Closing Party Set For Famed Red Hook Bait & Tackle Bar

RED HOOK, BROOKLYN — The famed dive bar Red Hook Bait & Tackle will have one last party at the end of the month before the watering hole shuts its doors for good.

The 320 Van Brunt St. bar will throw a final party on Jan. 27 starting at 4 p.m. with their annual chili cook-off to honor former bartender Christopher Piscitelli, who died from brain cancer in 2014.

The bash will also have a silent auction for the bar's "Suck It" sign, live music by band like Sinkhole and a dance party that won't stop until "the cops come four times," according to the bar's website.

The owner of the bar previously told Patch that he's struggled to keep the lights on for the past year and, faced with a rent hike in 2019, decided he couldn't keep it afloat and will end his lease early.

"It's not as popular as it used to be, it's just the changing of the neighborhood," owner Barry O'Meara, 48, told Patch. "I can't keep it open for the good of the community if I'm not making a living off of it."

The bar first opened in 2003 and was badly damaged during Hurricane Sandy, which sent flood waters surging through its basement.

The spot eventually recovered, raising more than $20,000 on Kickstarter to reopen, but it couldn't survive the changing demographics around the neighborhood in the year's since.

"Now Red Hook is a little bigger and now there's different financial demographics in the neighborhood," said O'Meara. "It's been great, it's just changing and my business can't change with it."

Bait & Tackle was loved by many residents, who took to Twitter to mourn the shutdown.

"That place is a national treasure," Nick Loss-Eaton wrote on Twitter.

Image: Nicholas Rizzi/Patch