Okay, so Gowanus Lounge couldn’t help but notice that the Brooklyn Brewery logo was prominent in the ads of the Sonic Youth/Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Iron & Wine and Neko Case shows at McCarren Pool. We have already noted that the Clear Channel Communications (okay, Live Nation) concerts at McCarren are not entirely popular with community members who hoped for a different use of the historic pool site. (IE, pool–the New York Post returns to this theme today). Also, we are aware of Brooklyn Brewery owner Steve Hindy’s support of the Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards Project. And of those that have suggested boycotting the Brooklyn Beer.
The Brewery is on North 11th Street in Williamsburg and has been shopping for new space, possibly on the Carroll Gardens-Red Hook waterfront. The irony, of course, is that Brooklyn was once of the country’s brewing capitals, and the industry’s heart was in East Williamsburg/Bushwick in a 12-block stretch between Bushwick Avenue and Lorimer Street that housed nearly a dozen breweries. Overall, North Brooklyn once produced nearly ten percent of the beer consumed in the U.S. including Rheingold and Schaefer. The site of the latter’s brewery is now Schaefer Landing, the luxury condo, in South Williamsburg.
So, does it matter if Brooklyn Brewery suds is the brew that anti-Atlantic Yards, anti-McCarren Pool concerts Brooklynites love to hate? Since the brewery is clearly cutting deals that will help it sell as much beer as possible and since marketing is about raising visibility, does controversy oddly play into Brooklyn Brewery’s hands?
Most likely. Even item is, in its own little way, PR for Brooklyn Brewery.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Gringcorp // Jun 12, 2006 at 12:18 pm
It’s bloody weird where Brooklyn Beer turns up these days – you can get tt in many parts of the UK by now. It probably has a better global reach than Junior’s cheescake as THE Brooklyn brand.
I think that Hindy’s never really traded much on the ethical aspects of his operations, so much as the stylised Dodgers-logo nostalgia for 1950s Brooklyn that Spike Lee films were meant to banish.
Sorry, I was about to digress there. It’s fairly clear that the earnest grassroots microbrew ethos that’s quite common in beer circles isn’t where the brewery is at. It’s branding, branding, branding. It just happens that, frustratingly for a boycotter like me, the stuff does taste good.
2 glitch p-udding // Jun 12, 2006 at 12:52 pm
it’s a brewery. there’s more to it–and anything else–than whether it supports ratner or not…or whether or not they want a pool to have water in it.
for the bottom line is that they make an outstanding product that brooklyn should be proud of. they don’t seem to do anything overtly evil. hell…they even power the brewery with wind power!
we’re not talking about walmart here.
3 dalton // Jun 12, 2006 at 7:30 pm
I saw at least a few Brooklyn Brewery bike jerseys at the Tour de Brooklyn last week. Gotta find out where to get one of those!
4 wild cherry sara // Jun 14, 2006 at 12:26 pm
there’s always sixpoint
5 NoLandGrab // Jun 15, 2006 at 3:18 am
Brooklyn Brewery’s Steve Hindy is a supporter of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Concervancy. That’s the group that wants to build condo towers in the park to make it “self-sustaining,” though you’d never know it from the name.
Someone should ask Hindy why the Brooklyn Bridge Park needs to be self-sustaining (it’s a park for heavens sake!), but Ratner’s $3.5-billion arena/high-rise project should receive over a billion in taxpayer money.