not going to take our pain and make it a novelty,” one impassioned woman yelled as she stood atop a chair, as seen in a video posted to YouTube.
Brennan reportedly was inside the restaurant during the protest, but did not come out to address the crowd.
The Canadian expat said through a Manhattan public relations firm Monday she was sorry her words had caused pain. “I made light of serious issues and that was wrong.”
She said the restaurant’s decor was “not intended to make light of any aspect of Crown Heights or its history.”