THE FINAL CUT
117-year-old Park Slope barbershop closes
INSIDE
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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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