36 | BOROMAG.COM | DECEMBER 2014 nightlife & entertainment The Bonnie—Astoria’s beautiful new gastropub, and sister to Sweet Afton. { { BORO: How did you get involved in the bar business? RC: I don’t know how I got into the bar business. I always kinda wanted to. I was a strange kind of kid. Everyone else wanted to be a policeman or fireman. I’d never been inside a bar—I wasn’t brought up in that environment. I always had an attraction to the hospitality business. I would be at home or in school and I would be drawing bar designs. It was a bit strange. I was never a 9 to 5 corporate guy. I opened the first bar a little over 10 years ago and I never looked back. MK: For me it was necessity, college, bartending. I had no money so I decided to start bartending, as most people do. I moved to New York after going to school in Philly. I was working in advertising, and I had to supplement my income. I ended up bartending and traveling for a while, and then I started running bars. BORO: How did Sweet Afton come about? RC: Sweet Afton opened five years ago in Astoria. Myself and Mikey were roommates. We were great friends. We always had to go to the city if we had to get a drink somewhere nice. We saw an opportunity, we knew there were great people here, and we just felt that it was a neighborhood that was under served, and we knew could bring something fresh. And that’s what we did with Sweet Afton. MK: Ruari was a big part of me owning a bar. I was living with Ruari at the time and he had just opened Bua down on St. Marks Place. We talked about how I was managing and bartending and going up and he asked me what my plan was. I told him I wanted to do my own thing, so we put a business plan together and started looking in Astoria. Interview & Images by Lizabeth Nieves BORO recently sat down with owners Ruari Curtin and Michael Krawiec to talk about
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