THE FINAL CUT 
 117-year-old Park Slope barbershop closes 
 INSIDE 
 WWW.BROOKLYNPDAPILEYR.C.COOMM   1 METROTECH CENTER NORTH • 10TH FLOOR • BROOKLYN, NY 11201  
 Bitter and  better 
 Wormwood Distillery opens tasting room in Industry City 
 In the pour house: Standard Wormwood Distillery co-owner Sasha Selimotic mixes a Manhattan, made with the distillery’s own vermouth and rye whiskey.  Photo by Caroline Ourso 
 By Bill Roundy They’re setting the standard! 
 A distillery and tasting room  
 now open in Industry City produces  
 spirits made with an exotic, once-forbidden  
 bitter plant. Standard Wormwood Distillery  
 creates whiskey, gin, and other kinds of  
 booze out of wormwood, a key ingredient  
 in absinthe that was banned in the early  
 20th century because of suspicions that  
 it could cause hallucinations — concerns  
 that were concocted by a rival beverage,  
 said one distiller. 
 “It  was  a  hit  job  from  the  wine  
 industry,”  said  Taras  Hrabowsky,  who  
 founded Standard Wormwood with Sasha  
 Selimotic. 
 Restrictions  on  the  herb  were  lifted  
 in 2007, and the pair, then roommates  
 in Bushwick, began experimenting with  
 it. Now they use the plant to distill a  
 rye whiskey,  a  gin,  an amaro,  an  apertif,  
 and a semi-sweet vermouth, along with  
 an agave spirit (which legally cannot be  
 called mezcal since it was not produced in  
 Mexico, but tastes much the same). 
 The addition of wormwood gives each  
 spirit a unique character, said Hrabowsky  
 — one that is distinct from absinthe. 
 “It gives the spirits a long finish,” he  
 said. “It’s a way to add complexity. People  
 assume it’s going to be licorice-y, but we  
 say right on the bottle that there is no anise  
 or licorice flavor in here.” 
 In  fact, Standard Wormwood does not  
 make absinthe, because its founders are  
 focused on making something new, said  
 Selimotic. 
 “We  do  love  absinthe,”  he  said.  
 “For us though, it’s about exploring the  
 possibilities of what wormwood and bitters  
 in spirits can bring.” 
 The  pair  previously  worked  in  a  
 cramped  spot  in  Bedford-Stuyvesant,  
 but the Industry City location gives them  
 plenty of space to experiment. The back  
 room features a mad scientist-like shelf  
 of  bottles,  each  containing  the  essence  
 of a different herb or fruit, along with a  
 still and other equipment. In the front is a  
 45-seat bar, where people can sample the  
 results of those flavor trials. 
 “Experimenting  is  what  this  is  all  
 about,” said Hrabowsky. “We can do little  
 things  that  are  one-offs,  things  that  we  
 only do here — it gives you a reason to  
 come back.” 
 The bar has a cocktail menu filled with  
 classic drinks, including the Manhattan, the  
 Sazerac, and the Margarita, each made with  
 A little jarring: The distillers at Standard Wormwood experiment with many different flavors while  
 working on their next spirits.  Photo by Caroline Ourso 
 liquor produced on site — and if you like  
 what you taste, you can buy a bottle to go! 
 The distillers plan to produce two more  
 kinds of vermouth and another apertif in  
 the near future, which will let them add a  
 Martini and a few other drinks to the menu. 
 Standard Wormwood Distillery Tasting  
 Room  68 34th St. between Second and  
 Third avenues in Sunset Park, enter from  
 Industry City Courtyard 5/6, (718) 635–4368,  
  standardwormwood.com. Open Thu–Fri,  
 5–9 pm; Sat, noon–10 pm, Sun, noon–8 pm.  
 Your entertainment 
 guide Page 39 
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 COURIER L 2     IFE, FEBRUARY 7-13, 2020 
 BY BEN VERDE 
 In sunny 1903, Maurice  
 Garin won the inaugural Tour  
 de France, Prussia became the  
 fi rst nation to require mandatory  
 drivers licenses, the original  
 Teddy bear was exhibited at  
 the Leipzig Toy Fair, and a new  
 business debuted on Seventh  
 Avenue — Park Slope Barber.  
 The newly opened barbershop  
 would  go  on  to  become  
 one of the neighborhood’s oldest  
 continuously operated businesses, 
  weathering recessions,  
 changing fashions, and radical  
 demographic shifts, as time  
 worked its magic around a business  
 that  changed  very  little  
 over the years. Customers were  
 still seated in antique leather  
 barber chairs and accepted  
 change from a 100-year-old  
 brass cash register, although  
 one ancient appliance, used to  
 heat up towels, sat unused in recent  
 decades — the Health Department  
 banned  them  in  the  
 1960s after they found barbers  
 were using  them  to keep  their  
 sandwiches warm. 
 That all changed last month,  
 however, when the business’s  
 sole remaining proprietor, one  
 of three brothers who once  
 labored together over an uncountable  
 legion of shaggy  
 mops, found himself cutting  
 hair without his siblings’ company, 
  and decided it was time to  
 hang up his shears. 
 “I  always  felt  it  was  my  
 brother’s place,” said John Fiumefreddo, 
  74, who worked in  
 the shop for over 50 years. “Being  
 there by myself, I just got  
 these feelings.”  
 The Fiumefreddo brothers  
 — including Angelo Fiumefreddo, 
  who passed away two  
 years ago at the age of 79, and  
 Vito Fiumefreddo, who retired  
 to Florida fi ve years ago — inherited  
 the barbershop from  
 their father, who purchased the  
 storefront  in  1948,  before  leaving  
 John Fiumefreddo (front) worked at the century-old shop for over 50 years.   Courtesy Fiumefreddo Family 
 it to Angelo in the wake of  
 his own retirement. The barbershop  
 had fi rst opened 45 years  
 earlier, although you wouldn’t  
 know it by the awning, which  
 declared its opening as 1904,  
 nor by the painting in the window, 
  which advertised its opening  
 date as 1906.  
 “The guy made a mistake  
 and we said ‘well what’s the difference,'” 
  said Fiumefreddo.  
 Even before taking up their  
 father’s mantle, the Fiumefreddo  
 brothers, who grew up  
 down the block from Park Slope  
 Barber’s storefront between  
 Third and Fourth streets, labored  
 there as teens, and remained  
 young men when the  
 great barber-depression of the  
 1960s — the hippie movement  
 — swept the nation, leading impressionable  
 young men to eschew  
 buzz cuts in favor of wild,  
 unkempt manes.  
 The siblings didn’t favor the  
 stylings of the counter-cultural  
 movement themselves — John  
 Fiumefreddo described it as  
 “sloppy” — but the barber credits  
 their relative youth as compared  
 to the owners of more oldfashioned  
 barbershops for their  
 ability to weather the dwindling  
 demands for a trim.  
 And as many older barbers  
 shuttered, the Fiumefreddos  
 adapted, embracing this newfangled  
 idea of a “unisex salon,” 
  according to John Fiumefreddo, 
  who said the Park Slope  
 Barber attracted its fair share  
 of female customers despite the  
 shop’s no-frills style. 
 “We even did a few permanents, 
  but those were far and  
 few between,” he said.  
 Of course, the hippie movement  
 didn’t last forever, and after  
 cutting hair for 50 years, Fiumefreddo  
 claims a modicum  
 of perspective on the evolution  
 of men’s hairstyles, which he  
 says are cyclical in nature.  
 “What goes around comes  
 around,” he said. “Right now  
 you have a lot of hairstyles similar  
 to those in the thirties and  
 forties, where it’s short and neat  
 on the sides and longer on top.”  
 From their perch in the  
 heart of Park Slope, the barbers  
 were front-row spectators to the  
 phenomenon of gentrifi cation,  
 watching as a working-class enclave  
 transformed into the bougie, 
  stroller capital of Brooklyn,  
 stripping out some of the area’s  
 character in the process, according  
 to John Fiumefreddo.  
 “When I was there it was a  
 neighborhood, now it’s just a  
 place to come to,” he said. “It  
 doesn’t have that neighborhood  
 feel anymore.”  
 But even as the neighborhood  
 changed, Park Slope Barber  
 remained much the same.  
 Many of the same old regulars  
 continued to crowd into the  
 shop — even if they didn’t need  
 a trim — and local musicians  
 occasionally hauled their guitars  
 in to share a tune, Fiumefreddo  
 said.  
 And while the barbershop  
 is  closed  today,  Fiumefreddo  
 says there are some rumblings  
 within the family that a younger  
 relative may take the reins, but  
 as of now, nothing is certain  
 other than his retirement.  
 “You never know, it might  
 come back again,” he said. “It  
 would be nice.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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