Friends and Lovers Wins BKMAG’s Readers’ Choice Award for Best Nightlife

By Arielle Lana LeJarde

“We once kicked out Björk.” That’s what Diana Mora, the owner of Friends and Lovers, recounts when asked about her favorite memories from the bar and venue she opened at 641 Classon Avenue over a decade ago. “She came in and decided to get all Björk-y and started touching all the fruits behind the bar. My manager was like, ‘Get out. We don’t care who you are.'” It’s a uniquely unpredictable and undeniably New York story you’d only find at a place like Friends and Lovers, the beloved Brooklyn bar, placed squarely between Prospect Heights and Crown Heights, that won BKMAG‘s Reader’s Choice Award for “Best Nightlife.”

Mora grew up on the border of Queens and Nassau County. As a kid, she’d cut class and hop on the Long Island Railroad to explore open mics at the old Knitting Factory, formerly on Leonard Street, and take in all different types of talent. By the time she was 16, she was a regular at Limelight’s infamous New York City location, situated on Sixth Avenue and West 20th Street. “In retrospect, I realized I was being exploited,” she says. “But at the time, I was just hanging out with cool people, being super sober, and just absorbing the culture.” She was raised in those crucial and iconic nightlife institutions, like Limelight, Tunnel, and Twilo, and they served as the inspiration for her own space, which is not short on that “Old New York” spirit.

(Photo by Cedrick Hoyle)

But what really pushed her to make it happen? “My boyfriend broke up with me and said something crazy like, ‘You’ve been talking about a bar, but you’re not doing anything about it.” So, Mora took the money she’d put aside from a stint at Vitamin Water as the company’s first marketer, and finally did something about it.

Friends and Lovers officially opened its doors in 2014 with a wide range of parties and artists spanning generations and genres. From the very beginning of its stay on Classon, the venue’s booking theory has been simple, inclusive, and quality-driven. On any given night, it could be a temple for cherished eras—blessed by NYC legends like Easy Mo Bee, Pharoah Monch, Stretch Armstrong, DJ Jazzy Jay, or Maseo from De La Soul—or a dojo for talented young musicians, working on their chops and stage presence in front of intimate crowds.

Run P., the venue’s Programming Director since 2021, started DJing at the bar in 2017. He grew up on Staten Island, but had family in Crown Heights, so he was familiar with the area and understood how to protect the essence of this rare cut of bar/venue/club in a rapidly changing stretch of the borough, while also allowing it to expand. “I’m really bringing diversity when it comes to people who play there and the patrons across live music, comedy, and dance parties,” Run P. tells me over Zoom. “We serve everything from dancehall to disco with everyone from queer club kids to drill rappers and everybody in between.” Run P. also recognizes that, unlike other similar-sized live music spots where partygoers just pull up to stare down a DJ they follow, Friends and Lovers is a place where you can still meet like-minded people and strike up a chat with a perfect stranger.

(Photo by Cedrick Hoyle)

Andre Gee, a music writer and regular who lives nearby in Prospect Heights, confirms P’s scan on the bar’s energy and atmosphere. “Damn-near once a weekend, I find someone to talk to and have a deep-ass conversation with in there,” Gee says. “It feels mad natural, and it’s happened with multiple people, multiple times.”

For Gee and Peter Berry, another writer frequently passing through who lives on the Crown Heights side of Classon, going to the bar is always on the weekend checklist. “It’s called Friends and Lovers,” Berry tells me. “And it lives up to its name.”