Irish Coffee and the Establishment Clause

It’s been an exciting few weeks on the corner of Wolcott and Van Brunt, and they have brought us to this very auspicious autumnal moment: The skies over our neighborhood are blue, it’s a crisp 63° with a projected high of 70°, and the Fort Defiance General Store is open for business.

Our pastry case is full of scones and hand pies. In the kitchen, eggs are frying for delicious breakfast sandwiches made on our own English muffins. In the bakery, trays of fresh focaccia are bubbling and browning. And our new display freezer rolled through the front door, after months of supply-chain delay, to be filled with pints of local gelato, immaculate fish, actually good chicken, frozen pot pies, and those very good Now Wah dumplings.

The only thing missing? An Irish Coffee! 

Read on to find out how the State Liquor Authority is goofing around with our liquor license, and some very fun upcoming neighborhood events. But first:

We peeled you a grape!

Our new soft-serve flavors are instant fall classics: maple ice cream and Concord grape sorbet. If you haven’t tried the grape sorbet yet, please do — it’s incredible. For my mother, who tried it this weekend, it summoned Proustian memories of picking Concord grapes in the fall — the thick skins that burst when you bite them, the intensity and purity of that grape flavor that bubblegums and candies imitate, the way the tannins tickle the sides of your mouth.

Pastry chef Anna Lockwood multitasks.

To make it, our pastry team (Anna and Kate) literally peel and deseed local Concord grapes (they literally peel grapes for you!), then puree the skins and seedless fruit together with sugar and lemon. The flavor is intense, and won’t be around long — maybe three weeks, depending on how the grape harvest goes. Get it while you can, either swirled with maple or on its own.

You’ll have to wait a little while longer for one of these…

Last Friday I received an odd letter from the State Liquor Authority — the denied our application for a liquor license. The reason? We’re too close to the church on Wolcott Street. There’s an ordinance in place that forbids restaurants from serving liquor within 200 feet of a church, and our front door is approximately 185 feet from the door of the Red Hook Pentecostal Holiness Church. 

But wait, you might say. There’s been a bar there for 20 years! True! The letter from the SLA made no reference to that fact, but it’s true. So what changed? Nothing much. So why? No one knows — the luck of the draw, my attorney says. Somebody at the SLA finally figured out that we’re too close, and if we try to argue that we are “grandfathered” in, they might just claim that the last 20 years of permits were issued in error, and they can’t repeat that mistake. 

Don’t lose hope — my lawyer has some ideas as to how we can appeal the decision, and she’s fairly confident that we’ll get a license — eventually. And don’t get mad at the church! This isn’t their fault, and they didn’t do anything to trigger this. It’s just the State Liquor Authority being themselves. I’ve been a tavern operator in New York City for 12 years, and I guess I’m just used to this kind of nonsense. It’s ridiculous, it’s anti-business, it’s financially disastrous for Fort Defiance, it’s wasteful, capricious, and inconsistent  — and sadly, it’s not at all unusual, and it is literally your tax dollars at work. 

Thurgood Marshall: 
“Well, I'm going from there to tequila.”

All of this got me reading about laws intended to physically separate churches and their habitués from bars and alcohol. In 1982, the US Supreme Court heard a case called Larkin v. Grendel’s Den, Inc. Grendel’s Den is a bar in Cambridge, Mass. that was denied a liquor license because the church around the corner objected to their presence. Long story short: Grendel’s Den won, and is celebrating their 50th anniversary this year.

Massachusetts had to clean up its liquor laws as a result — before Larkin, all it took was a letter from a pastor to kill a liquor license application. Now, when churches offer guidance in the administration of liquor licenses (which they still do in some places, for some reason), it has to be part of a public process. Perhaps this change limits the temptation of hopeful bar owners to make unusually large contributions to local churches, and limits the temptation of pastors to solicit or accept them.

Thurgood Marshall, contemplating the Establishment Clause.

Anyway, the oral arguments in the case make for some good reading (and you can actually listen to them and follow along with the text here— it’s very cool). It helps that Grendel’s Den was represented by the legal scholar Laurence Tribe , Professor Emeritus at Harvard, whose students include John Roberts, Elena Kagan, Merrick Garland, and Barack Obama. The decision left intact the ability of a municipality to enact these “500-foot rules” intended to separate bars and churches — hence our current predicament, and despite the establishment clause of the First Amendment — but at times it seems like Thurgood Marshall just wants to throw them all in the trash. Here’s a fun exchange between him and the attorney for Larkin :

Thurgood Marshall: What happens if the church only has bars that sell Irish whisky?

Gerald J. Caruso: If the church?

TM: Only allows bars in its neighborhood that sell Irish whisky.

GC: I would rely back on my--

TM: Well, I'm going from there to tequila.

GJC: --Sure.

TM: So I mean, I can go anywhere I want to go.

GJC: I would fall back on my position, Your Honor, that that case--

TM: Why should I, as a legitimate businessman, have to go and ask a church whether I can do business?

***

It was a very good question, and still is. 

It’s event season in Red Hook! 

This Tuesday is the biggest night of the year on Red Hook’s social calendar — Taste of Red Hook, the annual benefit for our beloved nonprofit Red Hook Initiative! Fort Defiance has participated in this event every year since we opened, and we can’t wait to do it again. In RHI’s own words: “Each fall, Taste of Red Hook offers a night of Red Hook-togetherness featuring award-winning restaurants, breweries, wineries, and distilleries. All proceeds benefit our mission to create change from within alongside 6,500 Red Hook youth and community members.” If you’re new to the neighborhood, get yourself a ticket and come meet your neighbors!

Next week is Red Hook Open Studios, and in next week’s Bugle, we’ll meet the artist who will be showing work at Fort Defiance: Erin Treacy. In the meantime, stay safe, shop local, and I’ll see you on the streets!

Love, 

St. John