Starlite Lounge Now A Cell Phone Store
Sad day in Crown Heights. The neighborhood’s historic Starlite Lounge at 1086 Bergen Street has been replaced by a Metro PCS. We had heard this awhile ago as a rumor from Nostrand Park while the building was under construction. But now it’s confirmed: one of Brooklyn’s oldest gay bars and its first black-owned gay bar…
Sad day in Crown Heights. The neighborhood’s historic Starlite Lounge at 1086 Bergen Street has been replaced by a Metro PCS. We had heard this awhile ago as a rumor from Nostrand Park while the building was under construction. But now it’s confirmed: one of Brooklyn’s oldest gay bars and its first black-owned gay bar is just another soulless storefront devoid of its past life.
The Starlite Lounge Says Goodbye [Brownstoner]
Actually, Benson, if it was an old dive bar filled with guys with American Legion hats, that had been there since the 1950’s, unchanged, that would have done it for me, white, black, gay or purple. The point is that it was a neighborhood institution. Of course the owner had every right to invoke his rights to have new tenants, especially since the Starlight was derelict in paying rent. And I’m sure Metro PCS is paying primo rent. But we can comment on and mourn the loss of an institution that did have historical and cultural precident. Soullessness is in thinking none of it matters, and its only commerce, because it really does. A neighborhood is made up of more than buildings.
if there’s now a big underserved gay bar demand set, a great spot to open a gay bar is that spot on corner of kingston and bergen
“Someone should go in there and tell those employees what that space used to be.”
Oh yeah. That will undoubtedly intrigue them to no end.
Or is it the daily-double of black and gay that vaults it to community institution status?
ROTFLMMFAO
“not caring about community instiutions”
Bxgrl;
Help me here. I thought it was a business that closed up. If it were just an old dive bar filled with old, white guys wearing stained American Legion caps, would it be a business, or a community institution? If it were just a gay bar, would it be a community institution? How about black-owned? Or is it the daily-double of black and gay that vaults it to community institution status?
There’s a gay bar in bangkok, on Soi 4, called Telephone. There are old fashion telepnones in front of every barstoool and you can phone anyone else in the bar.
Maybe they can all hang out at the cell phone store.
Benson: The “everyday changes in a living city” are what make living here interesting. Would you rather everyone just ignore what’s going on in their neighborhoods and write about the Kardashians?
What’s really soulless? not caring about community instiutions that actually served a real purpose. Like the Starlite did.