‘Green’ Fun Comes to Fulton Street at Habana Outpost

A restaurant in Fort Greene has found a new way to energize Brooklyn’s cultural scene – by harnessing sunlight. Habana Outpost, the city’s first solar-powered dining and cultural center, swung open its doors this past weekend for its inaugural six-month summer season.The combination restaurant, flea market, artist community center, performance space, and car wash is an homage to all things green, featuring bio-degradable products, a food compost, refurbished and recycled furniture, and even a bicycle-propelled juice blender that doubles as a dishwasher and ice crusher.Solar panels span the 40-foot awning on Fulton Street, where the captured sunlight powers the entire kitchen and the outdoor lights. The panels, which are connected to the neighborhood’s power grid, even generate enough energy to power light bulbs across the street, the restaurant’s owner, Sean Meenan, said.“There is something both didactic and aesthetically pleasing about the panels,” Mr. Meenan, 38, said. The owner said he recently commissioned a muralist to paint a visual story of the panels and how they work on an exterior wall of the former parking lot.“I kind of see this place as a spiritual center, like a church, where you can learn the murals and artwork,” Mr. Meenan said.“I wanted to create a place that represented the New York vibe in a multicultural way,” he said.Each weekend, visitors can peruse the outdoor flea market and find everything from homemade wares to clothes by up-and-coming local designers.The restaurant’s interior walls feature the works of such graffiti masters as Lee Quinones and Richard Hambleton. Both artists are considered icons of the 1980s East Village art movement, along with Jean-Michel Basquiat. Fort Greene artists and graffiti writers will also have their turn at the wall.The car wash, a hand-to-bucket operation available at the restaurant on the weekends, recalls a time in the 1970s when New York kids would wash cars as a fund-raising device, Mr. Meenan said.The bar and food counter are crafted out of found objects, the sort of eclectic materials one might see on a New York City street. The bar sits in a 1949 GMC pickup truck, and a retired postal truck, decorated in bold, angular patterns, serves as the restaurant’s food counter.“We kind of flipped the inside out,” Mr. Meenan said. “We put many of the interior elements, like the bar and food car, on the outside, and the graffiti murals on the inside.”A former boxer and a native New Yorker, Mr. Meenan owns another restaurant, the Cafe Habana on Prince Street in Manhattan’s SoHo, but he sees his decision to open in Brooklyn as a way to tap into a more culturally diverse area.“Fort Greene has that essence that Lower Manhattan has lost,” he said. “I think the variety of people that come here is unmatched in the city.”The restaurant serves a selection of Cuban dishes such as grilled corn, rice and beans, and mango salad.“The main thing is we are trying to engage the community, and there are all different ways that we can do that,” he said. “For some people, it might be slumming it. For others it will be a big night on the town.”

‘Green’ Fun Comes to Fulton Street at Habana Outpost

‘Green’ Fun Comes to Fulton Street at Habana Outpost

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