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Brooklyn nights hit different. Stashmaster: Bushwick’s Community-Driven Neighborhood Dispensary. Stash Responsibly.
Ridgewood nightlife is filled with beloved white ethnic institutions popular with people who wear skinny jeans, but would be embarrassed to identify as indie sleaze. Amma Cafe (68-64 Forest Ave.), an Albanian social club, has hosted alt-lit readings and NYFW afters. Across the street, the party continues at Relax Bar (68-17 Forest Ave.), this time an Albanian-owned bar and grill that somehow has lobster pasta and $7 glasses of wine.
Gottscheer Hall (6-57 Fairview Ave.), a nearby beer hall and community center for a niche group of German-speaking Slovenians, hosts karaoke nights where you can now hear awful renditions of Neutral Milk Hotel. Not to mention their honky-tonk nights, where Greenpoint invaders in vintage cowboy boots come to act as if Dolly Parton helped them discover their gender identity. IO Cafe (7-93 Fairview Ave.), a Romanian bar between Gottscheer and Relax, used to host Top Surgery, a weeknight party for the trans community, and is listed on Resident Advisor.
Going to these spots feels like you’re being let in on a secret, an older New York where strange bedfellows collaborate, bonding through vice. An owner or bartender forty years your senior could hit on you in accented (Slavic or New York) English and you’ll get a free shot of raki or Underberg out of it. You don’t have to sit through a Nowadays (56-06 Cooper Ave.) lecture on phone usage and consent. No one will admit it, but it feels like the movies.
But life in contemporary Ridgewood isn’t Little Odessa or Once Upon A Time In America. More than a third of Ridgewood residents are Hispanic. One Census tract, a near perfect rectangle bordered by Woodward Ave., St. Nicholas Ave., Grove St., and Gates Ave., identifies as 27% Ecuadorian, 10% Dominican, and 8% Mexican.
Within this tract sits Tequila Time (6-75 Seneca Ave.) and Seneca Fiesta (6-03 Seneca Ave.), two bars that play reggaeton until the wee hours of the night. Just outside of it is Cocina Mama Rosa (6-89 Seneca Ave.), a 24-hour Ecuadorian restaurant with rowdy karaoke nights.
Hispanic nightlife doesn’t bleed into my college-educated, underemployed milieu. Nobody wants to have tongue-in-cheek afters with these locals. This is diversity that doesn’t feel glamorous, diversity that contends with the reality of ICE raids off DeKalb and Myrtle-Wyckoff. You can’t tweet about “having Euro Summer at home.” You might have to learn how to order a drink in Spanish or Quechua.
If nightlife is community, then we have chosen who we want to be in community with and implicitly who we want to exclude. But this doesn’t have to be the case. We can continue to expand our reach without cannibalizing.
If you take the B38 a couple of miles to Bed-Stuy, you’ll arrive at Sugar Hill Supper Club (217 Nostrand Ave.), a staple in the Black community. It has hosted queer independent publishing parties and has gotten shout-outs from Eric Adams to prove his own bona fides.
Gentrification has bizarrely created an opportunity. Outer borough artsy types want the “real New York,” which can be beneficial to ethnic enclaves when done right. But this mindset cannot just extend to “spicy whites.” Our dollars can benefit vulnerable populations. A tequila shot should not be such a hard sell.
Ariel is a writer and librarian based in Ridgewood. She also co-edits Bushwick Burner Phone.
Photos by Andrew Karpan and Aaron Tomey.
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