Beast Bar in Prospect Heights Closed This Weekend
Longtime Prospect Heights staple Beast Bar closed its doors this weekend, DNAinfo reports, celebrating a decade in the neighborhood with a “Last Supper” goodbye party yesterday. They’d been in there spot on Vanderbilt Ave. for a decade, and owner/chef Debra Bicknese told the site, “I need a break. It’s a definite choice. We weren’t muscled out of anything.”
The building’s reportedly in talks to be sold to a new owner who’s committed to maintaining its historical details (it’s a landmarked building with a bar that dates back to 1912), and Bicknese said, “Everybody’s happy and sad. People have been coming out of the woodwork. People from the last 10 years have been popping in.”
Bicknese herself might be taking a Brooklyn hiatus, and said, “I have zero plans. A road trip, an adventure of some sort… going to take the summer off. I really want to take a road trip with my dog.”
It’s sad to see them go, but it looks likely that the new owners will also be opening up a bar on site, and anyway, always nice to hear a closing story that doesn’t involve a greedy landlord doubling or tripling rents.
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.
