DeKalb

One block.
Twenty-five years.
One family.

Charles McMickens has been building on this block since 1999 — when he left a career in banking to open Sol, a Latin Caribbean restaurant at 229 DeKalb Avenue. Fort Greene was home. It had always been home. His mother Jacqueline McMickens — attorney, civil rights advocate, Brooklyn institution — raised her family here. Charles grew up between Clinton Hill and Fort Greene, returned for good in 1986, and never left.

Sol became June. June gave way to The General Greene, one of Fort Greene's defining farm-to-table restaurants. Heritage Wines opened in 2013. His son Clay opened Soulmate, Fort Greene's neighborhood dispensary, in 2025. Grace runs operations across the family's businesses. Bar Heretic and Bar Heretic Events arrived in 2026.

DeKalb Collective brings together Heritage Wines, Bar Heretic, Bar Heretic Events, and Soulmate — four businesses within a block of each other, each with its own identity, all sharing a neighborhood and a story. Come for one. Discover the others.

"Fort Greene isn't a backdrop for what we do. It's the reason we do it." — Charles McMickens