Moonshine
MOONSHINE
FOR NICK FORLANO, the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel's bumblebee-yellow exit disgorges not just harried traffic and noxious exhaust, but a whiff of reincarnation. In this blighted nether realm, severed by the BQE from Brooklyn proper, where the distinction between Red Hook and Carroll Gardens is as blurry as graffiti is abundant, Forlano has jumpstarted long-dead inebriation.
Back in January 2003, Forlano, 37, an html designer for lego.com, looked to escape coding building blocks. The solution? A real-life building with a ground-floor bar. The lifelong New Yorker found his ideal spot around Red Hook, but slow financing nixed the deal. Hardly discouraged, Forlano kept searching. His broker called, ecstatic about 317 Columbia St. He entered the long-locked storefront and "immediately fell in love."
Upstairs were two serviceable apartments. Downstairs sat Rocco's, a saloon for longshoreman and day-laborers from 1937 until 1975. Rocco's was a dusty Pompeii where Schaeffer Beer signs still urged consumption. An operational bar awaited a booze refuel. The wood-planked floor wondered about its next mopping. It wouldn't wait long.
"I put a bid in that day," says Forlano. A few months later, he owned 317. Toiling for lego.com by day, Forlano, a well-built man with a shiny shorn skull and Naugahyde-brown eyes, spent the next four months pounding the "Polaroid from the 70s" into 21st-century shape.
Inch-and-a-half-thick cement was sledgehammered to expose the brick walls. The bar's Formica coating was stripped and refinished. The decrepit kitchen-from which Rocco's served free lunches and Friday mussel fests-was ripped out and replaced with a pool room. Inch-wide wooden slats were removed from walls, one by one, thousands in all, as new Sheetrock was installed-and the same slats pounded back in place, one by one. Rocco's rusty tin panels torn away revealed an intact wooden ceiling.
"It was a momentous moment," Forlano says. "I knew I had to paint it firehouse red."
That's one of his few concessions when refurbishing ("Moonshine, a rustic Texas honky-tonk lost in Brooklyn.") Forlano strove to salvage original details, right down to the bronze footrest ringing the bar. Walk inside Moonshine, sidestep a silver bulldog statue-homage to Forlano's dual bar-going bulldogs, Topper and Boss-tickle the in-tune piano's ivories and savor a faithful recreation. Weathered floors are crammed with cracked peanut shells. The bar-length mirror reflects visages just like it did in 1937. And beer prices remain rooted in the Depression.
"Brooklyn's largest selection of can beers," touts Forlano, feature 14 crushable brews like Genny Creme Ale, Schlitz and Old Milwaukee priced to sell at a buck-fifty. Ante five bucks, and an ice-filled pail is loaded with four beers. Or, a fin pairs judgment-thrashing Jameson with a beer chaser.
"That," Forlano says, "is very popular."
So are the suds, which he handpicked with selfishness. "These are beers I drink," says Forlano, who previously was the assistant manager at the Bottom Line. "I wanted a bar where I could go in with money and leave with some, too. It's the Chinatown philosophy: sell cheap, but move in volume."
Friday nights, Moonshine moves enough beer to sate an army of can collectors. The bar is packed with locals-new and old. Since Moonshine's May opening, Rocco's past patrons have dropped in, one or two a week, to examine the renovated digs. "The owner's son even stopped by and gave us his blessing," Forlano says. As well as a grainy, black-and-white image of heyday-era Rocco's. The photograph hangs by the entrance, displaying suited beer sippers frozen in time, huddled around the sawdust-strewn bar, oblivious of Rocco's future as a hard-to-reach-destination bar.
Moonshine is, charitably, a 15-minute hike from the Carroll St. subway. A bodega and limo service share the block. But once drinkers trek over Carroll's BQE footbridge, they have little reason to leave Forlano's all-inclusive "Red Hook Club Med."
Inside sits Miss Pac-Man, Big Buck Hunter II and a flat-screen tv broadcasting sporting events, free peanuts (bargoers weekly devour a 50-pound bag), wireless internet and a cigarette machine. There's also a back patio where patrons puff and grill BYOM-bring your own meat.
This particular perk-the propane grill is stocked and gratis-has led to parties packing the patio each weekend. A group of locals even meets weekly for "Meat Mondays." Next year, Forlano will fashion abandoned Red Hook cobblestones into an enormous brick grill.
"That way we can cook twice the meat," he says. That means attracting twice the clientele. That may be easy. Down the road, Red Hook booms. Nearby Union Street houses hot spot Schnäck. Toward Atlantic Avenue, Columbia Street percolates with new restaurants. And here, on Columbia's trolley-tracked dead end, Forlano is hunkering in for the long haul.
"Some see this street as the beginning of things. Others see this as the end. All I know is that we're going to be here, serving cheap beer." o