cafe moto
\Mo"to\, n. [It.] (Mus.) Movement; manner of movement…(Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary)
“The motorcycle is a metaphor for just about everything,” said Bill Phelps, co-owner of Café Moto. “The meaning constantly evolves: beauty, adventure, speed, sex.”
Bill knows about bikes and about the past: he is the owner of 10 vintage bikes; his partner John McCormick has a 1965 BMW bike. It’s parked in the café right now while it awaits some “medical attention.”
The motorcycle could be a metaphor for Café Moto, a place that invites you to come along for the ride and hang out in the past. Decorated with vintage memorabilia found over nearly a decade, Bill and John have discovered a mode of transportation to memories and past eras.
Part pre-war (read radio and no television), part reconstruction (Bill and John gutted the place entirely), part salvage job (all the marble table and bar tops were found in the trash), part prohibition speakeasy, part early 1900’s Brooklyn corner bar, part 1930s Berlin nightclub, part film noir; Café Moto screams familiarity and timelessness – in a hushed, secretive whisper that you catch out of the corner of your eye.
The two times I have gone to see it have been magical journeys. Located at 394 Broadway, directly under the Hewes Street station, I trudged down the street with snow silently falling from the elevated tracks as the trains rumbled by. The night was quiet and felt otherworldly. I walked by Café Moto the first time, but the second time they had hung an antique bicycle outside as a calling card. Sitting seemingly by itself on the corner, the V-shaped building invites you in at one point and then lays itself open once you enter.
Not a very long walk, its distance from “Williamsburg-central” was not lost on the two owners. “We wanted to get away from what was hip and happening,” said John. “We’re banking on the future of this neighborhood, that things will begin to move out here in this direction. But we didn’t want to be part of something that existed. We wanted to be part of something new.”
Café Moto is a journey once you arrive, full of knickknacks and nostalgia so thick you could peel it off the walls. “I’d like to think it inspires creativity with its dreamy quality,” Bill explained. “This is a café in the old sense: a place for exchange to take place, a gathering place.”
Like the night Bill and John looked up from their work to find an Hasidic couple, a Rockette, a 3-legged dog and its owner, and a mohawked punk sitting next to each other at the bar. “That was a bit surreal,” Bill admits, “but it captures this place perfectly. It remains wide open for anything to happen.”
It also serves some quite savory food, courtesy of the menu cooked up by Bill, John, and their chef, Cloey Osborne: simple dishes like marinated squid, pork stew, chicken dijionaise, and truffles. Of course, the menu has changed regularly since it opened six months ago. “It’s like a garage back there; we take what we have to build the perfect meal.” (Ah, the motorcycle metaphor again.)
And as they travel into the future, the café will evolve again as they begin to stock vintage spark plugs behind the counter, have a tool set available for bike enthusiasts who need to give their ride a tune, install a compressed-air pump, and show silent-era films late Monday nights from a 16mm projector. For the present, they feature live music three nights a week.
It’s different, but it is a very comfortable bar. It should be since rumor is both of the owner’s apartments look the same. Take a ride back into the past-present with what was and is again. Come visit a relaxing time machine.