Brooklyn balks at Canadian bar owner’s bad idea
Woman ‘sorry’ for insensitive marketing ploy
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, self-described as a “boozy sandwich shop” with a “surf shop vibe,” began promoting itself in 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 that 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 shtick” 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 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 follow-up article in 2015 noted surging rents caused by the influx of people fleeing Manhattan — coupled with the arrival of fancy cafes and restaurants — was 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.
Tracy Reid, the owner of a store near Summerhill, told the New York Daily News, “When you’re using the challenges we have as a community to mimic us … (that) is very distasteful to the human experience.”
Gordon Douglas, a professor of urban planning at San Jose State University who spent the past year running a research institute at NYU and who came out to observe the protest, told the National Post the bar’s marketing materials seemed to celebrate the black community’s historic pain.
“It’d be different if there was a gunfight in the 1880s and (the bar said), ‘Ooh, we’re so cool, this place is so rough,’ ” Douglas said.
But gun violence is still a problem in the neighbourhood, he said, and many who showed up to protest shared stories of personal tragedy.
Brennan reportedly was inside the restaurant during the protest, but did not come out to address the crowd.
The Canadian ex-pat did not respond to messages from the Post on Monday. She previously told the Gothamist blog site she was just trying to be “cheeky” when she falsely claimed Summerhill’s wall had been damaged by gunfire, and apologized for being “insensitive.”
“I was excited to keep the wall as a shout-out to the different businesses that occupied the space before us but my intention was misinterpreted and I’m sorry for that.”
She added that bottles of rosé would be served in ice buckets, not brown paper bags.
In a follow-up statement posted to social media, Brennan said she was proud to call Crown Heights home and planned to spend the coming days talking to neighbours about ways the restaurant can become more involved with other small businesses, artists and charities.
“I want Summerhill to be a point of pride for everyone,” she wrote.
Her supporters pointed out many of Brennan’s patrons and staff are black and critics should get to know Brennan before judging her.
Last year, another Crown Heights business owner came under fire for calling a bar Crow Bar. Crown Heights was once known as Crow Hill, and some said the word “crow” had in the past been a derogatory term to refer to the neighbourhood’s black residents.
The bar’s owner, Dan Wilby, initially didn’t know what all the fuss was about, telling reporters he didn’t mean to offend — “but it’s a free world, I guess.”
A few months later he re-named the bar Franklin 820. Not having learned the neighbourhood’s history, he said, had been a “significant and regrettable oversight.”