Union Pool

Overview

A cavernous former pool-supply store in the shadow of the BQE that Zeb Stewart opened in 2000 as a corner bar for North Williamsburg's arriving artists, with a live-music back room, a fire-pit patio, and resident DJs seven nights a week; co-founded with Ray and Alyssa Abeyta, who died in 2014 and 2017.

Union Pool occupies the ground floor of a onetime pest-control and swimming-pool supply warehouse at the corner of Union Avenue and Meeker Avenue, beneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway overpass in North Williamsburg. Zeb Stewart opened the doors in 2000, converting the cavernous shell into a neighborhood bar, wooden banquettes, a central DJ booth, a fire pit fashioned from a Bowery restaurant wok, and a back room bookable for live acts, at a moment when the surrounding blocks were still described as desolate. Ray Abeyta, a painter known around the neighborhood as the 'Mayor of Williamsburg,' and his wife Alyssa Abeyta co-founded the project alongside Stewart, and all three remained embedded in the North Brooklyn arts scene; the Abeytas later opened Hotel Delmano (2008) on Berry Street together with Stewart as a companion cocktail-and-oyster bar. Union Pool's back room holds roughly 100–150 standing, and its programming spans indie rock, experimental music, and late-night DJ sets running to 4 a.m. on weekends; the venue's own description notes resident DJs playing seven nights a week and retaining many original staff members across its more than two decades of operation. The outdoor patio, set behind the building in a fenced courtyard, became Union Pool's best-known space: a shack bar, the El Diablo taco truck, and wooden benches. The bar's Summer Thunder free concert series, now in its fourteenth year, brings free outdoor afternoon shows on Sundays in July and August, with a range running from Sun Ra Arkestra to underground indie acts. The venue also runs a DJ program from 8 p.m. to close daily, programming that leans eclectic, the 150-cap interior is less a dedicated dance room than a social bar that moves late in the evening. The two founding co-owners died within a few years of each other: Ray Abeyta was struck by a truck on Flushing Avenue while riding his motorcycle on the night of November 30, 2014, and died early the next morning at 58; Alyssa Abeyta died in 2017. Their community ethos survived in the staff they shaped, employees Suzanne Cub and Ryan Sawyer launched a weekly food pantry at the venue in June 2020, serving approximately 150 people every Wednesday through the COVID shutdown and beyond, citing Alyssa directly as their inspiration. The building itself survived a five-alarm fire on July 1, 2022, in an adjacent three-story structure at the same address; with 200-plus firefighters responding and 14 injured (11 firefighters, 3 civilians), Union Pool sustained water and smoke damage and closed for just over a month before reopening on August 5, 2022, with a relaunched Summer Thunder lineup. The back room's 100-150 person standing capacity has made it a standard early-career booking for indie rock, experimental, and DIY touring acts passing through Brooklyn, the room modest enough that sold-out shows retain floor-level proximity regardless of the act's profile. Summer Thunder has run since 2012.