485 Dean St. at 6th Ave.,  Brooklyn

        On the outside it’s just another corner bar, soaked in neon beer lights and devoid of any easily  identifying signs. Step inside, though, and you’re suddenly basking in the well-preserved beauty of Freddy's Bar--a true neighborhood institution, full of the sort of one-of-a-kind quirks that “wacky” chain restaurants try so desperately to replicate but never get right. A dusty stuffed marlin shares wall space with African masks and old glamour photos above a row of heavy dark-wood booths. A pair of red high heels hang from the ceiling. The album-cover faces of Telly Savalas and big-hair-era Loretta Lynn watch from behind the bar, guarded by animal skulls and a formidable brassiere, while a television broadcasts nonstop trash-art video collages (courtesy of bar manager and film-splice auteur Donald).  But the best detail lies in the far corner, beneath the television, where an understated but jovial light-up sign reads simply, “The Backroom”.

        Follow the sign’s arrow through a closed door, past the catfish tank, and down a small set of stairs into the adjoining building, and the effect is, I imagine, like stepping into a particularly swinging speakeasy eighty years earlier—you hear the music, you see the light, and then the back room opens up and embraces you into a bustling mass of happy drinkers. On the hot August night I went—Old Time Jam Night, first Thursday of the month—the tin-ceiling room was easily ninety degrees inside, yet was packed with forty people, and almost as many were jamming “onstage.” Acoustic musicians dropped in and out of the mix of bluegrass and country-blues standards, laughing and bumping into each other, as members of the raucous crowd strolled up at various points to blow a harmonica, sing harmony, or just adjust a feeding-back microphone. Sing-alongs grew louder as the night (and booze) flowed, culminating in the signature set-ender, Leadbelly's “Good Night Irene”.  It's not every dive bar that, besides putting on such great events, also plays host to an art gallery and a literary magazine. And how often, really, do you get to witness two beautiful women (one black, one Russian, no less) get up and sing an impromptu duet of “I’ll Fly Away”?
God bless Brooklyn.

        And all the more reason to defend it.

         If Bruce Ratner’s proposed Nets stadium plan has its way, Freddy’s, The Backroom, and much of the surrounding mixed-ethnicity, working-class neighborhood will be demolished to make way for a traffic-choking arena and blocks of six-figure-salary luxury housing. The folks in Brooklyn, however, aren’t known for taking shit, and Freddy’s has become the headquarters and rallying point for the fight.  It's no secret that, these days, everywhere, local character and community are in constant danger of being sold out to the highest outside bidder (case in point: most of Manhattan). If ever there was a bastion of soul, uniqueness, and real, old-fashioned neighborhood community—in other words, everything we love about Brooklyn—this place is it, folks.

    Let’s hope—and help assure—that this place will become a landmark, and not a footnote, to the cause.

phone: 718-622-7035

www.freddysbackroom.com

Want to help save Freddy's? Check out Develop Don't Destroy

For more on the Nets Stadium issue, check out these stories:

http://www.sportsbusinessnews.com/index.asp?story_id=34520

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4154174/

http://experts.uli.org/Content/ResFellows/NewsClips_04/Clips_04RF_003.htm

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