If you’ve headed over to Triple Crown in Williamsburg on a Saturday night to grab a drink only to find it closed during prime hours there’s a reason.  It looks like the bar has been dealing with ongoing issues with their neighbors and community board, forcing them to shut down and sell the business.  The full story with complete details is posted inside, but the point is, a number of issues have prevented the sale of the establishment, largely due to its reputation of drawing “hip-hop” crowds. 

A benefit for Triple Crown is taking place Sunday, 10.28.07 from 1:00 PM - 9:00 PM.   Sponsors for the event include SHQ, The New Pop, Soundgirl, Breathe Inn, Good Peoples. Kilo Goods, Ladies Lotto, Surface 2 Air, Zoo York & Worship Worthy.  A line-up of DJs has been scheduled to spin all day as well: Alec D (Grayv), DJ Chino, Cosmo Baker & DJ Ayres (The Rub), Duane & DJ Lindsey (Negroclash), DJ Jaclyn (The Bangers), Large Professor, DJ Myles (Triple Crown), Queen Majesty (Deadly Dragon), Thanksgiving Brown (Female Fun Records) and Uncle Mike (Garden Seeker Productions).

This whole situation is a sad story, especially for the DJ community.  Triple Crown hosted tons of good events, booking everyone from local DJs to 9th Wonder, Ali Shaheed and The X-Ecutioners.  To be honest, any time I’ve been there it has never really been that crowded so I don’t see how this spot could be worse than the rest of the commotion taking place on Bedford Ave.  Triple Crown is urging people to write politicians.  I’ve experienced issues with liquor licenses and community boards first hand and I can tell you that little will get done by reaching out to the Brooklyn politicians.  This is not a knock towards them; it is just not realistic to expect an elected official to side with a bar over his/her constituents.  New York State has lots of flaws in its permit and inspection laws (especially buildings and liquor licenses) and somehow it has become the decision of a community board (often made up of many old, retired, out of touch power hungry members of the community who hate to see any change) what businesses can stay and go.  This issue was just brought to my attention today by an email from DJ Lindsey but I can tell you that if this is something that legitimately concerns you, the best way to get some action is to show up at the community board meetings yourself.  Sign in as a speaker and speak on behalf of Triple Crown.  Even if 50 people sign up to speak on the same issue, NYC law requires that you are given your three minutes to speak on the record.

Info From the Email:

“Here’s info on why we’re having this event on Sunday: 

I am a small-business owner in Williamsburg, I co-own a bar called Triple Crown with two other young men, Kit Tipley and Michael Pappalardo. The bar was our joint dream and first hopeful business venture, into which we collectively invested all of our own hard-earned money into. Sadly, however, our dreams and vision for our bar have gone awry, due to conflicts with our local community board with whom we seem to be in a deadlock for resolution. To appease everyone and save ourselves from total financial demise, we have decided to close shop and sell the business. The community board, however, refuses to allow us to sell the space and seems to discourage potential buyers from continuing with its purchase. I am writing to entreat you to please help us by stopping by the bar on Sunday to sign the petition, so that we can all get on with our lives and bring an end to any more conflicts.

The sound issues with Triple Crown led to us spend an additional $40,000 to improve the sound issues by; hiring a sound engineer to set the sound system so that all of the adjacent apartments were under the decibel level that the DEP has set as the legal limit, installed additional quiet rock to the walls of the bar, offered to put all of the neighbors in the adjacent apartments in hotels while quiet rock was installed in their individual units (this offer was declined), replaced the entire sound system with a new quieter system with a limiter that DJs could not touch, hired a door man to keep smoking patrons quiet and away from the property. We even closed the business every day except for Wednesday – Saturday to try to minimize the amount of nights that we made noise. For a while that seemed to appease the neighbors, but even then that wasn’t enough.

We found our first buyer fall 2006, a reputable businessman who owns a few other local businesses. He wanted to open a quiet café/bar. The sale of the bar and the transfer of the liquor license had to be approved by the community board and we attended the meeting to see the outcome of the vote. To our surprise one woman (who doesn’t live in the community but whose father lives next door to the bar) had rallied up a petition and a large number of people in the neighborhood to fight against the sale of the bar. They even made up “no Triple Crown” t-shirts. Before CB1 could even vote on the sale that night, the buyer— who was very afraid of making these people angry at him due to his other businesses in the neighborhood—pulled out of the sale publicly in the middle of the meeting.

We found another buyer December 2007 and the same thing is happening again. We have been in contract and everything else has been approved for over 8 months. CB1 met Wednesday 10/10 to vote on this point and 7 voted no and 6 voted yes the others did not vote at all. They said they would possibly re-vote next month if the new buyer agrees to certain terms. On September 28, 2007 there was a story in the Williamsburg Courier about this issue. They interviewed a member of the community board and she openly admitted that they want to drive us out of business out of spite. She admitted to knowing that the first buyers have good reputations but because of the bar’s loud “hip hop music” and us being unwilling to quiet down his association with us made the sale “dubious.” They have known about this pending sale for months now and if they had any terms for this new buyer they most certainly could have made them clear before this month’s meeting. This was a cleanly run business by very honest people who stand to lose EVERYTHING. It’s not a matter of starting over if the bar doesn’t get sold; it’s a matter of digging ourselves out of a massive hole due to this harassment from the community.

The bar is now closed with the exception of one or two nights a month to help pay the rent. The rest of the rent is coming out of our own pockets, we are all working double shifts to make this happen and after 8 months of this and my wedding in August we are barely making it. I am just confused as to how denying the sale and driving us out of business and setting us back years financially is the answer to a noisy bar issue. If they were unhappy with the noise then it would seem that they would approve of the sale and everyone could move on with their lives. The next community board meeting is November 8. We are in need of your assistance before that date. We are having a party at the bar to gather names from the community and friends for the state liquor authority. Please show your support for us and come by on Sunday, October 28th to sign the petition.

CB1, CAN WE LIVE!?

We have also listed some of our local representatives, if you feel strongly about this issue please take a minute and them an email or write them a letter. It would make a huge difference for us and our families.

NYC Council District - 33
Council Member: David Yassky
114 Court Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
yassky@council.nyc.ny.us

NY Senate District - 17
Senator: Martin Malave Dilan
786 Knickerbocker Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11207
dilan@senate.state.ny.us

US House District - 12
Representative: Nydia M. Velazquez
266 Broadway, Suite 201
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(718) 599 - 3658

US Senator: Charles E. Schumer
757 3rd Avenue, Suite 17-02
New York, NY 10017
web email form: http://www.senate.gov/~schumer/SchumerWebsite/contact/webform.cfm

NY City Mayor: Michael R. Bloomberg
City Hall
New York, NY 10007
web email form: http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.bd08ee7c7c1ffec87c4b36d501c789a0/index.jspdoc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fmail%2Fhtml%2Fmayor.html

Thank You,
Myles Tipley

Kit Tipley, Mike Pappalardo, & Lindsey Caldwell-Tipley <— !!

That is all…”