A dry summer is in the forecast for this Williamsburg club.
Police caught massive pop-up nightclub the Brooklyn Mirage serving alcohol without a liquor license at its first event of the season on Saturday night, just six months after its organizer tried to hold a rave in a toxic Greenpoint factory — and authorities say the company’s latest irresponsible stunt could cost it the chance to ever serve booze again.
“Selling without a permit would absolutely have a negative impact on any future applications for permits or for liquor licenses,” said State Liquor Authority spokesman William Crowley.
The club’s creator City Fox infamously planned a Halloween bash inside the old NuHart Plastics building — a Superfund cleanup site with dangerous chemicals but no sprinkler system — last year, before firefighters pulled the plug at the last minute.
This time, cops let the event continue, but confiscated all the booze at the discotheque — a 6,000-person outdoor venue in an industrial lot at Stewart Avenue and Meserole Street where City Fox plans to hold events all summer — and issued the company with a summons for unlicensed sale of alcohol, according to a Police Department spokesman.
Crowley said the liquor authority hasn’t received any license applications for the site, though Greenpoint watering hole One Stop Beer Shop — which ran the bar at Brooklyn Mirage’s 2015 iteration on Scott Avenue and Randolph Street — unsuccessfully applied for “special-event” permits to serve at 10 of the club’s planned parties, including Saturday’s.
The authority rejected the application on May 13, writing in its response that a self-described “three-month pop-up club” is not what catering permits are for, and admitting that it shouldn’t have issued them for last year’s Mirage, either.
One Stop Beer Shop also successfully scored a special-event permit for the NuHart rave — a fact that local residents and pols were livid about when they finally learned of the party, as those licenses don’t require any community consultation.
Organizers did take the first step in applying for a liquor license earlier this month, appearing at a Community Board 1 meeting on May 11 and asking for its blessing.
But members — who have previously griped about last year’s Mirage for being loud and unruly — told them their application was too vague, and to come back for its liquor license committee’s meeting on May 24 with more details, according to a DNA Info report.
Police weren’t the only ones peeved by Saturday’s speakeasy — attendees, who paid $70 a ticket for entry, lambasted City Fox on social media for failing to let them know they’d have to boogie into the wee hours without booze.
“No indoor space, no alcohol, and no warning that this would be the case,” Celeste-OJ wrote on the event’s Facebook page. “It’s unacceptable when you pay $76.”
But others weren’t so put out — several claimed security staff turned a blind eye to them smuggling their own rotgut inside.
“They were pretty good about not checking anything at all,” wrote Matt Sanchez. “Walked in with a full bottle and a flask with no issues whatsoever.”
City Fox and One Stop Beer Shop did not return requests for comment by press time.
