Despite 38 television sets, 10-cent wing nights*, 48 tap beers plus nearly 80 bottles, the owners of Croxley Abbey in Williamsburg — the sixth location in the Croxley Ales chain of sports bars — say they’re not trying to appeal to frat guys.
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Welcome to Berry Hill, Where Williamsburg Looks More Like Murray Hill
On the G train to Nassau Avenue, a guy in a backwards baseball cap and a “Most Dope” t-shirt tells his friends, dressed in button-downs and popped collars, that their stop is next.
“I love Brooklyn!” he yells, getting off the train.
Their destination is Berry Park, where on the rooftop strung with Christmas lights there’s a view of the invisible line dividing Williamsburg and Greenpoint.
The night scene around Berry Park doesn’t exactly fit with either of those neighborhoods. In fact, it’s much closer to a certain neighborhood in Manhattan.
Members of Hold Steady, Spoon Bring Minneapolis to Manhattan Avenue
Bobby Drake in Lake Street’s bathroom. (Photo: Jesse Sposato)
What do a bunch of band dudes from the Midwest, who now live in Greenpoint, do when not making music together? Easy: they open a bar. Bobby Drake (The Hold Steady, w/o.), Frank Bevan (w/o.), Rob Pope (Spoon), Eric Odness (The Wanted, Primitive Weapons) named Lake Street after a major thoroughfare in Minneapolis, and they want it to be reminiscent of the bars they used to hang out at back home – “kind of old-man divey but cool bars, you know, where they could be sketchy, but not really,” Drake told Bedford + Bowery during a chat at the nearly finished space at 706 Manhattan Avenue, near Norman.
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