NYC Ferry Operated by Hornblower is your new way to commute. We connect New Yorkers and visitors to the city’s waterfront communities – including neighborhood businesses, job centers, and parks. Our new blog series, Community Connect, is another way to connect our riders to these communities by highlighting local businesses, community leaders, and non-profits. Each week we focus on a different neighborhood along one of our four routes and bring you a short story about a neighborhood icon.
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On the corner of 3rd Avenue and Ovington in Bay Ridge sits a bar, restaurant and performance space called the Brooklyn Firefly. To step inside feels almost like stepping back in time, which was the intended design by co-owner Michael “Kaves” McLeer who revitalized the location in 2016. The location has a deep-rooted history in the neighborhood, as does McLeer himself, when the spot first opened in 1933 as Lento’s Restaurant, an old-school pizzeria that was a staple in the neighborhood.
For McLeer, his history with Bay Ridge goes back to World War II, when his grandfather met his grandmother. “Everyone was raised here,” he says of his family. The Brooklyn Firefly is co-owned by McLeer and his business partner and childhood friend, Larry Hyland, and is operated by McLeer’s entire family. When asked if it’s difficult to run a business with family, he says, yes, but “there are loyalty and trust. That family that you were so eager to get away from, as you get older, you just want to be with them.”
Michael McLeer’s grandparents in Bay Ridge in 1947. “Rooftops were an escape from a hot summer day.”
The vision of the Brooklyn Firefly came from a desire to have a place for artists, families, and neighbors to gather. “Being surrounded by concrete in the summer, seeing the fireflies come out was something magical. Bay Ridge was at one point the center of the universe for nightlife, with so many bars and restaurants, I wanted to bring a little bit of that spark back to the neighborhood,” McLeer reminisces. “As a kid, I wanted to make a name for myself, explore the world, but the world is right here on this block.”
McLeer is an artist himself (a graffiti writer and also a rapper) and wanted the Brooklyn Firefly to welcome creators of all kinds. Bar tops are covered in rolls of drafting paper with buckets of pencils, there’s standup on Wednesdays, and jazz all weekend long. It’s a place where families can come have dinners made from old family recipes and can remember the old times, but create something new.
In a way, this “newness” extends to McLeer and Hyland themselves. They met as childhood friends in Bay Ridge, worked together in McLeer’s band (The Lordz of Brooklyn), and started a graffiti design company, BMT Lines. Both are Brooklyn natives, and even though Hyland moved to Greenpoint for many years opening bars and restaurants in North Brooklyn, they’re both back in Bay Ridge, a place that feels like home. “It’s a little bit suburb, a little bit urban, it has the buildings and the hub that you need, but if you walk a couple blocks down you see trees and nature, and the shore. Not a lot of people know about how many parks are in Bay Ridge, a lot of children and families that surround these pockets; it’s the best of both worlds,” McLeer explains.
Co-owners Michael “Kaves” McLeer and Larry Hyland.
If it’s your first time at Brooklyn Firefly, Kaves and Hyland recommend trying the pizza. It’s artistic, “not artisinal” and the dough is a personal formula of McLeer’s, made from the finest ingredients and served with a basil crown top. It’s the Brooklyn of their youth, but with a spin.
Brooklyn Firefly is a 15-minute walk from the NYC Ferry Bay Ridge landing along the South Brooklyn route. For hours, performance schedule, and a menu visit thebrooklynfirefly.com.
