The Village of Haverstraw : The Bricktown Brewery & Frida Debacle

Good morning everybody! How are you?!

Even Frida Kahlo herself would have puked if she ate there…..let me begin.

When Bricktown Brewery closed down, I was very upset, not that one of my favorite restaurants closed but, that I knew this would be another unfair black eye to the Village of Haverstraw. What I mean by that is that people said, “Boy, if a restaurant on Main St. in that location can’t survive, nothing will…” which is not a fair statement. However, Bricktown was far from perfect; no live music, food was boring, service was poor, no ambiance, no effort to connect with Nyack dj’s or anybody really, when given the opportunity.

So, for over a year and a half Bricktown Brewery sat empty and lonely for everyone to see that Haverstraw is still the same old Haverstraw. The owner of the building decided not to list this beautiful space on the Greater Hudson Valley MLS but rather put a small crappy FOR RENT sign with a number in the window. WOW! Can you believe how little you have to care about a particular property if that is your effort to try to lease out a potential A++ space? It tells me everything I need to know about this building owner, he is in it for himself, not Haverstraw.

On a side note, on the north side of Main St. then east of Anton McGuires, there are several empty storefronts that have been repainted from the outside, a couple of the spaces were filled with another salon and a social club, yippy! Thats what we really needed! However, there are a couple of spaces left but the owner of this strip is apparently content with losing money every month by not listing her property on the MLS with a Realtor and choosing the little red FOR RENT sign. Why, you ask? Because they make up the lost money by being slumlords. But I digress…back to Brictown Brewery,

Finally, in March of 2010 nearly two years after Bricktown closed its doors, the owner of the buiding decided to give the Village a surprise. And that surprise was call Frida’s Restaurant & Bar!

Once I heard they were opening I was excited, but my excitement quickly turned to suspicion as the Bricktown Brewery sign remained up but, it was covered with a poster board sign for Frida’s held up by scotch tape, I’m not kidding. I thought this must be temporary but alas it wasn’t and on the last week of March 2010 my wife, our friends and I decided to Support Haverstraw and try out the new “restaurant”. When we walked in, my friends immediately recognized the manager from Fiesta Sunrise in West Nyack, on Rt. 303. They didn’t recognize him for a good reason either, if you didn’t know, this restaurant was featured on Kitchen Nightmares with Chef Gordon Ramsey.

Here is a Youtube clip, gross.

Anyhoo, since I wasn’t sure who the guy was and I hadn’t see the episode yet, we decided to still try it. Well, the food was horrible, they treated us like gringos and we all puked after our meal. Yes, 4 people ate, 4 people puked…

The funny part is that we were some of the first people in there so we knew that it would close in no longer than a month and that’s exactly what happened. But that’s not the funny part, the funny part is how the people spoke at events and talked about how Frida’s was this high end Mexican restaurant that was getting raves reviews.

Lies, lies, lies…and I have to call out GDC on this one as my parents, who live in Nyack received a promotional flyer for the Harbors encouraging them to move there which is great, the only problem is they dedicated a page to the success of the restaurants in Haverstraw and included Frida’s. It says something like, “Experience Frida’s then puke all over the sidewalk…”

Good job owner of Bricktown Brewery, good job…

Until next time…

Adam Stein - harborsbroker.com - 845.323.9709 -adam.stein - Associate Broker - WB.

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