Triggering a culture clash
A new foodie haven in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn wanted locals to know it wouldn’t be just another newcomer in the rough-and-tumble neighborhood’s gentrification. Summerhill was setting out to be the area’s most Instagrammed spot, a “boozy sandwich shop” for downing a few cocktails on a sweltering summer afternoon—exactly what the predominantly black and Hasidic neighborhood needed. Or so the place asserted in the official announcement of its opening.
Still, it pledged to retain some grit. A bullet-riddled wall, for instance, would be left untouched, a reminder of Crown Heights’ violence-torn past and the site’s reputed stint as an illegal gun shop.
The characterization might not have been the best for a neighborhood many New Yorkers remember as the scene of a three-day race riot in the 1970s that left two dead.
The press statement touched off a firestorm, with offended New Yorkers gathering to protest the place’s insensitivity and complete misfire in reading the mindset of its new neighbors. Talk about an upscale interloper imposing its sensibilities!
Then things got appreciably worse. Proprietor Becca Brennan admitted that the bullet holes weren’t real, and she spoke of celebrating the place’s opening by putting 40-ounce bottles of rose in paper bags, a consumption method usually associated with Colt 45 and Olde English.
Locals called for a boycott. But Brennan, 31, finally apologized, retracted the rose-in-a-bag josh, and admitted she’d made a mistake by making light of the area’s past.