Diego and Stephanie Castillo, owners of The Keep. (Photo: Nicole Disser)
Walking into The Keep, a newish bar that straddles the Bushwick / Ridgwood border, can be something of a dizzying experience at first. There’s so, so much to look at– a thick layer of stuff permeates every corner, every surface, and the place is packed with antiques, taxidermy, tchotchkes, and trinkets from throughout all of eternity and all over the world. At times, it seems like these objects might swallow you whole, but after a few minutes the eyes adjust to the stimulation overload and you realize you’re not in an antique shop chock full of a random assortment of things only there because they could potentially sell, but in a bar filled with objects that are beloved and have been carefully, thoughtfully placed in their home. For Stephanie and Diego Castillo, the bar’s owners, many of these objects are steeped in history and hold a certain power.
“I’ve been collecting since I was 12, just from all over the world,” Stephanie explained. “I’ve always loved things that have already had a life of their own. I’m not a modern stuff kind of girl.” Her passion has rubbed off on her husband Diego too, though according to Stephanie he keeps her habit of amassing stuff in check. “Of course whenever I say I can throw anything away, Diego’s on it.”
And the more you speak with Stephanie, the more you’ll understand how the hodgepodge of objects is fitting for her personal history. “I have a kind of what do they call it? Oh, a checkered past,” Stephanie laughed. She was born in Brooklyn and growing up split time between her hometown and Genoa, Italy. Stephanie wasn’t just worldly at an early age, she was precocious. While she recounted stories of her teen years partying on the Lower East Side, Diego stood behind the bar prepping simple syrups and stocking the bar, occasionally cracking a smirk.
(Photo: Nicole Disser)
“We basically lived at Danceteria, the Mudd Club, AM PM,” she recalled. Over the years, Stephanie met up with the likes of Run DMC, the actor formerly known as Marky Mark, and LL Cool J. “Madonna had just come from Detroit. We sold her ecstasy,” she laughed.
Though Stephanie was happy to recount stories like that one, she remained a little vague on what exactly it was that she was doing. “When I was quite young I worked for some crazy people who used to send me around with little packages for here and there,” she said. “I was about 15 when I was out and about.”
At such a tender age she even had an encounter with John Belushi. “He was on a bender when I met him at this after-hours club called AM PM and it was right around the corner from the Mudd Club,” she recalled. “It was the week before he went to LA, right before he died. When he found out I was 15, he chased me all around the club. We hung out. He was cool, though, harmless really. He had a really quiet but funny presence. He didn’t talk too much, actually — there was a lot of grunting.”
When she was 16, Stephanie moved to London, a city that would be her home for several years and where her daughter was born. She also spent a year living in Lagos, Nigeria. “I went on some crazy excursion with these bank robbers to Africa,” she said, offering little detail save for that “it was really intense, I wouldn’t do that again.”
After traveling extensively, Stephanie met Diego and they’ve been together for almost 16 years. “He was my bus boy,” she laughed. Diego didn’t respond. “You don’t remember?” she asked.
(Photo: Nicole Disser)
Eventually Stephanie returned to Brooklyn, living in Red Hook for a while before she and Diego bought their first home in Ridgewood. “It was hard for me as a Brooklyn girl to be on this side of the street, because over here it’s Queens,” she said. “But Brooklyn’s right across the street.” To be fair, the area, at just two blocks from the Jefferson stop, definitely feels more Bushwick than Queens.
While Diego splits his time between managing a bar on the Lower East Side and running The Keep, Stephanie said she’s at the bar, which officially opened in January, “all the time.” And in a way, it’s brought her back to her club days. “I’m on a schedule where I’m a vampire again, again! I’m used to it, I guess,” she said.
The Keep, which is just around the corner from their home, has been a long time coming for Stephanie and Diego, who’ve worked a combined 35 years in the service industry. “He’s the master bartender,” Stephanie explained. “It’s so liberating to not have to work for anyone else anymore. I’ve worked really hard my whole life, so it’s really nice. We worked really hard on it. We don’t have investors, it’s just me and Diego. We took our time. He did all the brick, he exposed all the beams. It really was a labor of love.”
(Photo: Nicole Disser)
Stephanie showed me photos of the place during renovations and it looked like a complete disaster. “There was a lot of work to be done on the place,” she said. Prior to The Keep, the building housed what Stephanie called a “shady” Dominican social club. “I’ve heard some messed up stories. Some guy got stabbed at the bar and didn’t die here, but came right in front of my house, that we bought, to die. So it’s a weird connection,” she said.
But the new owners were tipped off by neighbors who told them the building’s history ran even deeper than that. Stephanie pointed out a bullet hole in the big mirror that lines one of the walls. “In 1967 this was the site of a mafia massacre. It was called Cypress Gardens and these made guys totally got pulverized in here. Some guy came through the back door and just shot em up,” she said. A 1968 article from the Times confirms the story.
“When we were renovating we had a pool table downstairs. It was kind of warped and you could tell it was from the ‘60s,” she said. “Diego chopped it into bits so we could get rid of it and he comes up with this clip, this bullet clip with hollowed-out bullets that was hidden in the pool table.”
Maybe I was a little tipsy from the hot toddy, but I wondered if, given the violent history of the place, Stephanie and Diego thought the place might be haunted. “We have our moments, I swear to God,” Stephanie replied.
“I don’t like to think about that stuff,” Diego admitted. “It’s because I’m afraid of it. I respect it.” He said that when he was working on restoring the place, he kept a little saint nearby. “To take care of me while I was working– it’s still down there, actually.”
Stephanie showed me a bizarre photo on her phone– pictured are two people, but a reflection in between them appears to be of a man in a trench coat and hat, easily a mid-century getup. “I see it right away,” she said. “Whether it is or it isn’t, the fact that it comes off this way is saying something right there.” Stephanie wasn’t explicit about what she thought the reflection could be, but it was admittedly pretty spooky.
(Photo: Nicole Disser)
Stephanie’s suspicions were fueled by another strange encounter with a magician who goes by the name Voodoo. “This guy comes in and he’s got a huge parrot, a Macaw named Paco. So he comes in and he’s like, ‘Have you ever seen that guy?’ He’s staring off into the distance, into the same corner where I took the picture. And I was like, ‘What guy?’”
Voodoo pressed on. “The guy that stands in the corner,” he said. Stephanie recalled: “I didn’t even turn around. I was like, ‘No.’ And I’m thinking like, ‘Okay, you’re a little lost buddy.’ But it also could be possible that he sees that.” She asked Voodoo if the man he was looking at said anything to him. “He likes what you’re doing with the place,” Voodoo replied.
We swapped more ghost stories but Diego and Stephanie were insistent that even though they’ve had some strange encounters, they still feel the place has positive vibes. “The energies– that’s what I constantly get about this place, is that we have good energy,” Stephanie said.
And it’s true, I felt like I could have sat there all day talking to Stephanie and Diego and investigating the countless objects. It’s almost as if certain things — the laughing hyena head, an icon of the Virgin Mar — are imbued with a sort of power of their own. “Oh yeah, that goes way, way back,” Stephanie agreed. “Think of altars, amulets, icons — all that stuff. It’s why churches are so magnificent and have that energy, it just lifts you.”
The Keep is located at 205 Cypress Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens
