Reopenings

Sunny’s in Red Hook Reopens August 29

Sunny's, six days after Hurricane Sandy.
Sunny’s, six days after Hurricane Sandy. Photo: Hugh Merwin

The iconic bar at the end of Conover Street in Red Hook will reopen in ten days, the Brooklyn Paper reports, just ten months after Hurricane Sandy brought five feet of storm surge into the establishment last October. The grand reopening of Sunny’s coincidentally falls on the 78th birthday of proprietor Sunny Balzano, yet another thing to celebrate. The old bar dates to the late nineteenth century and was more or less a refuge for longshoremen until the late eighties, when artists and craftsmen started taking over airy loft spaces in and around the nearby dock buildings as studios. There is nothing else like it in the city. Much of the more than $100,000 that was needed to resurrect Sunny’s came from neighbors, longtime customers, and other supporters, and Balzano tells the paper he will turn the bar’s façade into a blackboard for patrons to sign their names. [BP, Earlier, Earlier]

Sunny’s in Red Hook Reopens August 29