Meet me at Sundown
Walking home from work in the dead of winter, you see a glowing square of colorful neon through a corrugated glass storefront.
With windows and doors shut against the cold, and patio furniture stored away, luminous bars of yellow, red, blue and indigo are the only indication that you’re missing an opportunity to sip on an Old Fashioned before hitting the hay. Sundown, a shot glass sized cocktail bar, lies within.
Proprietors John Ortiz and Jamie Eldredge opened Sundown in late 2017. Since then, the weather has warmed and with it the iron and glass facade of Sundown has been flung open. Stools and benches are out, and tines of music spill onto the sidewalk.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, Arts + Craft Foods sat down with co-owner John Ortiz for an interview about this newest project. First and foremost an artist, Ortiz discussed his inspiration for the look and feel of the bar, as well as the intentions behind the cocktail menu, and his experience as a business owner.
Sundown’s small patio lends necessary seating to the 450-square foot space. Inside, a curvaceous blonde booth is offset by a gleaming, azure blue bar top. Glittering light emanates from a column of sparkling glass bottles, and a small abstract painting on the back wall is the single bit of artwork in the space.
Or is it?
During our conversation, Ortiz invokes Dan Flavin to explain the origins of the neon square, and we discuss The Judd House as a resource for furniture and interior design inspiration. Others in that same ‘graduating class’ of American Minimalists are evoked by Sundown’s design if you keep looking. Frank Stella and Sol Lewitt make an appearance in the patterned, monotone walls, which, when illuminated by modern white sconces, reveal textured striation in contrasting bands of light and shadow. Long slivers of mirror form a ring overhead, tipped at an angle to reflect the scene below. The reflective panels conceal the seam where wall meets ceiling, conjuring Robert Morris’ Untitled, Wall-Floor Slab (1964, Dia Art Foundation) as well as Robert Smithson’s Corner Mirror with Coral (1969, Museum of Modern Art.) Ortiz is a frequent visitor to the fantastic collection at Dia:Beacon, so it’s no surprise that these art history heavy hitters make an appearance in his (design) subconscious.
There are notes and tones of other sorts to be found here as well. Come by and see. Ask the bartender what they think. Maybe you’ll notice the nod to wabi-sabi on your way out into the night, uplifted by good company and fine spirits: a single miniature Japanese Maple basking in the perpetual sunset glow of Sundown.
We begin by discussing Elderdge and Ortiz’s first bar, Troost, which they opened in Greenpoint, Brooklyn in 2011. The following interview is reproduced in full and has been edited for clarity.
ACF: I know that you and Jamie opened Troost because you felt there was something lacking in your neighborhood, and you kind of went from there, but what was the impetus for Sundown?
Oritz: Yeah, at the time all the bars in Greenpoint were shot-and-beer type spots. We were getting a little older, and we wanted a little more low-key kind of situation. And a different aesthetic. We wanted it to be a natural wine bar, but as it turns out, you need to have a lot more food around wine to go with it. I learned that if you’re going to strictly run a bar, the wine suffers a little bit because of it. You could have great wines on offer but without food [our] list got smaller over the years. We were sitting on inventory for a long time because it wasn’t moving like it would at a restaurant.
ACF: Because people aren’t ordering it as consistently?
Ortiz: Partly price point, and often people will want to pair it with eating, not just drink wine all by itself. There are plenty of great wines to drink by themselves, but I learned over time that it was hard to maintain. It’s a lot of work to maintain a good [wine] list.
ACF: I know you have a fine art background. Did you learn about the wines as you went; was that part of the process of opening Troost?
Ortiz: I’ve always had an interest and love for wine but never presumed I ever knew anything about it at all. I also loved meeting some of our early [wine sales] reps. They didn’t talk mumbo jumbo wine speak, sommelier stuff, they were just like, ‘hey, try this one!’ I remember one of the first reps we had, he described one of the wines as being ‘slutty.’ Stephen Plant was his name.
So, Jamie and I would make these cards with descriptions of the wines that were along those lines. For example, there was a beautiful wine that she described as “a fairy tale in which someone dies,” and I was like, “Yeah, I’ll have that.”
““There was a beautiful wine that she described as ‘a fairy tale in which someone dies,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll have that.’””
ACF: What would you do with the cards, were they for your own reference?
Ortiz: Initially the notes were part of the menu. That was a lot of work. You go through wines every few weeks, lot of turn over, you’re constantly doing it, there’s so many things to do that we couldn’t keep up with it. I’d like to get back to that one day but I don’t know if I will or not. So wine was a strong factor at Troost but as we evolved the café kind of took over.
ACF: You had a food menu at Troost when you first opened, right?
Ortiz: We started will all of that. For me it was a huge learning wall to climb – it wasn’t even a curve – I had to learn right away. But it was also a bit of a disappointment because I was more interested in the evenings, after-work vibe, having a wine and beer, not the morning coffee laptop rush. As you know, we got rid of that over time. And then I started getting more interested in cocktails. One, for the business, and also because it’s interesting stuff. It’s alchemy. That’s what Sundown kind of came out of.
ACF: So you came to this place through the cocktail kind of perspective?
Ortiz: Yeah. I like a small place. I like a local approach to everything. Jamie has been living here [in Ridgewood] for 4-5 years or so, and I’d come and visit. Ridgewood has a kind of Greenpoint vibe to it. We were thinking if we get in on the ground level…it’s going to be slow to start but eventually the neighborhood will grow around it.
ACF: Was Sundown your or Jamie’s idea?
Ortiz: It was my idea. I didn’t know if Jamie was going to want to do a second business with me or not. I had other friends who were interested in working with me on it, but Jamie’s just great to work with. She and I work really well together.
ACF: After all these years. That’s awesome.
Ortiz: Yeah, it’s like family.
ACF: Do you have siblings?
Ortiz: Yeah, one of five.
ACF: That’s a lot!
Ortiz: People say ‘don’t go into business with your friends’ but who else would you go into business with, really? I’d rather go into business with some I know rather than someone I don’t know.
ACF: How long were you planning Sundown, and how long did it actually take to open?
Ortiz: It happened very quickly. I met the landlord, Kermit, and he was on the same page as us.
ACF: Right, legend has it that Kermit owns every building in Ridgewood…
““...legend has it that Kermit owns every building in Ridgewood…””
Ortiz: Yeah he’s curating the neighborhood with buildings and tenants. [Laughing.] I met him through a mutual friend and we hit it off. It happened quickly.
ACF: So did you already know you wanted to open something in Ridgewood, and then Kermit was like “oh, well I have the perfect place!”?
Ortiz: Yeah it was kind of like that because there was another party who had already started plans on this location but they had to pull out. So we inherited the…
ACF: Partial work?
Ortiz: There was no work in here yet – it was a black box, but Kermit had already started setting it up to be a bar. There’s basement access, there’s everything you need to have a bar run. The middle storefront does not have a basement so that wouldn’t have worked. It’s def. on the small side, but I like that in a bar, I like a small bar, but it’s stretching it.
ACF: So when was that that you met with him and started talking about it?
Ortiz: Over a year ago. We signed a lease in October 2016. We had to wait for him to finish a lot of work here. We didn’t really get started until end of March [2017]. And then we got a stop work order and couldn’t do anything.
ACF: I remember that – there was an official looking sign from the NYC Dept. of Buildings on the front door.
Ortiz: Yeah, the landlord had taken on a lot of projects, and if there’s one thing off the department of buildings hits you with that. I think it had something to do with the pipes. There were tenants upstairs at the time too, and maybe that was causing some trouble, but that’s pretty common.
ACF: You kind of have to expect that, right?
Ortiz: Yeah it’s pretty common.
ACF: But how do you plan for the unexpected when you’re doing a project like this? Is that before you started paying rent?
Ortiz: Well that’s the thing; you need to try to set up a really good lease – first. In our case, we agreed that we don’t pay rent until he and the contractors have signed off on the job. So its not on us, its on him. So we put that on our lease.
ACF: How did you learn to do that?
Ortiz: Just from hearing so many people’s stories.
ACF: So you didn’t hire a lawyer to look at the lease or anything?
Ortiz: No, It’s a pretty boilerplate lease but you just negotiate, everything’s negotiable. You hear so many stories of heartache and heartbreak, people losing a lot of money, when they can’t open for months. A lot of people budget for that. A lot of commercial leases have anywhere between 3-4 month concessions before you start paying rent. Sometimes you have to pay right away though.
ACF: Things went pretty smoothly other than that?
Ortiz: Yeah, I built the place out from May through October. It was a mostly solo job. I mean, of course I had help building this, but we didn’t have a crew in here, it was Jamie and me and [our friend] Ashley helping out, all taking turns doing things.
ACF: Who made the neon sign?
Ortiz: We had Robby at Artistic Neon do it. He’s a local, been in the neon business a long time, think he’s second generation. I saw a photo of some artwork, maybe at the Dia:Beacon. Maybe a Dan Flavin. Our neon was supposed to be hanging on the wall, a white wall, and the colors on the outside would blend together in the middle. They make a tertiary, sundown-kind of time of day color palette. But we ended up hanging it in the front window, and it doesn’t really work that way.
ACF: Sometimes you let those ideas have their own life I guess.
Ortiz: Yeah, it becomes something else over time.
ACF: Troost has it’s own kind of vibe and look. How did you conceptualize of this place and achieve what you were going for?
Ortiz: We conceived of Troost as a kind of Shaker chic thing with long lines. Mostly [I think of this as a] kind of Minimalist, Shaker aesthetic, Asian even, that I go for, but it’s not something I think about too long.
ACF: Where does that stuff come from for you?
Ortiz: I’m not sure, to be honest. It’s all somewhere inside, you know what I mean? I don’t overthink it.
ACF: There’s so much detail even though it’s simple. The lines, certainly reminiscent of minimalism, Donald Judd for example. Have you been to the Judd House in SoHo?
Ortiz: Yeah, love it.
ACF: Yeah, it’s amazing right?
Ortiz: Love it. I’ve been there maybe two or three times now. People often ask what’s your concept for a place, I don’t know the answer. I don’t over think it.
ACF: But how you do it? How did you start? Like how did you end up with this tilted slat motif in the entranceway?
Ortiz: It was partly inspired by a recording studio. If you look at some nice recording studios, they’ve got to have broken planes to get the sound to work well. I don’t know if that works acoustically that way here, but aesthetically that was part of my inspiration for this.
ACF: It feels cozy, calm and also focusing in here.
Ortiz: Another point of departure was Japanese restaurants and bars that have great funny little nooks about them.
ACF: You’ll remember when I first came into the bar here and told you how impressed I was by how many seats you fit in here. I literally could not conceptualize the scale of the place by looking in the window on my walk to the train every day. So actually there’s really a lot of space and you can fit a lot of people in here.
Ortiz: Wabi-sabi, you know? I learned it a long time ago but it sticks with you. Also, the color was the best description of an oyster shell that I found, a shell with all these gorgeous grays. If I were to think [more about the concept, it’s a feeling of] about it like, being contained in that little shell.
ACF: So you should do an oyster night here.
Ortiz: I know, I keep thinking about, in terms of food…it’s difficult having food…but I would like to do maybe a supper once a week…maybe a bowl of some clams with some sausage, a piece of bread. I think that would go well with a cocktail, with wine, or with beer.
““…maybe a bowl of some clams with some sausage, a piece of bread.””
ACF: It’s like halfway between a bar snack and dinner.
Ortiz: A little dinner, and it’s easy to do.
ACF: And shareable.
Ortiz: And shareable. It could be a weekly thing.
ACF: You’re familiar with that cookbook shop in Greenpoint?
Ortiz: Oh, Archestratus? Love it.
ACF: Yeah, she does a nice weekly supper program there.
Ortiz: Paige [Lipari] is fantastic. Great taste in music, great taste in food. She’s great.
ACF: I was going to ask about music, because that’s a huge part of Troost, and what you did there. How does that play out here at Sundown?
Ortiz: I wanted to carry that over here. We built a DJ booth into the bar – you just lift the lid off the bar and the equipment is under there. I wanted to carry that aspect of music and community into this bar.
ACF: What are you listening to right now?
Ortiz: The Barkada Quartet, I just came across them on the radio. Kind of Phillip glass like, repetitive but also kind of moments like are cinematic, filmic, cartoon moments, suspense, and then kind of minimalist. I don’t know who they are but I like them, I just found them a week ago. I just jump around.
ACF: Sundown is a great name. What were other ideas that you had?
Ortiz: It came up really early, it happened right away. The basic idea was the time of day. I’ll meet you at sundown. We could have said sunset but sundown is – a little off – I liked it. But other names…lemme think. Well I don’t know if this is ever going to happen but, there’s a slight chance that we would lease the basement, and this [storefront] space would function as a little speak easy and you’d go downstairs to the venue where there’s live music down and a bar. I was thinking I would call it The Galaxy, or that this would be The Galaxy and the basement would be Sundown. A Scottish friend of mine dissuaded me from calling it that because there’s a British candy bar with that name. But Sundown just clicked, everyone liked it, across the board.
We don’t have a sign. We may or may not put a sign in here. That’s the beauty of this thing to me, what I love about it. I’m not making [visual] art anymore, but this is like an installation. It’s gratifying because I don’t have a studio anymore, and [what I’ve found in my time in] the service industry is that it’s all about creating an experience, a fictional space for people to come at the end of their week, their shitty day. You want to give them something they can really escape into, I think. So that’s the aspect I really love about creating a space like this. You see the fiction play out, you know, certain people start to bring it, regulars start showing up, there are aesthetics that people identify with.
““...it’s all about creating an experience, a fictional space for people to come at the end of their week, their shitty day. You want to give them something they can really escape into.””
ACF: What makes a great ‘regular’?
Ortiz: That’s a good question. I guess you just know that they feel like they’re at home. You can see that they’re happy, that they’re relaxed.
ACF: And what makes a good bartender?
Ortiz: Similarly, someone who – even if they don’t feel like it – they’re going to make you feel like you’re the best thing they’ve seen all day. That’s the whole point really. That’s aside from being efficient, quick, good at what they do. That’s really hard. New York City – there’s no end of shitty bartenders. It’s insane what you see. It’s actually one of the best jobs you can have, in a way. Quick money, and there’s so much potential to get really good at it and learn that business.
ACF: So you appreciate a really good bartender.
Ortiz: I know for a lot of people it’s a side job, because they have other careers in mind. But sometimes those careers don’t work out for people and they may have wasted their time not getting better as a cocktail bartender, not learning the craft, not learning the liquor, learning the wines. It’s a huge education, I think. And there’s alchemy in it. You start learning how things play with each other. How you make a drink, how it sets up conversation between people.
ACF: How did you come to the cocktail menu here?
Ortiz: I think of it as kind of a cut to the chase. I wanted to avoid the mixology craze for cocktail bars. You know when you see a cocktail list and often there’s a million different cocktails with fanciful names? They’re all exciting and fun [but] I love to just see a martini on the menu. Kind of bring it down to a traditionalist approach. As you go down to the bottom of our list, towards the end there’s two or three that we’ll work on developing throughout the year, and will change through the seasons.
The other thing is the categories. Sometimes you see a cocktail menu and you get a long list of information and you have to figure out what it is. I wanted to direct people; ‘I like cocktails on the rocks’ or ‘I like citrusy cocktails like sours’. So we organized it based on those ideas.
ACF: It’s approachable.
Ortiz: I hope so.
ACF: What are the ones you mentioned that are evolving?
Ortiz: The Badlands, the Bladerunner, Whiskey and Cloak. The rest are all pretty standard, classics. But I think when Fall comes we’ll change, and switch the Bladerunner out.
[A towheaded seven year old boy pokes his head into the door.]
Ortiz: Oh hi, Lionel!
ACF: So, there are three little storefronts here; there’s you on one end, an espresso bar on the other, and an it seems like someone is now moving into that empty space in the middle. Who is your ideal neighbor in that space?
Ortiz: A record store or a wine store.
ACF: Oh, well you’re getting your wish, right? I heard a wine store is going in.
Ortiz: That’s what I heard – I’m excited. I think it will be good to have. Actually there’s also the front corner space here too. The landlord hasn’t rented it out yet but I think he wants to put a restaurant there. We would love to take it if we could. It’s small for a restaurant. I know people who have looked at it and said that the [profit] margins would be really tiny [in a space that would have so few seats].
ACF: So what were some stumbling blocks or real failures at Troost that have informed what you decided to do here?
Ortiz: The behind-the-bar design. Efficiency, where things are located, sinks. It works at Troost but it can be a juggling act sometimes.
ACF: You also mentioned the wine issue earlier…
Ortiz: Yeah, these things change a lot. It does evolve. How you opened the bar…it’s going to be different in six months.
ACF: You can’t be too precious about it?
Ortiz: You have to be open to changing.
ACF: Cause it’s just funny hearing you talk about the sign, like “oh maybe we’ll put a sign up.”
I’m learning more that that’s a positive approach to [creative projects like this]. I think my own impulse is towards perfectionism and so that seems sort of shocking, like, “How would you open a restaurant without knowing where the sign is going to go?!” And I’m finding more and more that it’s not going to work that way, first of all, and you kind of have to just go with that and that’s okay.
Ortiz: Yeah, it has a life of its own. That’s my experience. You’ve got to pay attention to it.
ACF: How do you and Jamie balance each other out in terms of what roles you play working together?
Ortiz: She’s more behind the scenes, the mechanics of building, getting the accounts and all of that. And I’m more on the ground, seeing the inventory, what’s working, what’s not. For example with Troost, I was noticing the evening beginning to pick up, but there was something holding it back. And I was watching it for a few months and realized: it’s the damn café! There’s a spiritual pollution behind laptops. You can walk into a room and tell that people have been working, and I think Troost was suffering because of that. So, as soon as I started banning it – I turned the wifi off at 4, and don’t allow laptops after 4 – it started changing.
““There’s a spiritual pollution behind laptops. You can walk into a room and tell that people have been working.””
ACF: How did that go over [with your customers]?
Ortiz: Some people were quite disappointed, but they weren’t paying the bills. You gotta just make that call. And then the next step was to cut the morning café out all together. And people were really upset about that. But it’s our neck our eyes, you know? So, it was sad, we had to cut off half the staff. So with Jamie, for example, I was showing her the numbers but she was pregnant at the time, and she said “I can’t deal with this until I have the kid and then we’ll talk about it.” So it’s going to be 9 months even though I’m ready to [make this big change] now. I waited 9 months until she had the baby before making changes to the schedule.
ACF: That was patient of you.
Ortiz: Well, in the meantime I worked hard on the cocktail program there, which was new to me. I was learning how to do all that, and working on the music program as well. So it was growing. We finally made the call, I showed her the numbers, like “look what’s happening here.” The café seemed like it was paying the bills but it was actually creating the bills. The costs are high. So I said lets cut it out, and we sling-shotted forward as soon as the café was gone. Business picked up a lot.
ACF: When was that?
Ortiz: Four years ago. It was three years in when we did it.
ACF: Tough decision.
Ortiz: It was tough! Jamie, not that she was resistant, but coming from a restaurant minded-experience like hers, she was skeptical of it, but she saw it. Numbers don’t lie; she saw what was going on. And it’s to her great credit that she was like “okay, let’s do it.” Especially because I have less experience than she does, when it comes to that.
ACF: Are you good with numbers?
Ortiz: Yeah, I think I am. You can kind of sense it. Though if you asked me to do an algebra equation I wouldn’t be able to do it.
ACF: In my experience as a bookseller I found that it’s about patterns in the numbers, and if you’re paying attention to your business you can see what’s happening and that translates back to what’s on paper.
Ortiz: You see a pattern, you sense it. Even simple things, like that beer/wine/cocktail isn’t selling, you see the ones that aren’t and you cut them.
ACF: And do you just trust your instincts on that? Because you can sometimes wait something out.
Ortiz: A combination of things. I think I trust my instincts. And you see trends. For example, Fernet was selling like crazy and then after a couple years it went away.
ACF: Like, kids in Bushwick in five years will not know what Fernet is. [Laughter]
Ortiz: Mescal is really big these days. Lot of cocktails with Mescal seem to be selling really well. The industry that produces it promotes it and it catches on.
ACF: Aside from wine, is there something like that, a spirit or beer that you’re particularly interested in right now?
Ortiz: I like whiskey and tequila, generally. I’m getting interested in the various herbal liquors that you can mix with a base spirit like a whiskey. See on the top shelf there? [Points to the liquor case behind the bar] There’s a great importer [named David Philips whose company is] called Haus Alpenz, and he specializes in fantastic European herbal liquors that you can mix. Great business, great company. They sell the top shelf stuff. There’s the ammaros, the vermooths, all those great European drinks that are part of living from the earth, they’re herbal, they’re good for your digestion. I’m interested to see how we can work some of those into these cocktails down the road.
I also just love my bourbons. To me a good test of a good bar is a whiskey sour. I’ll order a whiskey sour at bars and see how they do it; is it fresh citrus in there?
““A good test of a good bar is a whiskey sour.””
ACF: That’s a good test. It’s a simple recipe, but if you screw it up it’s very clear, and when you get it perfect, it is perfect.
Tell me about the kombucha, you have kombucha on tap here.
Ortiz: Yeah, it’s sort of new to me. I like funky tasting wines. I’ve been seeing it around at bars, and I’ve been told that it sells really well. And good for people who are kicking the alcohol. It’s good to offer. You don’t need to come in here to get drunk all the time. It’s nice to get drinks but you don’t need to get smashed, and plenty of people want to go to a bar and not drink, so it’s nice to offer something else.
ACF: So do you have to source [the kombucha] from a totally different vendor, or is there someone that is already doing this?
Ortiz: Someone mentioned this particular maker, Pilot Kombucha, and I looked it up online and called [owner Alex Ingalls] up. It’s a one woman operation – she has a team but it’s her small business. She’s in Brooklyn, not far from here, and they deliver a keg.
ACF: What advice do you have for someone looking to start their own business in the bar or restaurant industry?
Ortiz: Love it and be flexible, love it and be open. You’ve got to really love it and you’ve got to really love people. You’re doing it for people. I’ve talked to people who say, ‘I want to open a place and make money,’ ‘Are you going to run it?’ ‘No, hell no, I’m going to get a manager.’ That’s not how it works. That just shows me you don’t have faith in your customers, in your employees. Of course sometimes you need management help, but you know what I’m trying to say.
ACF: Yeah, you don’t just hand the whole thing over and walk away.
Ortiz: Yeah that’s not how it works. I don’t think that’s how it works.
ACF: So you would never, say, open another business across the country?
Ortiz: I would if I had a business partner that I knew was going to run it that lived there. And I’d visit once a quarter. I’ve noticed that if you’re there a lot, it’s good for business. Any bar or restaurant that I’ve gone to that I like, I think it has a lot to do with the owner being around. You can tell. You’ve got to love it and love the people you serve. It’s not easy! It’s hard to have faith in humanity sometimes, people do some dumb shit sometimes.
ACF: There’s a lot at risk, right?
Ortiz: Especially when you’re giving them alcohol. So far so good, we haven’t had too many crazy incidents.
ACF: So where are you headed next week?
Ortiz: San Diego to visit my sister. San Diego’s got great food. I want to explore it more, because there’s great restaurants, great bars, good cocktails, good wine. A little wine making area, Temecula, that’s growing and growing. My brother lives out there, he’s growing vines now, so I’m gonna go see how he’s doing with that. I think they’re going to do their first harvest and wine next year, after about four years. It’s so cool, I’m psyched that he’s doing it. And I get to get out of New York for a few days!
“Further reading:”
To learn more about wabi-sabi, a "world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection" (Wikipedia), read Wabi Sabi For Artists, Designers, Poets And Philosophers by Leonard Koren
Visit the Dia collection, including Dia:Beacon https://diaart.org/
Read about the Judd House in this New Yorker article by Alexandra Lange
