Frog

358 Marcus Garvey Blvd. Brooklyn, NY 11221

Bed Stuy is home to the newest, coolest, outsidest, presumably natural, wine bar in New York City.  The name Frog is more appropriate than I initially noticed as a Google maps search reminded me Bed Stuy is home to places like Turtles, The Swan, Coyote Club, one restaurant named Bunny and another called Mama Fox, and even Lone Wolf and Birdy’s aren’t too far away. Frog sounds funny in a French accent. The term arose in England whence some of the French aristocracy, having fled the Revolution, disparagingly referred their ousters as “les grenouilles” or “the frogs.” Their new English neighbors found this funny a just decided to call all French people that. Frog is also home to the freest pool table this side of Broadway Junction though based on my experiences of Paris perhaps a foosball table would have been plus Gaulois.

I visited Frog this past Saturday to sit in the backyard and enjoy the warm 60* weather.  A block before I ran into my friend Aisa, owner of hotspots like Mr. Fong’s, Casino, and wine bar Casetta.  “What are you doing over here, you headed to Frog?”  “Yup you just leaving?”  “Sure am, you going for the backyard?”  “Yessir!”  My girlfriend noted he seemed the happiest she’d ever seen him.  “Is this because he’s far away from work?”  “Maybe geographically but something tells me his never quite too far from work.”  I live and operate in the downtown area known as Dimes Square, which I will henceforth stylize as DS2.  There are almost always people walking around, entering and exiting, sitting out front, walking in the street - it’s a busy area.  Bed Stuy on the corner of Marcus Garvey and Jefferson isn’t particularly so, so I was surprised, naively, to open the door to a raucous Saturday crowd; the bar and its interior seating totally full.  We wound our way to the backyard, which appears to seat around 75 aka the maximum municipally mandated capacity of, say, Clandestino.  73 people, of the neighborhood I may be incorrectly assuming, have taken 73 chairs and kindly left the last 2 open for myself and Vanessa, my aforementioned girlfriend.  We take our table at the center of the scrum.  A couple to my right consoles their baby which is frowning adorably having closed its tiny finger is their papa’s sunglasses case.  A man to Vanessa’s right puffs upon a cigar and wears a medium weight French chore coat befitting the tepid shade of this late afternoon spring day.  A pair of women and a tall sommelier wrestle with the fence between Frog and the property next door as they saw down a portion of the barrier to allow ease of passage from one backyard to the other.  The tall somm informed the leering eyeballs and craning necks in the vicinity they have the lease next door and are opening the second yard because it’s gonna be busy tonight.  On the strength of Frog #1’s success they have expanded to build a venue of some sort nextdoor which he elaborates they are in post-production on.  He does so in his outside voice as the din of the exterior grounds is quite a bit to compete with.  I look to the back windows of the apartments above and wonder if any are available.  Not because I love the idea of wearing earplugs to bed rather because if I could move in and make a few well timed noise complaints I bet I could get them to offer me a free tab at the bar, or heck even a rent subsidy, it absolutely would not be the first time a bar has done so to avoid a record of civil demerits from an irritable tenant above.  So great is the cost of said referrals at any bar’s next liquor/community board meeting I have heard of bars offering running tabs, to pay moving costs, renting the apartment above them just to appease the landlord.  I can’t imagine the venue next door is going to make that easier.

My first real visit here was a few days prior when I wandered in solo, reintroduced myself to the bartenders, and I got on the pool table to play a few miserably subpar games.  The table is delightfully free of charge as the side door window has been gloriously liberated to allow equal access for any and all of those who share in the interest to shoot. However, I blame Frog for my poor performance as no one should be playing pool at a wine bar; spiritually speaking.  Nothing about the two go hand in hand.  A Miller High Life and a cigarette and a pool stick somehow all in the same hand?  Sure, no problem.  But a lightly chilled red with fruity notes and mute tannins? Surely such a beverage had distorted my center of gravity or depth perception. 

There’s really nothing for me, nor you, to gain from me complaining too much about Frog because, although the wine is all $16ish and the cheapest thing on the menu is one of two varieties of forgettable beer for $10, it’s quite a nice place to visit.  So, instead I will complain about a something else seemingly separate but in my estimation ultimately to blame and the reason a bar in the middle of Bed Stuy is successfully charging $30 to become slightly tipsy.  In the fall of 2020 I went to a fall harvest party in a private wood in Bryn Mawr Pennsylvania. The party was hosted on this land by a billionaire family, who owned it, with a last name also given to a fashion company that you would likely recognise.  I left Manhattan, in the car of a friend, wearing whatever I would normally be wearing on a fall weekend eve: black slacks, black sweater over a black button up, black corduroy blazer, and black leather lace ups.  When we got to the grounds everyone else looked like they stepped out of a Double RL lookbook.  I felt like the step dad character from a 90’s family comedy where the twin girls go to their real dad’s ranch somewhere and the cityslicker steps in cow dung when exiting his limousine.  The party was great. In attendance were a cornucopia of autumnal delicacies, trash cans full of iced macrobrews, tables of natural wine but the not so good kind, even a few bands were shipped in from Bushwick, but that’s not the point.  The point came days later.  I was delegated the task of carrying the forgotten laptop of the host family’s adult male offspring back to New York City with me on Amtrak.  I remembered meeting him briefly in the woods: work boots, Carhartt pants, hunting style jacket, vintage dad hat.  I sat in front of Dimes Deli on the bench, him having texted me to meet him there, waiting to return to him the laptop in my tote bag wrapped in a sweater as it was given to me sans case.  A tall handsome young man walked up to me and asked “Alex?”  I didn’t recognize him in front of me for a moment as his appearance had changed: sleek Chelsea boots, plaid wool pants, trend vintage tee, and one of those long heavy weave wool coats that have been the reliable signifier of expensive taste for the past couple winters.  I looked up and saw the attractively coiffed 20 something before me and realized something I hadn’t previously.  I have been in New York over 9 years now but I am far from my original home in California.  I don’t have multiple wardrobes, just clothes.  I live in this area of the city out of habit and necessity.  This kid lives in Bushwick, for the time being, but shops in some other city’s version of SoHo.  I say all this to say the crowd in the backyard of Frog this past Saturday reminded me of either the adult children of the rather wealthy and even very rich, or in fact the parents themselves, that grew up in affluent suburbs or on an Upper Side, went to private schools, and now live in brownstones complain about their parents cars getting tickets when they occasionally borrow them and try street parking without the genealogical timesense of the locals.  I really didn’t get the impression that anyone here stayed in the city with a couple roommates during the first 6 months of the pandemic.  They can all afford $16, which is fine for them and is the same price as anywhere else to be fair, but that’s why the wine costs that much.  That and a normal bar makes most of its profit on well’s alcohol; shots and Gin and tonics and vodka sodas.  A bottle of well’s tequila is let’s say $17 for a litre which is like 32 oz which is like 16 shots aka drinks each for around $10.  That a materials cost of $1.20 sold at a 8x mark up.  This is why we can’t have nice things.  Or rather why they cost $16. The old restaurant adage is “the first glass pays for the bottle;” though the glass is not 333ml.  Anyway, I handed the kid his 13” Macbook Pro and he walked off with it in his bare hand like Kanye West in 2016. Also weirdly there was a fight at that harvest party.

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