Jaywalker is open. As of June 11, 2026, New York Distilling Company’s new cocktail bar and event space is pouring at 573 Johnson Ave in Bushwick, Brooklyn — Thursday through Sunday, 4pm to midnight. Martinis and Manhattans are $12. The rye behind the name took 150 years to get here. You can walk in tonight.
What is Jaywalker?
Jaywalker is a 3,000-square-foot bar inside the New York Distilling Company distillery — an ode to the city’s artists and rebels, named for the company’s Jaywalk Rye. It reimagines the traditional distillery tasting room as a place to actually spend an evening: signature cocktails, guided tastings, immersive blending experiences, and a snack menu of North Fork chips and Brooklyn Biltong.
The essentials
- Where: 573 Johnson Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237 (Bushwick)
- When: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 4pm–12am
- Cocktails: by Jane Danger and Jamie Gordon — Martinis and Manhattans at $12, plus a signature Rye Egg Cream
- Snacks: North Fork Potato Chips and Brooklyn Biltong
- Also on: guided tastings, blending experiences, watch parties, DJ nights — see the calendar
Why open a bar inside a distillery?
“Steinbeck said that ‘New York is where you prove if what you think in theory makes sense in real life,'” says New York Distilling Co. founder Allen Katz. “For me, the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of a great Manhattan is the epitome of a great night out. By the second drink in hand there is usually a realized plan in play built on curiosity and confidence. That’s the feeling we want Jaywalker to capture.”
Where it fits among Brooklyn’s new cocktail bars
Every “best new cocktail bars in NYC” list this year will have its share of speakeasy doors and $24 drinks. Jaywalker is making a different argument: a working Brooklyn distillery pouring its own award-winning gin and a genuinely rare heirloom rye, at $12 a cocktail, in a room built for staying. Among new bars in Bushwick — and Brooklyn at large — nobody else can pour the house whiskey thirteen years in the making, because nobody else grew the grain.
Read the rest of the launch coverage: the Magazine. Plan the first visit: what’s on this week. Follow along: @jaywalker.nyc.