(Photo: Summerhill BK)
A new cocktail bar in Crown Heights recently issued a press release bragging about a wall covered in bullet holes, but the bullet holes might not even be real.
Summerhill, located at 673 Nostrand Avenue, has been open since June but sent out an email blast to try and drum up interest, talking up how its owner, “reformed corporate tax attorney” Becca Brennan, took “a long-vacant corner bodega (with a rumored backroom illegal gun shop to boot)” and turned it into a $12 cocktail joint.
Among other talking points, the restaurant pointed out a damaged wall and said, “Yes, that bullet hole-ridden wall was originally there and, yes, we’re keeping it.”
However, when Gothamist fact-checked the claims, Brennan had to admit: “Just looking at the angle I don’t know if that is possible that that’s a bullet hole. We call it [a bullet hole-ridden wall] because if you look at the history, someone seriously said, ‘Isn’t that the place where we could buy guns?’”
The “history” refers to an anonymous community post comment, but Brennan defended it as “cheeky,” the same word she used to describe the wallpaper in the bathrooms.
It’s a particularly troublesome email blast considering the history of the area, which has seen creeping gentrification over the past years as rents have been raised and new businesses try to move in. Summerhill, however, is the first to overtly play on the area’s violent history as a theme.
Brennan, however, claimed in a Hello Living profile that she had “plans to give back to the neighborhood she inhabits by hiring local residents and providing culinary training to those who may not otherwise have access to it.”
