Gaslight This! Restaurants Clamor for Faux-Retro Décor

The other evening at Moto in South Williamsburg, brothers and interior designers John and Kevin McCormick were slumped over mini

The other evening at Moto in South Williamsburg, brothers and interior designers John and Kevin Mccormick were slumped over mini glasses of Guinness, which they’d ordered by the nickname, “Sweet Sweet Baby Jesus.” Surrounded by the peeling walls, rusty light fixtures and creaky Viennese chairs that have become their signature, the McCormicks were discussing the most recent evolution of restaurant decor in New York.

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“At one point, it was all French bistro and yellow washes and tin ceilings,” said Johnny (as he prefers to be called), 44, wearing jeans, a scruffy thermal shirt, and a mischievous smile hidden by graying facial hair. He was referring to places like Keith McNally’s Pastis, in the meatpacking district, and the crepes chainlet Le Gamin. “It looked like they all picked up the same coffee table book and bought the same enamel sign.”

Sitting across from him in a crisp dress shirt was Kevin, 38, a former ballet dancer with cheerful blue eyes.  “And then it went into like this lounge phase with clean painting and low seating and glass walls,” he said.

“And then it was this industrial design and suddenly everything was poured concrete and brick and black pipe,” Johnny continued.

“I think people wanted a little more warmth and history back,” Kevin said.

Proprietors like Taavo Somer of Freeman’s on the Lower East Side and Matt Abramcyk of Smith & Mills in Tribeca and the Beatrice Inn in the West Village have become public figures of a certain Depression-era nostalgic charm that has washed over the city’s restaurants. But it is Johnny and Kevin whom these men, among others, have called on to come in and beat things up a bit. The McCormicks are not exactly decorators or contractors, while they do both. Rather, they are professional distressors: helping build restaurants and bars where bartenders wear arm garters, ice is cubed by hand, and each dust particle, creaky door hinge, dent and scratch is applied with expert precision.

Johnny rusts, oxidizes, and ages surfaces. Sometimes he uses chemicals to create aged-green copper; other times he attacks light fixtures, bar tops, and doors with nails, keys, or whatever else might be lying around.  Kevin, meanwhile, is the wall and ceiling expert: applying layer upon layer of paint and plaster as well as candle wax, or motor oil if necessary, to get a weathered look. They like their places to look as if they “maybe opened 1890, and now it’s 1940 at the latest,” as Kevin put it.

Raised in Minneapolis, neither brother was schooled in design, but they attribute their appreciation for “old, soulful things” to their mother, a homemaker and a dedicated antique shopper. (Dad worked in air pollution control.)

In 1997, Johnny, who moved here in 1989 and worked as a bike messenger and later, a bartender, asked Kevin to join him in New York to open the restaurant Palacinka, in Soho, which they did on $36,000 in 3 months time. (They sold their stake in 2001 and the place closed last year). Shortly after they opened Moto, in which they are part owners, along with photographer and design collaborator Billy Phelps. Fellow restaurateurs noticed the space’s distinctive, sentimental atmosphere. Soon after, Mr. Somer asked the brothers to help him open Freeman’s; Kevin did the walls and Johnny helped with construction. Then, Kevin was asked to paint the walls of the Beatrice Inn and later Smith & Mills, where Johnny also worked on the interior. Most recently Kevin did the ceiling at Hotel Delmano, before the brothers signed on to execute Five Leaves, a restaurant that opened in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in September, financed by the actor Heath Ledger and later his estate.

 

THE RUSTY KNIFE

Past is paramount to the McCormick brothers–even if it’s a fictionalized past. The retro bathroom with the pull-chain toilet in the basement bathroom of Moto was inspired by the scene in The Godfather where a gun is planted behind a toilet of a restaurant in the Bronx. The globe light fixtures at Five Leaves were intended to resemble gas lights, even though Johnny bought the connecting parts new and then scraped off the lacquer and applied rust. Kevin, meanwhile, likes to scratch 3-inch spots into paint, revealing the colors of phantom past tenants.

The crescent-shaped space at Five Leaves reminded Johnny of a ship, and so the brothers decided on a nautical theme. But as Kevin compulsively applied plaster to the sample boards like frosting to a cake—painting, spreading, smoothing, scraping—he couldn’t get the aged marine paint effect he was hoping for. He walked away for a bit, forgetting to rinse his plaster knife. When he returned a few days later, the sample boards were still disappointing, but something beautiful had happened.

“He showed me this knife that was all rusted from the wet plaster, but the rust was also bleeding—almost blossoming through the paint,” recalled Johnny. The knife pattern was reminiscent of the below sea-level part of an old ship. In other words—perfection!

The McCormick brothers’ serendipitous method is a way of rebelling against the boom of shiny, glass, hyper-planned and overmarketed buildings with names like NV (it’s green!) along the Brooklyn waterfront.

“We’re fighting back against all this greediness and the shitty materials in the design of all these spaces,” said Johnny. “It’s like we were comfortable with this depression before it even happened.” He argued for the cultural benefits of economic implosion. “I think the first depression in this country was one of the best things that ever happened to galvanize people. You’re not living large and people come together at restaurants and bars, which are always great places to plan a revolution or make art.” (The appeal of McCormick-customized bars is certainly not that they are Depression-era cheap, however; at Hotel Delmano on Berry Street, cocktails like the St. Germain or the Commandant go for around $12.)

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Gaslight This! Restaurants Clamor for Faux-Retro Décor