The messages began arriving early—as the regulars went streaming out into the breaking dawn—announcing that this day would mark a last in Brooklyn. The version we knew, anyway. “Come,” they all said, “to Freddy’s. Tonight. Come to say goodbye.” There was, they reasoned, nothing left for them to do. These homies had tried it all. Fought the good fight. Employed means ranging from sane and democratic to borderline domestic terrorism. They’d petitioned. They’d rallied. They’d deployed celebrities. Enlisted politicians. They’d chained themselves to brass bar rails for days at a time; strapped themselves to bulldozers. A few tried to gunk up the gears in a cement mixer; others had sent the developers threats. Some, it was said—the spiritual among them—had gone days without food or drink.

People, on the outside, thought it was a little daft. So much hubbub over a bar. But we, on the inside, knew it was so much more than that. Even those of us who barely went to Freddy’s in the first place.

It was about who gets to decide something is valuable and something else worthless. It was as much about how the shots get called as it was about the shots themselves. (Everybody in Brooklyn—our kind of Brooklyn—believed in a fair fucking fight. But this, we all knew, had been dirty pool.) It was because one day it’s Freddy’s— some other guy’s watering hole—and the next day it could be yours. Or your house. Or your block. Or the neighborhood you’d always called home. Taken. Without one word of your say in the matter. Because suddenly, what you had—what you cherished and loved that had been shat on and forgotten by everybody? Well, suddenly, it has value. It is deemed nice. And apparently, it was decreed—by those unknown kings appointed to discern such things—that we didn’t deserve nice things.