This Bud’s for you?
It might be, if you join a nascent, poorly organized and, let’s face
it, uphill boycott of a tasty product churned out by Williamsburg’s
own Brooklyn Brewery.
This week, several opponents of Bruce Ratner’s arena, residential
and commercial mega-project, called for the boycott, citing brewery owner
Steve Hindy’s increasingly public support for the developer.
It started last week, when Hindy invited arena booster Borough President
Markowitz, Ratner vice president Jim Stuckey, former NBA star Darryl “Chocolate
Thunder” Dawkins and four Nets cheerleaders to the brewery to watch
the Nets-Cavaliers game on TV and open a few brewskies.
Days after the party, the blogosphere slammed Hindy, calling him a toady
and suggesting that his Brooklyn Brown Ale should be called “Brown-Nose
Ale” for the manner in which he was supposedly sucking up to Ratner,
who already sells Hindy’s products at Nets home games in New Jersey.
“Hindy is desperate to be part of Ratner’s hoped-for Brooklyn:
bland high-rises, national-chain box-stores, and a paucity of small Brooklyn
businesses like Hindy’s,” wrote Fans for Fair Play, an anti-Atlantic
Yards Web site, in calling for the boycott. Another blogger, gumbyfresh,
posted his own open letter to Steve Hindy, in which he first praised the
very product that he now hopes Brooklynites will shun.
“Your support for moving the Nets arena to the Atlantic Yards site
is wrong on so many levels,” the open letter continued. “The
plan calls for the demolition of Freddy’s bar [which] sells consistently
drinkable Brooklyn Lager at a very reasonable price.
“In the meantime, I will be switching to Rheingold’s inferior
product. This will hurt me more than it hurts you.”
On that last point, Hindy certainly agrees.
“So far, this ‘boycott’ has not hurt me one bit,”
the brewer told The Brooklyn Papers. “Freddy’s bar, for example,
is still selling Brooklyn Lager, and I thank them for it.”
A call to Freddy’s bar, which is at the epicenter of Ratner’s
24-acre project, revealed this telling piece of news: “Selling it?
Of course we’re still selling it,” a bartender confirmed. “Brooklyn
Lager is our most-popular beer. I just sold one a second ago!”
But even if the boycott hasn’t hurt Hindy’s bottom line, he
did sound concerned, mostly that bloggers and rabid project opponents
would sully what has always been his company’s good name.
But he called the Brooklyn Brewery “boycott” ironic because
it seeks to draw attention to the supposed shortcomings of the Atlantic
Yards project by damaging a “homegrown Brooklyn business.”
“And the other irony is that I’m currently looking for new brewery
space because I’m being displaced from Williamsburg the very same
way that opponents of Atlantic Yards say [Ratner] would be displacing
them.
“And unlike the Atlantic Yards residents, no landlord or developer
is helping us find another home at the same price,” he added.
Scott Turner, who runs the Fans for Fair Play Web site, said Hindy’s
call for sympathy was a week late and a pint short.
“I have a tub full of crocodile tears for Steve Hindy’s displaced
brewery,” he said. “He has hitched his wagon to the very people
who want to make Brooklyn more generic, more corporate — the very
‘homegrown’ story his company used to stand against.”
Turner claimed “hundreds” of people were already asking bartenders,
“Whattya got besides Brooklyn?” But he admitted that his numbers
were “unscientific.”
“It’s really hard to organize an actual boycott,” he said.
