A crowd of 20-somethings is drinking beer on a recent Saturday night in Gowanus. They’re working on different art projects — band album-cover art, posters, skateboard designs — flirting and laughing. Nothing out of the ordinary here.
But this scene is set not in some industrial loft. The fun is happening at a supermarket: the new Gowanus Whole Foods, which opened last month to great fanfare.
“I heard the Whole Foods salad bar is a good place to pick up chicks,” says Park Sloper Jack Storie, 25, who looks like Elijah Wood’s punkier brother.
He and five arty friends are crowding around a table in a space called the Roof, a hangout spot with more than 200 seats. One corner is a bar/restaurant with big communal tables where patrons can sip their way through a flight of local beers from Sixpoint and Alphabet City Brewing Co., watch sports from a bunch of TVs and order off a menu of grass-fed burgers or pies from nearby Four & Twenty Blackbirds.
But that’s just the tip of the hipster iceberg: The brightly lit grocery store plays to every Brooklyn stereotype, with a record shop, a juice bar, in-store-roasted coffee with origin stories on the package the length of a Proust novel and, naturally, a bike-repair station.
If this feels like pandering to the hip Brooklyn crowd, it is. With regular events like trivia nights and brewery spotlights, the store is trying to become a social center for the neighborhood — with a Brooklyn foodie vibe.
“There’s such an unbelievable artisanal food community in Brooklyn, I think there’s a lot of opportunity to represent that,” says Whole Foods spokesman Michael Sinatra.
To that end, the store’s 20,000-square-foot rooftop greenhouse space, run by Gotham Greens, aims to provide fresh produce to the store year-round.
The cold didn’t deter about two dozen people from piling into the Roof for the first drink and draw, where a local artist gives a quick, free lesson before letting creativity — and $5 beers — flow.
“This separate space doesn’t feel like you’re in the middle of a grocery store,” says Arts Gowanus director Abby Subak.
Come spring, customers will be able to sit outside at one of six long wooden picnic tables that boast a view of the Gowanus Canal, the notoriously polluted waterway that has become a symbol of the neighborhood’s renaissance, where the sun sets majestically behind the elevated subway train and iconic Kentile Floors sign.
Parts of the store look like an Urban Outfitters that has suddenly decided to start selling air-chilled poultry.
You can buy slow-dried whole-wheat dinosaur pasta made with bronze dies cast in Brooklyn, or browse the vast selection of locally made bitters. But you can also outfit your life: One end contains a record store, with old classics like Ray Charles and new releases from Arcade Fire, and recycled record jewelry.
Perusing the record section during their first trip to the store, Kait Kerrigan, 33, and her boyfriend Nathan Tysen, 37, say the Gowanus outpost reminded them of another Whole Foods they’d seen: the original one in Austin, which is full of patrons just hanging out throughout the day.
“It’s a Saturday night and it’s hard to even get a parking spot,” Tysen says.
Nearby, you can drop off your knives to get sharpened by in-house blade man Chris Harth while you shop. He’s taking a break from his business of making knives and furniture out of old sawmill blades in Clinton Hill.
Bike got a flat? Fix it at the bike repair station outside. Rip your flannel on the door of the gourmet vegan-cheese cooler? Pick up a new one, plus a set of Mason jars for some home pickling — and a stylish fedora to boot.
At the Allegro Coffee counter, Zachary Conner, in a knit hat and tattoos down his arms, will make you a 16-ounce coffee in a machine called the Steampunk that looks like what a mad scientist would use for his morning cup.
This Whole Foods “seems like it’s more interactive. I feel like the vibe’s different,” says Dena Kopolovich, a 23-year-old resident of South Slope, while waiting at the deli counter.
“Everyone’s not here to rush in and rush out, and they’re sort of here taking their time, really choosing wisely.”
Choosing wisely may also apply to potential dates.
If you’re making eyes with someone over the sriracha popcorn, the ability to pop upstairs for a first drink makes for prime dating efficiency in busy New York.
The topic of grocery-based dating also came up at the bar on a Thursday night, where the Roof was hosting the first of what it plans to make a monthly trivia night hosted by TriviaNYC.
“There are some cuties here,” says West Villager Josh Rogol, 27, as he drinks a beer out of a koozie, along with his co-workers from Urban Green Energy, the company that installed the solar panels and wind turbines in the store’s parking lot.
Had he done any flirting yet?
“Maybe after a few more drinks,” he laughs.
The Drink and Draw crowd has a similar idea.
Catie Randall, 27, who works at the store and frequently hangs out there even when off, says she suggested her bosses host a singles mixer or speed-dating event. “Maybe pairing people by food purchases?” she suggests. “Anything could happen.”