A Pint By The Sea

Liberty Heights Tap Room

34 Van Dyke St. (Dwight St.), Red Hook

718-246-8050

There are two reasons to travel to the far edge of nowhere, also known as Red Hook, where crumbling grain silos dot the waterfront like arthritic gray fingers and streets remain paved with brick. Reason one? Your stomach.

Weekends from spring to fall, Red Hook Park teems with Latin American soccer. The real action starts on the sidelines. From morning to dusk, dozens of chefs toil over fiery grills and griddles. They serve mouth-charring dishes ranging from tacos de carne to green salsa?drenched pupusas to mango spiked with cayenne.

Reason two? Your stomach. Take a five-minute amble from the grassy park to a tumbleweed-blown intersection. There, cattycorner from a school-bus depot (and the abandoned shipyards, where Ikea has proposed a new outpost), you'll see a red and blue neon sign advertising the Liberty Heights Tap Room.

Fifty years ago, this spot was Otto's, one of more than 20 bars serving Red Hook's shipyards. Men worked. Men drank. On the Waterfront was made. Then came the 60s. Trucks overtook ships as the primary means of transporting goods. Jobs evaporated. Shipyards started dying. The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which severed Red Hook from Brooklyn proper, effectively cast the neighborhood into the ocean.

The sprawling Red Hook Housing Projects started breeding poverty, violence and 25 percent unemployment. The Hook became a devalued wasteland. But in New York City's Great Millennial Land Grab, cheap property is a potential goldmine. In 1996, Steve Deptula purchased the old Otto's building. In 2001, he scratched together the Liberty, Red Hook's first new sit-down establishment in several generations.

Taking advantage of a sun-soaked evening, I bike to the tap room. (For the pedaling-averse, the B77 bus stops outside the bar.) Though the bar is an oasis of sustenance (the brick-oven kitchen crafts crisp margherita pizzas ($11) and half-pound burgers ($8) that soak their fat rosemary ciabatta rolls), I hope to drink beer on the roof and absorb the Manhattan skyline. A grandfatherly gentleman with a black sweatshirt and bushy eyebrows informs me the roof is not yet open.

The man introduces himself as Paul Brown. He would like to get me a drink. I once-over the room-with well-painted brick walls, pool table and bright windows, it's a handsome and airy space-and entrench at the bar. An iced gin and tonic sounds swell, but a cool, fresh beer sounds better. How fresh?

Walk past the bathrooms and out the rear door to find a microbrewery. Deptula built it in 1997, eventually pouring the beers at the Liberty. There was one snag: no customers. "I was making beer no one was drinking," he says. To save costs, the microbrewery closed. A couple years ago, several brewers approached Deptula with an idea that became Sixpoint Craft Ales. They reopened Deptula's microbrewery in 2004 and started fashioning fine Sixpoint stouts, lagers and ales, five of which are now on tap. Paul pours a taster of Otis (stout), but the fresh bread-like Brownstone brown ale suits me best. At $4.50 a pint, the price is as palatable as the beer is delicious.

Brown is an ideal Red Hook emissary. The 63-year-old has bartended more than 40 years, including a five-year stint at Upper East Side celeb haunt Elaine's (just get him started on Rod Stewart, who once slipped Brown a $300 tip). He lives in Clinton Hill but was raised in Red Hook in a "white ghetto" near Van Brunt Street, not far from the impending waterfront Fairway grocery store. These days, "Van Brunt is another world," Brown says ruefully, with the wide boulevard dotted with charming bistros and cupcake purveyors. "The people over there usually don't come down here. Why visit desolation?"

That's why Ikea excites Deptula. He's energized by the prospect of 500 hungry, thirsty construction workers flooding the area. "We could use the business," he says. "If I didn't own the building, I would've been evicted two years ago." I can see why.

Tonight, Liberty is quiet, with a handful of customers. On the weekends, though, the rear room's stage welcomes reliable country and rock acts, attracting customers from Williamsburg, Park Slope and Clinton Hill. The bar's location-a long baseball toss from the Atlantic Basin, 30 minutes from the subway-serves as both a detriment and the best reason for sipping a well-crafted pint. Here on the fringe, the humble-jumble disappears. But Brown also pines for a vanishing act of a different kind.

"It's time for Red Hook's negative stigma to go away."