{"id":345,"date":"2008-09-25T16:01:47","date_gmt":"2008-09-25T16:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=345"},"modified":"2008-09-28T14:07:28","modified_gmt":"2008-09-28T14:07:28","slug":"wiley-ben","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/library\/profiles\/wiley-ben\/","title":{"rendered":"Wiley, Ben"},"content":{"rendered":"

BAR GREAT HARRY!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ben Wiley (CIR Fukui-ken. 2004-06) Opens Up a New Bar in Brooklyn<\/strong><\/p>\n

(From the Fall 2007 Issue of the JETAA NY Newsletter)<\/p>\n

On August 17, JET alum Ben Wiley<\/span>, a former Fukui-ken CIR who lived and worked in Yokohama prior to that, opened Bar Great Harry<\/span> with his brother Mike on the corner of Smith and Sackett Streets in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn. <\/span>
<\/span>
After a small gathering of JET alums there on August 23 to say <\/span>konbanwa and <\/span>o-jama shimasu and show support for a fellow JET alum, the Newsletter caught up with Ben and engaged in investigative reporting (i.e., used Google) to better understand what makes this bar unique. <\/span>
<\/span>
What the Newsletter found is: <\/span>
<\/span>
1.\u00a0 Ben is obsessed with beer, and, Bar Great Harry serves some of the best and most unique “craft” beer around. <\/span>
2.\u00a0 One of those beers is called Butternuts Pork Slap. <\/span>
3.\u00a0 One of the bar’s biggest fans is El Presidente Rob Tuck<\/span>:\u00a0 “It’s got a fantastic selection of beers, ex-JET bartenders, and it’s on possibly the funkiest street in the city. What’s not to like?”<\/span>
4.\u00a0 Ben also writes a blog about the bar (bargreatharry.com\/blog<\/a>) that’s worth a read. <\/span>
<\/span>
And now, the the question that’s been on your mind since you started reading this article… <\/span><\/p>\n

What’s the story behind the bar’s name? <\/span><\/p>\n

Ben: <\/span>Well, I used to live and bartend at WINDJAMMER in Yokohama.\ufffd\u00a0 But the bar that I used to hang out at a lot after we closed up was called Bar Great Harry.\u00a0 We took that name for lack of anything better and because we thought it sounded weird and fucked up and cool.\u00a0 Nice to have a little homage to Nippon.<\/p>\n

And now a more prosaic question that is still worth including in this article for contextual purposes… <\/span><\/p>\n

Why open a bar in Brooklyn? <\/span><\/p>\n

Ben: <\/span>I like tending bar and I really like beer.\u00a0 So does my brother.\u00a0 Brooklyn is awesome – nice people, and they all seem to really like beer, too.\u00a0 I live here.\u00a0 I know the neighborhood.\u00a0 I knew that people would accept good beer if you teach them and tell them what it is.\u00a0 There’s enough decent (but not really really craft, micro stuff) beer around that I knew with a little tweaking we could present true craft beer to the people.<\/p>\n

But what’s so unique about the blog? <\/span><\/p>\n

We’re not sure if it’s common practice for bar owners to write blogs these days, but it’s clear from his prose that Ben enjoys writing and that the bar is more than just a business to him.\u00a0 Here’s a choice nugget: <\/span><\/p>\n

Can has Stella plz?\u00a0 No. (September 1)
\nWhen we opened everyone warned us that we needed to offer Stella.\u00a0 What did we do?\u00a0 We listened and ordered three kegs, assuming that we would run through it opening weekend.\u00a0 What happened? We took it down after about five days.\u00a0 Now we have the same three kegs taking up valuable real estate in our walk-in.<\/p>\n

We didn’t realize it at the time, but this was a one-way street. What are we gonna do, put Stella back up?\u00a0 And anyway, fuck this beer. It’s expensive as shit and isn’t anything special. Don’t get too twisted; I’ve had many a Stella on many a night. However, it makes us feel warm and fuzzy when someone sips on, say, a Stoudt’s Pilsner.<\/p><\/div>\n

To read more, go to bargreatharry.com\/blog<\/a>.\u00a0 To drink more, go to the corner of Smith & Sackett (F Train to Carroll Street stop).\u00a0 And to see Metromix’s review of Bar Great Harry, go to: newyork.metromix.com\/bars-and-clubs\/article\/inside-bar-great-harry\/163165\/content<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BAR GREAT HARRY! Ben Wiley (CIR Fukui-ken. 2004-06) Opens Up a New Bar in Brooklyn (From the Fall 2007 Issue of the JETAA NY Newsletter) On August 17, JET alum Ben Wiley, a former Fukui-ken CIR who lived and worked in Yokohama prior to that, opened Bar Great Harry with his brother Mike on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":61,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-345","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/PkZ7m-5z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":348,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/345\/revisions\/348"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/61"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}