A reader tipped us off to the sad news that the Moonshine Bar on Columbia Street near Hamilton in Brooklyn is closing. According to their Facebook page, the place only has two weeks left.
It's a good bar, with a nice beer selection and friendly bartenders. They used to have free peanuts in the shell until the health department made them stop. And there was once a policy where you could bring your own meat and cook it on their grill out back. Moonshine also has one of the only working cigarette machines in the City.
But the thing that made me love the bar was the bar itself. It was the original, ornate back bar from when the place opened as a saloon shortly after Prohibition. The space had been closed for a couple decades when the owners of Moonshine resurrected the interior. As it stands, it's the only extant bar space remaining from Columbia Street's old days as a commercial strip. Columbia used to be lined with bars a century ago. This is the only connection remaining to that boozy past.
"They used to have free peanuts in the shell until the health department made them stop."
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting. I know of another place that used to do this. I wonder of how many of these seemingly random changes in how commercial establishments treat their customers are really dictated by government bureaucracies.
So why is it closing?
ReplyDeleteAnother sad story....I took a look at some of the Yelp reviews and Moonshine looks like a fun place. The bit about the peanuts kills me. With all of the stuff going on in NYC....all of the strings Bloomie has pulled to help out "business" ..... with all of the truly rotten stuff that gets passed off as food around town...and the health department condemns free peanuts in the shell? Even when I lived in what some consider the proto-typical nanny state of California, two of my favorite bars featured free peanuts in the shell, and the floor would be absolutely covered with husks by the end of the evening. The places were practically landmarks! So I'm really glad that NYC is keeping me safe from peanuts!! Nuts is the operative word, here, I'm afraid.
ReplyDeleteif the health department made them stop giving out free peanuts, then why are places like rodeo bar and five guys allowed to give them out?
ReplyDeleteGood question. Five Guys dispenses the peanut in a very controlled way. At Moonshine, it was a much more haphazard affair, with lot of peanut shells on the floor.
ReplyDeleteLong ago in another life I was at the Rodeo Bar listening to friend's band play. I was eating peanuts from the shell and stacking them in a pile on the table in front of me with the intention of scooping them up and throwing them away at some point.
ReplyDeleteSuddenly some woman across the table from me (friend-of-a-friend, perhaps) reached over and swatted the whole pile to the floor as if to say "dude, relaaaaaax!!!!"
Little did I know she was committing a future crime.
For those of you that dont know, the Health Dept. in NYC are pretty much Nazis to any bar that isnt serving ginger infused green tea martinis or restaurants that arent some type of over priced fusion concepts. The DOH and ridiculous rents are pretty much why most of the good bars have closed.
ReplyDeleteLived next to this place for a couple years, sad to see a great bar go under. They seem to want all bars in NYC to be Starbucks of booze. Smfh
ReplyDelete