When Felice Kirby took over Teddy's—the old Polish bar on the corner of North 8th Street—she knew any attempt to change the name would be futile. People would say, "You know that place that was Teddy's?" And everyone would say, "Yea, that's Teddy's."
And so, she left it the same when she bought it from aging Teddy and Mary Pruscik in 1987, with her then-boyfriend Glen Kirby and partner Lee Ornati.
When they ripped out the phone booth—nothing more than a wooden box—and left it on the street, they saw a line form outside to make disembodied phone calls and heard knocks on the door asking for change. This was a part of the neighborhood that couldn't let go.
As Teddy's faces another change of hands in the coming months, the neighborhood would do well to remember its stubborn predecessors. Kirby will pass the torch to new owners this spring, and while there are strict rules in the new lease about preserving Teddy's history, its home turf of Williamsburg has been radically transforming for years.
When Kirby came to the neighborhood in 1979 she was a community organizer trying to save buildings from abandonment or neglect. Part of her job was begging businesses to re-occupy the empty storefronts along Bedford Avenue, where Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks now pay premium rents. At the end of a long day, Teddy's was her local bar. When dinner time rolled around, Mary and Teddy would lock the door and say, "Watch the place." They'd be back in ten minutes with white bread and bologna for sandwiches.
A scene from 1959; original owners Teddy and Mary Pruscik can be seen at the far left (Sai Mokhtari/Gothamist)
Once a bustling industrial scene, Williamsburg was in a depression. Mary and Teddy hit hard times with the bar and none of their kids wanted to inherit it. Kirby had helped Mary with a situation with her tenants and after, Mary asked her if she wanted to buy the building. Kirby's boyfriend said it was a deal.
"I knew the community," Kirby said. "I said to my boyfriend, 'How can we do a successful business here? There's no money here. The people who drink here are in trouble, they're alcoholics.' And he said, 'No. Make it nice and nice people will come.'"
Kirby recalls that at the time, walking into a bar in Williamsburg was like walking into an inquisition.
"Everybody stopped talking to you and stared at you and gave you what Lee called the 'fish eye,'" she said. "Who are you? I don't know you. I didn't go to school with you. You're not from this block."
Kirby and her partners wanted to create a place open to everyone, from the minute they entered the door. They started by bringing back the 19th-century, workingman's tavern feel of the bar. When they bought Teddy's, it was a '50s place: formica and sleek surfaces only. A canvas awning was pulled down over the bar to cover the wood. The tin ceiling was painted black with neon orange squares and all the furniture was made of formica. After their day jobs, they put up scaffolding and re-exposed the wooden and stained glass elements so vital to Teddy's aesthetic today.
With a new authentic look and liquor license, they opened with a handpicked staff, including an old bartender and guy from the block, Eddie Doyle, who had been a dock worker down on the waterfront. Because Kirby knew so many people from her community organizing, she knew just how to include those who were being snubbed by others. Teddy's is now known for live music and popular jazz groups like Shorty Jackson, but their first regular event was a wild dance party.
"I knew all of these kids and they lived here, but they were always being harassed for break dancing on the streets of their own block because they were Puerto Rican," Kirby said. "Well we invited them to come in and spin."
A scene from one of Teddy's dance nights. That's noted tap dancer and choreographer Savion Glover on the right (Sai Mokhtari/Gothamist)
Teddy's held weekly dance parties with huge crowds and bass music until the neighbors finally had enough. Coyote Studios had opened on North 6th street and musicians REM, Joan Osbourne and Cassandra Wilson and others started to frequent the bar.
"We didn't even know there were all these young, poor budding artists all over the neighborhood," Kirby recalled. "The night we opened, they all came out of the woodwork. We knew the Polish immigrant working class people, but these other people, I'd never seen before."
Teddy and Mary were thrilled with the new crowds. Upon seeing the bar fill up, Teddy advised Kirby to buy cases of Finlandia vodka, the most popular drink that he served.
"Well, nobody ever drank a drop except Teddy," Kirby said. "It was different times now, a different kind of bar."
Former Brooklyn Brewery partner Jim Munson, who now runs Brooklyn Roasting Company. Brooklyn Brewery's first tap in the world was at Teddy's (Sai Mokhtari/Gothamist)
It was the kind of bar that would taste a new beer brought in by Steve Hindy from a place called Brooklyn Brewery. Kirby had never heard of craft beer before, but when Hindy asked for a tap, she said yes, and put it in next to Budweiser and Schlitz.
"It was a radical decision," she said. "A beer no one had heard of and a beer from Brooklyn. But we did it and it was their first tap in the world."
Kirby and her partners introduced a full dinner menu in 1992 in an effort to calm the rowdy bar scene. Kirby and her now husband had moved upstairs and were raising kids. It was always their dream for Teddy's to be a family place again, but this was a time when bars still got shaken down for protection money.
One day, Kirby recalled, a group of men entered Teddy's and sat at a table near the door. Kirby's daughter stood nearby in her new, prized winter parka waiting for some food to bring upstairs. The men started to aggressively order drinks from a waitress, and she asked for I.D.
They smashed glasses, locked the front door and started throwing anything in reach: salt and pepper shakers, glasses and ketchup bottles. A ketchup bottle shattered on the wall spraying all over Kirby's daughters jacket. She started to cry.
"There were always episodes in a bar back then, it's not like now," Kirby said. "The whole bar got up, came to the door, opened the door and pushed the guys out, and locked the door. Then we called the police. We talked to people and said, 'We're not paying any protection money. If you come and make a claim, we will come and testify and turn you into the police.'"
Teddy's was a meeting ground for the old and new residents of Williamsburg. Kirby said that the artists were quick to make friends, but occasionally there was an issue. One night, an artist got into a fight with a local truck driver. They took the fight outside and the artist got beaten up by several men, severely injuring one of his eyes. After he got out of the hospital, he did something contrary to the unspoken rules of neighborhood scuffles: he sued them for damages and medical bills.
"It was the talk of the bar," Kirby said. "This was a whole new world. People knew how to get a lawyer. They know how to go to court. That helped calm things down."
There were junkies that overdosed into their plates on New Year's Eve, fights, great music and eventually, it evolved into a place where people patiently stood in line, waiting for a table. Kirby said when she saw the lines, she and her husband laughed. Unlike today, people didn't wait in line to eat in Williamsburg.
"It was a little bit funny," she said. "It gave you a vision of what the future would look like."
All of Kirby's employees used to live in the neighborhood, now it's rare that any do. Most of the original regulars from Teddy and Mary's days have all died, and it's their children who pass through the bar. Mary and Teddy built a house on a vacant lot on Driggs Avenue to live out their retirement. Teddy died six months after Kirby and her partners took over the bar. Mary continued to live in the little house, and developed Alzheimer's.
Long after Teddy was gone, Mary would come wandering into the bar, looking for him. She would be wearing her house coat and bedroom slippers, asking for Teddy in the one place that made sense. Kirby would walk her home. Mary died last year.
Like Mary and Teddy, Kirby and her partners started to feel at odds with the new residents of Williamsburg. She said they're not the kind of people who seek out luxury towers and condominiums, and that's who's moving in. She said she loves to see new people and a once-again thriving neighborhood, but hopes Williamsburg doesn't lose its spark.
"First people came because they heard how cool and hip and character-filled Brooklyn was, and there was music and art and happenings," she said. "Now they're coming because it's luxurious. And some of that aspiration to just have luxury and coolness, without the grit, without the real people that made the scene produces a certain sterility. You kill the goose that laid the golden egg."
Kirby wanted to make sure the new buyer had roots within the neighborhood. Instead of listing with a broker, she used word of mouth, like Mary did over 25 years ago.
"We could certainly sell the whole building," she said. "It's worth a tremendous amount of money. But the kind of people who will pay that money are not people that I felt I would be proud of."
A local woman, Kate Buenaflor, who runs Soft Spot and Kilo Bravo and two partners will take over the space. It's a lot of history to take on, but Kirby said she wants to give them room to breathe. You don't pollute someone's birthing experience, she said.
"We'll be proud, and we'll be like Teddy and Mary," she said. "We'll be here and they'll be successful. It will be different than what we've done but it will honor the traditions. And that's a great way to move on."
