Famed Red Hook Bar Bait & Tackle Will Close Next Month

RED HOOK, NY — The famed dive bar Red Hook Bait & Tackle will close next month after its owners said the watering hole stopped making enough money to cover the bills.

The owner of the 320 Van Brunt St. bar said he has struggled to keep the lights on for the past year. Faced with a rent hike in 2019, he decided he couldn't keep it afloat and will close at the end of January.

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

While the building that houses the bar sold for around $1.9 million a few years ago, O'Meara said the decision to close was based on the fact that he had to keep pumping his own money into the bar to keep the doors open.

His lease ends at the end of 2018 and his rent will switch to market rate, so he decided to cut his losses early and leave the neighborhood.

"It's a moment in time and it was f--king amazing," said O'Meara. "It's been a neighborhood living room for so long."

O'Meara, who was born in Ireland but moved to Red Hook 20 years ago, opened the spot in 2003 with several business partners. Over the years, he said the bar has cost him a marriage and several relationships, but O'Meara looks back fondly on how the spot became a hub for the community.

It was especially obvious after Hurricane Sandy sent storm surges into the neighborhood, flooding the bar's basement.

A Red Hook resident came in with two generators the day after and they used one to pump out the flood waters from the basement. They used to other to power the bar itself, turning on the Christmas lights and music inside. Nearly 80 people packed inside and shared their stories about surviving the hurricane.

"It's a memory I’ll always carry with me," O'Meara said. "It was a very, very special time."

The bar eventually recovered from that storm, raising more than $20,000 on Kickstarter to reopen, but the rising rents in the neighborhood priced some regulars out while others stopped coming in after they got married or had kids.

"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."

The bar plans to have one final send off on Jan. 20 with its annual chili bowl where O'Meara will hold a silent auction for some of the signs in the bar. After that, O'Meara plans to leave the neighborhood for a while and isn't sure if he'll return.

"I bought myself a one-way ticket to Colombia and I'm just going to travel for a year with no responsibilities," he said.

Image: Nicholas Rizzi/Patch