This is a picture of the tasting room just before closing, when the only lights we leave on are the grow lights for the plants. From the street, it might almost appear that we’re up to something nefarious in here, but more often than not people thank us for making them feel safer when they walk by at night, as it’s the only light shining on this part of what can be a scary, deserted block….

It’s true that I hadn’t thought it out. We had an electric kettle and plenty of spoons and I was dreaming like a child playing store of all the things we could serve. With a jar of honey and a carton of milk I thought we’d be set, but every move in business seems to require a license and a plan….

This Halloween, a day that normalizes the masks we’ve been wearing for almost two years now, I’ve had a chance to reflect on the moments when our other masks come off, and we reveal the people we really are.

I still feel the thrill of standing on the other side of the bar after nearly two years. The ding of a cash register being popped open has a different sound when heard from this side (the sound of success); the purr of under-counter refrigerators a secrecy and promise (of an illicit stash).  Then there’s the view of the world that’s microscopically sharper when everything is your responsibility, from the napkin that falls to the floor or the leaf that blows in on the wind to the presence of the police outside the projects for the past 24 hours.

A good bar serves its neighborhood in both deliberate and accidental ways. We’re the meeting places for celebratory drinks and solitary rituals just as often as we are the places to wait out a storm—the way stations between wherever you’ve been and wherever you’re going…

The thing about evolving—and I’m pretty sure Darwin would agree with me—is that the degree to which you can change is deeply influenced by what you were at the beginning, and who you meet along the way.

Like the sirens on the ambulance that goes blaring by, announcing some poor soul’s fate—perhaps we’ll make it, perhaps we won’t. I suppose all businesses start out this way, but after an inauspicious opening on February 29, 2020—exactly two weeks before (former) New York State Governor Cuomo shut down all restaurants and bars to slow the first wave of COVID-19—we ‘re taking stock.