Sunny’s

Ask a car service to take you to “the bar” in Red Hook, and you’ll wind up at an unassuming little place by the river, near some railroad tracks that go nowhere. Opened in 1890 and going through various incarnations including a restaurant and a longshoremen’s hangout, it wasn’t until the 1990s that it became the beloved local mainstay helmed by the beatific, beatniky owner, Sunny, who greeted you warmly from beneath a mop of gray hair until he passed in 2016. It’s now, as Sunny used to say, “just a meeting place for folks — painters, writers, musicians, plumbers — who care about each other so much they don’t mind the trip.”