This South Brooklyn bar wants you to know it’s all the fun
Young Ethel’s, a woman-owned bar and event space in South Slope, offers its audience an affordable and community-focused nightlife experience.
As people left their 9-to-5s on Thursday and entered the conundrum of the New York City rush hour, the bartender working at Young Ethel’s experimented with the brightness of chandeliers adorning the South Brooklyn bar. Yellow and orange light mellowed out to a blended warm hue between 4 and 7 p.m., and locals and regulars packed themselves tightly around the bar, in front of pinball machines and into velvety furniture tucked in corners or the back room. Overhead, songs such as “Zombie” by The Cranberries and “Toy Soldiers” by Martika teased the speakers. Bar regulars pulled the newly initiated into conversation as their loosely-held drinks wet the countertops and their elbows.
“We’re not just serving up drinks, we’re serving up Brooklyn community,” Young Ethel’s advertises on its website. “So come on down and join the party.”
Located between Park Slope and South Slope in Brooklyn, Young Ethel’s encourages South Brooklynites who visit once to visit again. A night at Young Ethel’s yields a simple itinerary: purchase a $12 cocktail, make a friend or say hello to the ones you know, and stick around for the show.
For local resident Jessica Lane, 38, Young Ethel’s is refreshing compared to bars across the city where the price tag attached to nightlife is steadily increasing alongside national inflation. Lane says the cocktails, priced under $15, mixed with free events and the community-oriented approach of Young Ethel’s has turned her into a regular since the bar’s 2019 inception.
“I run into people that I’ve met here all the time,” Lane says. “It’s nice to see people who are happy to see you.”
Lane referred to Young Ethel’s as “the carrot on the string” that empowers her to walk a mile home after a gin and tonic and a night proliferated by social activity. As someone who worked in retail for twenty years, Lane says the environment at Young Ethel’s has led her to enjoy non-transactional face-to-face interactions with new people.
“I actually do like talking to strangers when I’m not forced to do so for minimum wage,” Lane says. “I’m always both over- and under-stimulated, so a bar is a great place to wind down.”
While the bartenders helped guests on Thursday get warmed up and settled in after their respective shifts by way of drinks named “White Russian (scratch that) ‘The Dude,’ I Guess” and “The OnlyFans,” the back room stage at Young Ethel’s buzzed in preparation. Not unlike a school of fish, people sitting at the bar migrated to the back room when summoned by the scream of a bearded man who banged his palms wildly against bongo drums.
It was time for one of the bar’s most popular events to begin.
The first two Thursday nights of the month at Young Ethel’s are reserved for Bar-Prov, an experimental form of improvisational theater where teams must complete a set of skits based on a word or phrase thrown at them by the audience. Two members of the first team at Bar-Prov took the audience fishing by placing the magenta chairs characteristic of Young Ethel’s center-stage after someone shouted out the phrase “tackle box.”
“It’s good to get out of the city,” one of the actors said. His arms were anteriorly extended, as though he was holding a fishing pole.
“Yeah, the city sucks,” another one responded. He posed similarly as they shared improvised banter.
After the fishing escapade, the audience was tossed back-and-forth between interweaving scenes: an eager cousin visiting the city was enamored by the F train that led to a Shake Shack, a group of cousins had their Mardi Gras float preparation interrupted by a vomit-chain, and a long-distance couple grappling with intense sexual tension rode through Amish country. The audience was informed during the set that the goose is the state bird of New Jersey (New Jersey claims that its state bird is the Eastern Goldfinch).
Leaning into the imaginative space that improvised artistry offers has been a constant for Paris Adkins, 24, since they were a teenager performing at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre (UCB). When UCB, founded in-part by comedian Amy Poehler, closed in 2020 because of the pandemic, Adkins found Young Ethel’s to be a local and accessible space where they could experiment as an improv artist.
“After the pandemic, it was one of the only venues where shows were free and accessible,” Adkins says of Young Ethel’s. Although UCB reopened in 2023 and the improv scene has reclaimed some vibrancy since the height of the pandemic, Adkins has found a distinct sense of community at Young Ethel’s that they say is unique to the South Brooklyn bar and stage.
“[Young Ethel’s is] not just a theater where you do your stuff and leave,” Adkins says. “I come in on days I’m not doing shows, too.”
Mary and Tim Racine, the owners of Young Ethel’s, opened the bar at a time when their passion for theater was waning. Mary had dropped out of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Richmond, Virginia before moving to New York City and taking acting classes at the William Esper Studio from 2012 to 2014.
Shortly after Mary finished school, she and Tim temporarily fell out of love with the arts.
“We were tired of being those people and chasing after something we couldn’t grasp that wasn’t bringing us joy,” Mary said in an email. Mary and Tim believed that her previous bartending experience would suffice as the background to pursuing their dream of opening up a bar. More than four years later, Mary and Tim now offer the public about ninety free events and shows a month.
As with all forms of nightlife, Mary says the days and nights at Young Ethel’s pass in a non-linear fashion. At 2 a.m., it is normal for her to receive messages from bartenders about either a broken guitar amp or bathroom sink.
“[Tim and I] show up early to try to address whatever the issue is while also noticing that the bartenders didn’t stock, clean, or something important,” Mary says. “We curse them in our heads.”
Mary and Tim divide up the labor at Young Ethel’s: she handles inventory, ordering and booking while Tim organizes tech meetings, accounting and menus. Despite their even distribution of managerial responsibilities and Mary’s twenty years of experience in the service industry, she still deals with people outside of their marriage assuming that Tim is the central point of contact for business pertaining to Young Ethel’s.
“Folks tend to assume a man is in charge,” Mary says. “Whether it’s a solicitor, contractor or government official coming by with a chipboard, they tend to ask if my boss is around,” she says.
The growth of women-owned businesses outpaced the growth of businesses owned by men between 2019 and 2023, the Women Impacting Public Policy Institute reports. A campaign on behalf of New York City called the Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises Program also states that it aims to expand entrepreneurial opportunities for women and minorities. Still, New York City has struggled in properly addressing the discrepancies and discrimination women entrepreneurs experience across industries. Mary says that in the nightlife industry, she often has to work harder than her male counterparts to be seen and that male clients sometimes challenge her authority on managing a bar and venue.
“I can’t help but wonder how much easier my job would be if I signed off my emails as ‘Bob’ instead of Mary,” she says.
Despite the challenges that the nightlife industry brings to Young Ethel’s, Mary says that she wants the bar and stage to be a communal and exciting place for artists. For Nolan Kennedy, a 39-year-old teaching and improv artist, this commitment to the bar and local community struck him instantly.
“I had the luxury of just wandering in here when they first opened,” Kennedy says. “That’s when I met Tim and Mary. It was just instant, easy friendship.” His favorite nights outside of improv are Trivia Tuesdays, where Tim regularly dresses up in a bacon suit and the stakes are high: first-place winners receive $50 towards their bar tab.
Before guests poured into the bar on Thursday evening, Mary, pregnant and sitting in between Tim and a friend who traveled an hour to visit her, sipped water on a barstool. Her conversation ranged from Taylor Swift to drama in the improv scene. She does not stay out late anymore, she says, but still checks in daily on the bar, her friends and the local community that has made Young Ethel’s its second home.
“Young Ethel’s in itself is a living, breathing art project,” Mary says. “It decides what it is and we just try to keep up.”
