The new Barclays Center in downtown Brooklyn, home to the borough’s first major sports franchise since the Dodgers left town, is settling into its groove after opening for business a couple of months ago.
Opponents of the bitterly contested arena still have their complaints about traffic, public drunkenness and urination, and unkept promises of affordable housing and local jobs (you can find a comprehensive, ongoing archive of the case against Barclays at Norman Oder’s Atlantic Yards Report). But Brooklyn Nets T-shirts and caps have become ubiquitous in the borough, and a series of high-profile shows – Jay-Z, Barbra Streisand, Neil Young, Rihanna – have drawn tens of thousands of music fans to Barclays already. For better or worse, the arena has arrived.
In the “better” column you can count the food concessions. This is the rare arena that has rejected chain franchises in favor of local institutions, drawn from the rich food culture around the borough. Here, you can get barbecue from Williamsburg’s Fatty ’Cue; Cuban sandwiches from Fort Greene’s Habana Outpost; pizza from Gravesend’s Spumoni Gardens; and, in an inspired old-school-new-school mashup, a confection called a concrete that combines Junior’s black-and-white cookies with ice cream from Blue Marble.
Not all the food is to die for, but it’s for the most part a damn sight better than the stuff you get at your average sporting event. And it’s good to know that one of your local butchers (Paisano’s, in my case) has landed a contract that probably is a significant help to their bottom line. It makes eating at the game or the show a much more pleasant experience. If the locally sourced food arrangement works in the long run, it could be a model for arenas around the country, de-homogenizing the slickly packaged experience of sports and concerts and helping to diversify the income stream for neighborhood businesses.
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