In the New Yorker this week, Ian Frazier in the Talk of the Town covers the scene at Freddy’s Bar in recent weeks. Here are the “key words” the New Yorker posted next to this article online: Freddy Bar & Backroom, Brooklyn, NY, Atlantic Yards, Eminent Domain, Real Estate, Steve de Seve, Homeless Shelters…You get the idea. Here’s an excerpt:

In the windows of Freddy’s Bar & Backroom, a neighborhood place at the corner of Dean Street and Sixth Avenue, in Brooklyn, the neon beer signs hang upside down, as if sending out the international distress signal for bars. Freddy’s Bar & Backroom is indeed in distress, sitting as it does in the “footprint” of the massive, multibillion-dollar Atlantic Yards project, which hopes to turn an odd-shaped patch of land between Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues into a twenty-thousand-seat sports arena, etc. Sipping an ale in a corner booth by the stuffed swordfish, you can almost feel the giant shoe descending from above.