A neighborhood establishment wants you to come in and get completely wasted — and you can thank Bruce Ratner for it.
The JRG Restaurant and Fashion Cafe — which is on Flatbush Avenue between Atlantic and Fifth avenues — is having a hedonistic last hurrah before it is torn down to make way for Ratner’s Atlantic Yards mega-development.
The bar, which is in the way of the Frank Gehry–designed arena, is liquidating its stock in a $30, all-you-can drink bacchanal.
And rest assured — that cash won’t buy you mere swill.
“It’s all premium liquor — we’re not talking house wine,” said the bar’s general manager Ray Rodriguez. Even better, the $30 gets you 15 percent off all food, which is a substance sometimes ingested during alcoholic binges.
Like any decadent exercise, this one is tinged with a sense of fatalism.
The liquoricious deal will last only as long as the bar-cum-restaurant-cum-fashion house does — through the end of the month.
That’s because the premises are owned by Forest City Ratner, which has said it intends to start demolition for its 16-tower development as early as next month.
On a recent Tuesday evening, the ploy to pour liquor into the throats of eager Brooklynites wasn’t going so well. The bar was empty, save a few diners and a couple of reporters.
Rodriguez attributed the slow night to the just-beginning snow, and of course, to the fact that it was a Tuesday. But he was optimistic that business would pick up again once the streets became passable and the long President’s Day weekend encouraged lots and lots of toasts to our former leaders.
Rodriguez insists the bar will relocate rather than just close down.
“We’ll come back even stronger,” he said.
He also claimed that JRG Restaurant would move into the Nets arena when it is completed in 2009 — though Forest City Ratner would not comment.
After all the binge-drinking is done, Rodriguez will throw one last two-day bash on March 3 and 4.
