“Goodnight to our outdoor dining seating💔 it’s the end of an era,” read a post some months ago by Bowen Goh, owner of the popular Myrtle Avenue club Mood Ring. For most of the past few years, the aesthetics of the longtime astrology-themed nightlife spot were comfortably balanced with the newish wooden benches under the noisy sounds of the overhead M trains.
“The cost of paying people to take it down, putting all those materials into storage, pay for the storage facility until the following spring, and then pay for habitat … pricing was too difficult for us,” Goh says now. After crunching the numbers, Goh says that a new structure would cost roughly $5,000, in order to follow new guidelines that were put in place back by the city in August.
These days, the remaining outdoor dining sets up can often be found with a cigarette butt, leftover trash, and a fly or two; for the last four years, the pandemic-era outdoor dining experience has given businesses the chance to operate in the free breeze. After the era of the CDC all-clears, outdoor dining has transformed the streets into new hangout spots when the weather is nice, or an architecture of corners for a quick smoke break. It even inspired an iconic cover of New York magazine in 2022.
The new guidelines say that shacks must be weatherproof, safe from vehicles, no longer enclosed, and demountable, so owners can stow the fixture away during winter months. The city’s ‘‘Dining Out NYC’ program finally put out its official rules in the place of the pandemic-era relative free-for-all.
But with a $1,050-$2,100 fee to set up and, a strict April 1 to November 29 season, some, like Goh’s Mood Ring, in Bushwick don’t see this as a viable financial investment.
“Nothing about this makes sense to me,” says Spencer Nelson, manager and co-owner of 101 Wilson, a small graffiti-decorated dive bar. Nelson’s outdoor set mimics the grungy DIY spirit of the small bar, which can get quite stuffy on a busy Saturday night.
“It doubles our capacity and no one causes any trouble,” claims Nelson, who says he went to a local community board meeting to understand more of the situation but says he didn’t get met with many answers. Nelson says that he has applied for the permit but still feels upset by having to later take it down in November.
Adam Sacks, one of the owners of the Bushwick Avenue dive Rebecca’s, says he’s procrastinating taking down his bar’s outdoor dining set.
“I’ve went and made a little side business the last couple weeks tearing down other people’s outdoor dining structures,” said Sacks. Now, Rebecca’s is set to transfer over to a sidewalk cafe for extra space instead of readjusting their roadway dining.
The newest roadway cafe at Rebecca’s, unlike other DIY spots, is a bit more refined compared to its original 2020 set up. It’s packed with sturdy metal lined tables, and electrical wiring for fans, all of this is thanks to Pete Davidson; Sacks says someone driving a truck for a movie production the former SNL comedian was working had team accidentally wrecked their setup. “Some truck guy just drove and turned way too early,” said Sacks.
Some odd changes later, one of the area’s more advanced seating capacity will be leaving the block. “People kind of stopped investing in them to keep them… I really didn’t take care of it that much this summer, and it’s kind of falling apart,” says Sacks, who is repurposing the torn down materials to local community gardens.
Starting November 30, all roadway structures are set to disappear regardless of permit holdings, vastly changing the street and space of Brooklyn once again. While a year-round sidewalk cafe set-up might be useful for corner spots like Rebecca’s, other spots likely won’t see the hassle and will likely continue to forfeit extra seating for the near future.
But maybe this winter, when you’re smoking a cigarette with a mitten next to a cold metal table, you will long for the faraway days of 2023, where outdoor heaters were keeping the party going outside.
Photos taken by Moses Jeanfrancois for Bushwick Daily.
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