This Must Be The Place

Some of the best words are untranslatable. In German, fernweh means the yearning for a place one has never been. Literally a "farsickness" or "aching for distance places," it is the antonym of heimweh, "a great longing for the distant home or a loved one living there, with whom one felt secure." We experience these seemingly opposing impulses sometimes separately, other times simultaneously; when overlapped, we are compelled to unplug and go far away, so that we can feel at home-in our own lives-once again.

By most accounts, this condition finds its cure at Sunny's Bar in Red Hook. Crossing the threshold from Conover Street into the pub and realizing that you've reached the edge of the world, the seeker becomes still. After sipping a beer and soaking in strains of blues from the back room, the restless inevitably find repose. Wanderlust and homesickness take their cues to head back out the door into the waterfront winds that dance down the street toward the bay, their wake flicking daylight through the windows and off stainless steel coffee urns, beer bottles, and pint glasses. In the evening, the sunset splashes itself across the bar and pastel walls where the late Sunny Balzano's abstract canvases hang with quiet confidence over contented customers who all want to stay a while, maybe forever. In German, this would be called gemütlichkeit, in Swedish it is gemytlig. The Dutch and Danes, respectively, recognize it as gegelligheid or hyggelig. Though they vary in precise meaning and context, these terms all convey something convivial, familiar. They also indicate something deeper-the intimacy of reuniting with a friend, time passed with loved ones, or the togetherness that gives people feelings of belonging.

Like well-crafted words, prized places are evocative, idiosyncratic, precise, and untranslatable. Sunny's Bar is one of them. As seasoned musician and bartender Mara Kaye says, "You can't fake this. You can't build a bar that smells like this. You can't build a bar that feels like this. This is the pay off of time." It's true. And Sunny's wouldn't make sense anywhere but Red Hook. A longtime resident and patron insisted that the winds and waters around the peninsula provide Red Hook with a different atmosphere from the rest of New York City,...