Welcome to Writes & Bites — a series where Creative Writing MFA student Arianna Gundlach periodically reviews a place in New York City you could write at and tackles a writing topic that has been weighing on your mind. This week we look at Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain located at 513 Henry St. in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.
Hello, delectable readers and writers. I’ve been expecting you.
I hope spring break treated you well, but now that you’re back to your normal day-to-day, don’t skip out on treating yourself. New Yorkers are infamous for getting a little something while they’re out — and you’re a New Yorker now, so why not fit in? Pick up something that tastes like pure happiness and gives you the perfect dose of dopamine, draping the world in a rose-colored lens at least for a little while. Don’t wait for the weekend.
And, of course, I have the place for you to get the feeling you’re craving.
Because the walk is part of the experience, I recommend taking the 2/3 to Clark Street and continuing from there. The Brooklyn Heights area is sure to charm you, especially on sunny days (even if it’s not particularly warm). Follow a beautiful string of brownstones along Henry Street that will lead you to the turquoise storefront of Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain.
Don’t be deterred by the red “pharmacy” sign and lit-up first-aid cross outside; this is no drug store. At least not anymore.
Brooklyn Farmacy is housed in a 1920s apothecary, formerly known as Longo’s Drugs, with restored tin ceilings and penny tile floors as well as plenty of apothecary artifacts to go around. Instead of doling out prescriptions, remedies, and medications, the shop serves up an astounding menu of ice cream floats, sundaes, specialty hot chocolates, milkshakes, sodas, and egg creams. Their menu is truly divine and doesn’t miss a beat.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a line out the door when you arrive. Brooklyn Farmacy opens every day at 2 p.m., fills up within the first ten minutes on weekends, and hits the after-school rush around 3:30 p.m. on weekdays. For your choice of seating, your best bet is right at opening or after the kiddies have headed home for dinner. The shop is open until 10 p.m., and it’s never too late for chocolate.
Hopefully, with that advice in mind, you’ll be first in line. Grab a laminated menu at the register and snag a seat BEFORE you order. You have two areas of the shop to settle down in.
The front is akin to a 1920s ice cream parlor with table and counter seating, while the back is a time capsule into the 1920s apothecary with two round tables and high counter slabs. It’s arguably a tough choice on where to post up. The front is where all the action’s happening — there’s a constant shuffle of dishes, grinding of blenders, whirring of mixers, and whooshes of steam. On-tap chocolate syrup drenches scoops of vanilla. Your eyes bounce along the canisters of sprinkles, jugs of milk, glass serving dishes, drink taps, and containers of thick pretzel sticks.
The servers, known as “soda jerks,” bustle behind the counter wearing striped black-and-white paperboy caps and aprons. Opposite the counter is a wall lined with dark wood shelves full of artifacts and antiques, as well as drinking glasses, serving dishes, a blue typewriter, mortar and pestle, and decorative empty bottles. Atop the shelves are vintage fans with wavy metal and squiggly light bulbs.
This part of the shop takes you back to a simpler time of riding your bike, planning playdates and sleepovers, and getting a pick-me-up treat after school. You might be twenty-something, but at Brooklyn Farmacy you’re forever ten years old — when the hardest thing in life was finishing your homework.
For a short time, you can forget your adult problems, drowning them in sweet syrup, bubbly soda, rich chocolate, and smooth ice cream.
However, the back area calls you even further back in time. Through drawn open red curtains and up a few steps, travel back over a century to Longo’s Drugs. A dark wood apothecary table sits against the far red-brick wall under a swirly bronze mirror. The table has an endless number of drawers and a hollowed-out section in the middle for books, currently housing “The Columbia Encyclopedia: Third Edition” and National Geographic’s “Peoples and Places of the Past.”
The time capsule continues with the cabinets on the left black wall, holding six black typewriters with silver keys and three black rotary phones. Worn books and tall and small medicine bottles are preserved behind glass.
The dark academia vibes even creep into the floorboards, light wood rippling among the dark. A wooden ladder sits beside the apothecary cabinets, giving the illusion that a pharmacist could emerge at any minute and fetch your prescription. An ice cream sundae will have to do, but I’m sure that will please you just as much. Perhaps one will even be waiting in the 1940s-looking sea foam green latched fridge.
There are two round tables to enjoy your sweet delights at. The larger seats eight while the smaller seats four. But if you’re by yourself or with a friend, one of the two-seater high counter tables is probably more your speed. This is also what the staff prefers, and they may politely ask you to move to one of these during peak hours.
Listen to lounge music spanning from the ‘20s to the ‘60s. From plinky-plonky vaudeville (picture Charlie Chaplin) to old Hollywood voices (think Judy Garland) to easy-listening classics like “Danke Shoen” by Wayne Newton, which was revived by the cult ‘80s film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
To get the full effect of Brooklyn Farmacy, go with the two-seater on the border of the front and back that lets you look over the expanse of the shop. You can see all the drinks and sundaes being made behind the counter yet still feel a part of the historic apothecary atmosphere.
When you’ve finally settled on a seat (though any open one will do during busy times), the menu awaits. The long desserts menu is separated into egg creams (the shop takes special pride in these), shakes, sodas, ice cream floats, sundaes, hot chocolates, coffee & tea, alcoholic drinks, and baked goods.
Fellow NSFP series writer Kayley Cassidy and I are determined to eventually sample the entire menu. But so far, we’ve enjoyed the Peanut Butter shake, S’mores specialty hot chocolate (really tastes as advertised), iced Americano, Broken Dreams sundae (sweet and salty), and Peanut Butter Cup sundae (sweet and crunchy).
Shakes are served in a tall glass with an additional metal cup full of leftovers. Ice cream sodas also come in a tall glass with a scoop of ice cream hanging on the edge for dear life. Be careful to enjoy the ice cream before it melts or let it slowly capsize into the soda, after you’ve drank some.
Sundaes are scrumptious from top to bottom, from the first ice cream scoop to the sea of caramel, chocolate, peanut butter, or pretzel crunch goodness below.
When everything is so delicious, how do you possibly choose?
Consider what will satisfy your appetite, propel you from start to finish — something you can see through from ordering to stopping short of licking the syrup from the glass tureen. Writers consider similar things when picking a new project to tackle, especially when so many shiny ideas are calling out.
Story ideas come to writers like cravings, strong and bound to drive you to obsession if you keep them locked inside your head. But just like cravings, ideas can be finicky things. One moment you want sweet, the other salty. One moment you’re writing a contemporary romance, the next a high-fantasy adventure. Dreaming up ideas is fun, but they don’t stop pouring in even when you think you’ve committed to one. So how do you truly commit to one, you ask?
Lucky for you, I’m a survivor of shiny idea syndrome. And because of that, I can also tell you it’s not incurable.
As I’ve said before, the most powerful story is the one only you can write. But knowing which idea will be that story is a lot harder than it sounds. Every idea feels like “the one.”
You have to recognize which ideas are just that, ideas. Temporary wisps that excite you but ultimately lead nowhere. Most of my projects in high school were like this: fun to write but had no foundation for longevity. I could always picture the beginning and would write the first chapter on instinct, hoping the rest would follow suit. But around chapter three, I’d get bored and frustrated. Because while my idea blossomed into a premise, the development stopped there. It had burnt out in under 50 pages.
Novel attempt after novel attempt, I’d reach chapter three and this same phenomenon would occur. I was stuck. I thought it was me — that I just couldn’t write anything truly longform. Maybe I didn’t have the determination or the mind to solve plot holes that were springing leaks all over the page.
Then a new, shiny idea would beam in the corner of my mind, beckoning me, “Write me! Write me! I’m what you really need. You’ll finish me!” But would I really?
How do you sort out the epiphanies from the distractions? “Just ideas” — the distractions — are exciting with glitzy taglines that make you think, “I’d totally read something like that.” Epiphanies are more. When mine came, two ideas that weren’t working on their own clicked together and formed a new premise. In a flash, I could see the beginning and the ending, and more importantly I could feel the emotional arc. I knew physically and emotionally where my protagonist started and where they were left in the end.
And in 250 words, furiously typed into my Notes app, I wrote a protagonist I was willing to see through her journey. I cared that much in so little words. She had my heart in just a couple paragraphs. With the beginning and the ending, I could thread together the plot because I knew what I was ultimately writing toward.
Now, as always, take what I say with a grain of salt. There are exceptions. “Just ideas” can be nurtured into well developed, long-form stories, but maybe when they come to you initially it’s a case of “right person, wrong time.”
An idea worth committing to is something you don’t want to give up on because it captivates you, not because it makes you feel guilty for quitting. While it’s true that the next project won’t be any easier if you jump ship from your current one, going down with a sinking project is only going to drown you.
Commit to the one that has your heart — the one that fills you up with new energy and even when you’re frustrated, you still see a beam of hope. Because you secured four things: a beginning, an ending, an emotional arc, and a character you’re going to fight for.
While I can’t make you have an epiphany (though mine usually come from watching rom-coms or coming-of-age films), hopefully my advice will help you recognize and listen to them.
Though I don’t think “the jerks” at Brooklyn Farmacy are keen on you holing up for the day, there’s definitely time to get some writing done while savoring your drink and ice cream. And during a lull, they’re bound to be more lenient about hanging around after you’re done. During a busy Sunday, I spent two hours in the shop without too many lingering stares to turn over the table.
So when you find yourself at Brooklyn Farmacy, enjoy some amazing ice cream and think back to being a kid, when you had all those big ideas you couldn’t wait to take on. Then sift through them and find the one worth committing to. The one that flows from end to end and will last. I promise, the way you write an idea that will become a full-blown story will feel like nothing else. Because a piece of your heart will be living inside it.
Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain
513 Henry St.
(718) 522-6260
https://www.brooklynfarmacyandsodafountain.com/
| Commute 36 minutes from the UC via subway (F). | Hours Daily 2-10 p.m. |
| Tech Public Wi-Fi available. Some outlets. Tappable pay available. | Layout Front: Order here or pick up. Table and counter seating. 1920s ice cream parlor vibes. Back: Two round tables and high counters. 1920s apothecary vibes. Outdoor seating also available. |
| Gems Housed in historic 1920s apothecary; superb menu full of sweet treats; ice cream sundaes; mirrors in back make good photo-ops. | Noise Level Somewhat noisy. |
| Atmosphere Family friendly. Dream birthday party spot. A place to linger in, but not hole up for the day. | Rating 3.5/4 Stars – based on The New York Times star system: “ratings range from zero to four stars. Zero is poor, fair or satisfactory. One star, good. Two stars, very good. Three stars, excellent. Four stars, extraordinary.” |
| Be Aware One bathroom in the back. Fills up quickly after opening on weekends and after school on weekdays. Find seat, consider menu, then order. |