‘LGBTBQE’: North Brooklyn Gay Bar Inaugurates New Car-Free Plaza

Popular Williamsburg gay bar The Exley on Wednesday inaugurated a new car-free pedestrian plaza in a BQE-adjacent slip lane that was until recently occupied by cars.

The block of Jackson Street between Meeker Avenue and Union Avenue has been a slip lane and parking lot for drivers since state officials razed a church at the location to build the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in the 1940s. DOT recently converted it into a car-free oasis at the request of the Exley and North Brooklyn Parks Alliance, which applied for the plaza through a city program and will manage and operate the new public space with the help of the North Brooklyn Open Streets Community Coalition.

“Every time one of these things happens, it only grows,” said Exley owner Matthew Ricke, who opened the bar back in 2011 and added roadway outdoor dining in 2020 at the start of the pandemic. “All of our customers would be outside all day and night any chance they got.”

The Jackson Street pedestrian plaza is officially car-free, but the DOT has yet to get involved beyond approving it. Instead, The Exley bought cafe tables, picnic tables, and plants and set the area up with help from the North Brooklyn Parks Alliance.

DOT plans to give the plaza more attention next year, a spokesperson said. 

“This pop-up plaza is a great way to create public space fast while we develop plans to bring a full plaza to life at this location next year,” DOT’s Will Livingston told Streetsblog.

North Brooklyn Open Streets Community Coalition organizer Paul Benson praised The Exley for its interest in reclaiming public space.

“A gay person has learned to stick through some adversity and learn what’s cool before other people realize it’s cool,” he joked. “Despite this derelict, undesirable space that people did not appreciate, the Exley figured out a way to build community.”

A BQE legacy 

The plaza is the first of the many “slip roads” off the BQE to be pedestrianized.

When the state cut the highway diagonally through Brooklyn in the 1940s and 1950s, it created small diagonal pockets in its wake that advocates have wanted to turn into parks for years.

At Jackson Street and Meeker Avenue, the BQE’s construction forced the demolition of the Mount Carmel Church. Today the church is memorialized by Mt. Carmel Triangle, a small park inside the triangle formed by Jackson, Meeker and Union.

“We’re trying to reclaim as many pockets as possible,” said Katie Denny Horowitz, the executive director of North Brooklyn Parks Alliance, which helps maintain other car-free plazas, like the Berry Street Open Street and Banker’s Anchor, a plaza at N. 15th Street and Nassau Avenue.

Another open street in the area known as Bedford Slip existed for six weeks in 2024 until a single business — a locksmith and hardware store — lobbied to kill it.

The Exley, by contrast, is the only business on Jackson Street. Ricke envisions the plaza one day hosting flea markets, live music and even a queer food festival. 

He praised the ways the city has opened up access to the roadway since the pandemic began, and called on Mayor Mamdani to continue “investment and easing of restrictions to make it more comfortable.”

“For those who don’t know how restrictive it was prior to Covid, to all of a sudden have that,” Ricke said. “Now they have an irrevocable taste for it.”

The plaza’s grand opening was attended by Assembly Member Emily Gallagher (D-Greenpoint), State Sen. Julia Salazar (D-Bushwick) and State Sen. Kristen Gonzalez (D-Greenpoint).

“We had an immense sense of loss with the establishment of the BQE and tearing down that church, but in the wake of loss there have been generations of North Brooklyn residents who have put forward a new vision for what the future could be,” Gonzalez said. “I see this as part of a much longer vision.”