Tales of Retail

Joanne Lucas shocked the New York restaurant world last week with an extraordinary announcement.

After months of searching for some deep-pocketed tenant to replace the hugely celebrated restaurateur Florent Morellet, whom she infamously booted from her building at 69 Gansevoort Street amid a lengthy dispute over rent and taxes, Ms. Lucas had finally decided to leave well enough alone.

She would reopen Mr. Morellet’s famous Florent restaurant on her own, less than 48 hours after its highly publicized June 29 closure. Same menu. Same staff. Same iconic green storefront. Only without the eccentric Mr. Morellet at the helm. Or his neon pink “Florent” sign in the window.  read more »

Racking up huge bills has long been part of the exotic experience at Scores, the infamous Manhattan-based chain of upscale strip clubs that built a nationwide reputation by catering to celebrities and wealthy executives.

Only it used to be the patrons’ problem. Cover charge: $30 per person. ATM fees: $18.50 per transaction. Cocktails: $19 a piece. And that doesn’t begin to cover the extravagant services rendered back in the Champagne room.

For some horny high rollers, the cost of just a single evening at Scores could even reach six figures: One visiting CEO from St. Louis eventually lost his job over a whopping $241,000 charged to his company credit card over the course of one night at the original Scores, at 333 East 60th Street, back in 2003.  read more »

Of all the new wine bars that have opened in Manhattan in recent months—a record 11 of them during the last Zagat survey alone—Bowery Wine Company at 13 East First Street has perhaps attracted the most vocal following.

“Die yuppie scum!” chanted protesters outside the small sipping spot last Friday night; many wielded placards: “EVICT WINE BARS SAVE THE EAST VILLAGE.”

At least some of the attention can be attributed to the venue’s location on the ground floor of the Avalon Bowery Place luxury apartment complex, one of several shiny new upscale buildings to pop up along the once downtrodden corridor.  read more »

Nightclub impresario Charles Ferri already runs one bar in the basement of the legendary Chelsea Hotel: His swanky Star Lounge, which opened in 2007, is where modern-day would-be Dennis Hoppers like Josh Hartnett and Zach Braff come to add their contributions to the long list of artistic achievements at the Chelsea, often involving rousing karaoke numbers.

Now, Mr. Ferri is planning another one at ground level: The Chelsea Hotel Legends Cafe & Bar, according to his Web site, would include a “sidewalk cafe, lobby and back bar,” offering wireless Internet (“for cafe members”) and serving “fine coffees, teas, brews and foods” amid “artwork by legendary Chelsea alumni.” He calls it “Bohemia reborn.” (“Project in planning,” according to the site.)  read more »

Paul Stallings, developer of the trendy Hotel on Rivington, isn’t one for false modesty.

“I’ve been at the cutting edge of this neighborhood transitioning into what it is,” said Mr. Stallings, 56, a former Wall Street lawyer who, in addition to erecting the area’s premier boutique hotel, which opened in 2004, has been buying, building and renovating apartment buildings on the Lower East Side since the early 1980s.  read more »

The jukebox at Ruby’s Bar & Grill was cranking out its usual eclectic mix of beachy classics—Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers In the Night,” Milli Vanilli’s “Blame It on the Rain”—this past Saturday when proprietor Michael Sarrel abruptly pulled the plug.

“Finish your drinks!” he told patrons of the venerable Coney Island venue at 5:22 p.m.

The old boardwalk bar was closing early, long before last call or even sunset, due to an apparent “safety hazard,” he said.

As the boozy crowd abandoned their beverages and shuffled out, a slew of firefighters, police and paramedics huddled in the back amid the eerie glow of a bright Coors Light sign near the men’s restroom.

This reporter, too, took one last swig and then headed over to an officer in shorts and a blue polo shirt marked “Community Relations,” who bluntly summed up the situation: “One guy was taking a leak, the floor partially collapsed, and he fell 10 feet.”

He landed in the bar’s dank basement, itself a once-hopping nightspot several decades ago, where even today, amid “rats ... bigger than dogs,” as veteran Ruby’s bartender Frank Gluska once told New York magazine, “you feel like spirits are still there drinking.”

Not that the fallen patron probably appreciated the history lesson. When he finally emerged from the gaping hole in the floor—which firefighters estimated at roughly 6 by 6 feet—he was, in the words of one Ruby’s employee, “literally covered in shit.”

When the floor gave way, apparently, so did the plumbing.

Yet the soiled and presumably shocked patron still managed to climb a ladder to safety, witnesses said, though he was later carried off on a stretcher and loaded into a waiting ambulance.

Stranger things have happened at Ruby’s over the years. In 2005, for instance, a small Cessna plane crashed into the sand outside. One of the regulars was said to have heroically leaped from his bar stool, leaving his beverage behind while he rushed out to help pull victims from the wreckage.

To Ruby’s die-hard devotees, Saturday’s freak bathroom accident perhaps seemed even more ominous.

Neighboring boardwalk merchant Dianna Carlin of the adjacent Lola Staar Souvenir Boutique, for one, was worried that the incident might give Ruby’s landlord, developer Joseph Sitt of Thor Equities, enough of an excuse to finally demolish the old brick building, much like he bulldozed the batting cages and go-cart track behind the bar last year.

It takes only one bad building inspection to bring down a Coney Island institution, as locals duly learned from former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani back in 2000, when he razed the run-down Thunderbolt roller coaster in the middle of the night during construction of the nearby minor league baseball stadium, KeySpan Park.

While clouds of doom have long hovered over the lingering relics of Coney Island’s ever-shrinking amusement district, losing Ruby’s would be “the loudest death knell,” said filmmaker J. L. Aronson, who’s currently shooting a documentary about the decaying seaside destination entitled Last Summer at Coney Island, a project he began, inronically, prior to last summer.

Given 2007’s PR debacle over the scrapped batting cages and go-carts, Mr. Aronson doubted that the developer would be so quick with the wrecking ball this time. “Coney Island would be soulless without Ruby’s,” he said. Next Page >

Matt Abramcyk may have hit the hipster jackpot in April 2006 when he leased the old Beatrice Inn at 285 West 12th Street. Though, at the time, it probably seemed like a consolation prize.

“The only reason that we got it was because no one else wanted it, to be honest,” Mr. Abramcyk said. “The price was high for the shape, and the space was so unconventional, with the lack of windows and other types of things you’d normally want to showcase in a restaurant.”

   read more » Next Page >

Jann Paxton is something of an enigma around Manhattan’s most mythical inn, the Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street.

“I’ve been told that people call me ‘the ghost of the Chelsea,’” he said, “because I’m never seen. I’m kind of a hermit. … I almost never leave my bedroom—let alone the apartment.”

And yet, he may soon have to: On May 12, the 46-year-old Norfolk, Va., native is expected to pay more than $59,000 that he allegedly owes in back rent, according to a recent court order, or else lose his spacious isolation chamber on the hotel’s fifth floor.  read more » Next Page >

In a real estate industry that seems to thrive on rise-and-shine breakfast meetings, Alex Picken has long marched to the beat of a different drummer. Or, at least, a drum machine.

“Yeah, I don’t do mornings, actually,” said Mr. Picken, laughing, in a husky, smoker’s tone of voice, as techno beats thumped in the background.

That’s because, for the past 20 years, he has specialized in sales and leasing of New York City nightspots.

Around the time that most brokers were getting up for their usual early-bird powwows, Mr. Picken was just calling it a night.

“I shouldn’t say that, altogether,” the veteran venue broker reconsidered, as he wheeled around Manhattan in his black BMW X5 last Friday evening, The Observer riding shotgun. “We’re part of the Real Estate Board of New York. We network.”  read more » Next Page >

Michael Perlman should start charging a commission.

On Monday, the 25-year-old from Queens announced that he had just brokered a deal to move midtown’s Cheyenne Diner to the Brooklyn waterfront.

Hey, it was either Red Hook—or the wrecking ball.

Just two weeks ago, the 68-year-old all-night diner on Ninth Avenue near Penn Station had served what appeared to be its final triple-decker burger. Landlord George Papas, who also owns the nearby Skylight Diner, planned to tear down the shiny, chrome-covered, prefab single-story railroad-car-style structure and erect a nine-story apartment building in its place.  read more » Next Page >

John Varvatos may be bringing live music back to the old CBGB location this week. But don’t get too used to it.

“I’m not going to be a club promoter,” said the 54-year-old fashion designer, who is hosting a charity concert on Thursday to celebrate the grand opening of his new eponymous boutique in the former rock-club space.

But a promoter is just what some of his critics seemed to want last week, when a small band of placard-wielding demonstrators had camped out on the sidewalk to commemorate the transformation of the dingy club into a high-end shop stocked with vintage leather jackets for around $1,000 and up.

“ONE ‘SMALL’ LOSS OF A MUSIC SPACE, ONE GIANT LEAP FOR PANTS,” read one sign, carried around by activist Rebecca Moore, who took a swipe at Mr. Varvatos for catering to “a wealthy, male-dominated major-label mainstream rock world that has no claim on the CB’s legacy whatsoever.”

Ms. Moore was notably arrested during a similar protest outside the defunct Lower East Side music hall Tonic last spring.

“It would be great to see Mr. Varvatos not just stepping in to save a building he deems a shrine, and using that environment to help sell his clothing—but rather actively petitioning the city to save and recognize local cultural arts and community spaces that have a rightful place in these neighborhoods!” Ms. Moore said in a statement.

If Ms. Moore had hoped to awaken the designer’s inner radical, her effort fell short.

“I guess that was protesting the rents in the neighborhood,” Mr. Varvatos said of the demonstration. “We don’t set the rent here.”

“We didn’t kick CBGB out of here. We didn’t force them to go. It was empty for a year. This could’ve been a bank, a deli, a Starbucks—it could’ve been a lot of things.

“I can’t save the music venues in this city,” he added, “but I can save a part of history.

“I’d be happy if CBGB were still here,” Mr. Varvatos said, seeking to clarify his intentions during an interview inside the new shop on Monday. “But not the CBGB that it was in the last five years—the CBGB of the past.”

A self-professed “music junkie,” the Michigan native estimated attending more than 100 shows at the defunct club during its heyday.

“I always joke that coming to CBGB was a religious experience for me,” said the designer, who installed stained glass behind the cash register to emphasize the site’s inherent holiness.

“The Ramones were the first band that I ever saw here,” he said. “I saw the Damned. Psychedelic Furs played here for five nights in the ’80s. There’s all kinds of different people that I saw here, in different incarnations, too, bands that broke up and got back together and players from one band playing with another band. There was always something exciting happening here.”

MR. VARVATOS WASN'T lusting after the location when longtime proprietor Hilly Kristal shuttered the place in 2006, after a lengthy dispute with the landlord over rent hikes.

The club was reportedly paying about $19,000 per month in rent at the time of its shuttering, with the rate expected to more than double.

Mr. Varvatos declined to say exactly how much he is paying for the former rock club, though he noted that asking rents in the neighborhood now tend to hover between $125 and $175 per square foot annually. (Given the size of the space, roughly 3,300 square feet, that would put the new boutique somewhere in the monthly range of $34,000 to $48,000.)

“I wasn’t even looking in this neighborhood,” Mr. Varvatos said of the Bowery, noting the close proximity of his existing Soho shop. “It never really dawned on me until I kind of walked in one day.

“I just wanted to see, well, what did it feel like today in the space? Not thinking about retail, not thinking about anything, really. I walked in and it was pretty gutted. Other than the walls, they had taken everything out; and there’s like one light bulb in the place at the time.

“Something at that moment just struck me and I felt like there’s something really special here. There is something that speaks to you from these walls. Everything from the aggression that was here, to the excitement that was here, to the passion that was here. You see it. You could smell a little of it at that time, too.”

It smelled awful.

“There were leaks in the ceiling, so it was very musty,” he said. “There was a sewer pipe that broke in the basement, so it was all raw sewage down there.

“It’s not my job to try to save anything. It’s not in my best interests, necessarily, to take financial risks to do these kinds of things. But I also thought, ‘This could be a good thing.’”

He put it new floors and even chandeliers but kept the club’s graffiti- and sticker-cluttered walls. “This still feels like it belongs on the Bowery,” he said.

As opposed to, say, Soho, the neighborhood of his existing digs.

“This is definitely a younger, funkier, rock ’n’ roll store,” Mr. Varvatos said. “The other one is much more of a luxury store. This store has everything from vintage vinyl, vintage audio equipment, we carry more of our Converse collection. We don’t carry suits in here. The other store is a little bit more formal, a little bit more elegant in terms of the product.

“There’s just a lot more here that’s made for this neighborhood.”

Mr. Varvatos insisted he is “thrilled” if patrons simply hang out, bask in the nostalgia and not buy a thing; those who do will be supporting a good cause. “We’re basically taking our profits and putting it into an artist development fund, so we can do shows at least once a month in this store.

“There’s something pretty cool about that,” he added. “There’s not a lot of places in the city like that.” Next Page >

“Everyone thinks that we should make an R.I.P. truffle, which would be really funny,” said Alison Nelson, founder and chief operator of Manhattan’s burgeoning Chocolate Bar chain.

Ms. Nelson, 34, is opening a new location next month at 127 East Seventh Street—right next door to the Peter Jarema Funeral Home.

“We could start doing funeral favors,” quipped Ms. Nelson, whose signature sweets already include a line of chocolates marked with a skull and crossbones, a tasty tribute to the defunct downtown rock club CBGB.

The sugary memorial is quite apropos, as her devil-may-care attitude belies a certain degree of somberness surrounding her new plot in the East Village.  read more » Next Page >

Robert Prichard hopes to illuminate Long Island City with some emphatic Times Square-style signage.

“I’d like it to be visible from the 59th Street Bridge,” he said. “First, it flashes ‘Queens,’ then ‘Bridge,’ then ‘Theater,’ and then ‘Queensbridge Theater.’ And then maybe an arrow that lights up and points down to our loading dock.”

Mr. Prichard, 52, has long had a flair for the dramatic. This is the same guy, after all, who nearly a decade ago led a conga line up Avenue A in protest of the city’s antiquated cabaret laws.

Nowadays, he’s participating in a perhaps farther-reaching kind of procession—the ongoing exodus of artists, musicians and other creative types abandoning Manhattan in droves.

Adopting the slogan “Downtown Has Moved to Queens,” the former Lower East Side stalwart is partnering with developer Michael Waldman to open what he called a “rock ’n’ roll supper club, similar to a Bowery Ballroom or a Mercury Lounge with a restaurant—a first for Long Island City, a first for Queens.”

Scheduled to open this summer, the 5,000-square-foot Queensbridge Theater, located at 37-31 10th Street, may be somewhat unique in concept. (After the nighttime entertainment ends at 4 a.m., the proprietors intend to open back up just three hours later for breakfast, with homemade bread baked fresh on the premises.)

But it isn’t exactly the neighborhood’s first nightclub.

A large “EXILE” sign still remains on the site of an old discotheque by that name, located just a few blocks away on 11th Street, which, during its brief stint in business nearly three decades ago, reportedly chartered buses to transport patrons from Manhattan.

These days, Mr. Prichard and Mr. Waldman don’t think they’ll need shuttle buses, as patrons and performers will probably be driving in from elsewhere.

“That person who spends 30 hours a week sewing their own costume or creating some weird panorama—those people can’t afford to live in Manhattan anymore,” Mr. Prichard said. “A lot of them live in Queens or Brooklyn or the Bronx or even Jersey. As Manhattan gets richer and richer and the real estate gets more and more expensive, fewer and fewer artists can afford to stay there. Then the places that want to support the artists, it doesn’t make sense for us to be there, either.

“We want to bring in artists and performers on all levels,” added Mr. Prichard, who plans to book the space not only for concerts, but also for Off Broadway plays, art exhibits—even after-school programs: “We want to offer the community the facilities we have during the day,” he said. “Bring in musicians and teach the kids how to play music and then put ’em up onstage.”

It sounds like a bit of a stretch in a part of New York City where nightclubs tend to veer toward more adult-oriented entertainment. Particularly around Queens Plaza—nicknamed “the new Times Square”—Long Island City is busting with strip clubs.

“At one end of the 59th Street Bridge, you’ve got Scandals, and at the other end, there’s Scores,” noted Mr. Prichard, laughing. “I know that from riding my bike—no ex-girlfriends there. Not yet anyway.”

But there’s also a public school just a few blocks up 10th Street from the forthcoming theater, he pointed out. “And there’s another one two blocks away,” he added. “I think there’s plenty of opportunities to engage the community.”

IT IS A neighborhood in transition—albeit a different one from the place that Mr. Prichard used to call home. “This is more of a real estate frontier,” he said. “The Lower East Side, circa 1993, was more of a cultural frontier.”

An Army brat who attended high school in Alexandria, Va., Mr. Prichard got his first taste of the live-music business working at the seminal Washington, D.C., rock venue the 9:30 Club before moving to New York in 1983 with the hopes of becoming an actor. Next Page >

Veteran bartender Toby Cecchini is often credited as the creator of the popular cosmopolitan cocktail. On Monday afternoon, the 44-year-old author and bar owner prepared for another pivotal moment in his illustrious career.

“I’ve actually never closed a bar in 21 years of bartending,” he said. “This is going to be a first for me.”

Mr. Cecchini’s tiny dive bar Passerby, at 436 West 15th Street, is scheduled to serve its last round of drinks on March 29 after nearly a decade in business in the rapidly gentrifying meatpacking district.

Originally established as a hangout for artists and patrons of the Gavin Brown Enterprise gallery, formerly located next door, the sometimes unruly, roughly 700-square-foot watering hole also served as the setting of Mr. Cecchini’s 2003 book, Cosmopolitan: A Bartender’s Life.

“It’s not that we’re not making money,” Mr. Cecchini said of his beloved bar’s pending demise. “I mean, the bar is crazy busy right now.”

And he had planned to stay in business for at least another seven years under the bar’s existing lease. A demolition clause, though, abruptly terminated that deal.

The Meilman family, which owns the building as well as several other properties in the neighborhood, intends to tear it down in order to add air rights to a forthcoming condo development just down the block.

“I’m demolished,” Mr. Cecchini said, “not just that I’m losing my bar, but in a much more macro sense, this bums me out for New York City.

“It would certainly be better if nobody has been in the bar in six months and we can’t pay the bills. Then I could understand why we’re closing,” he added. “Trying to convince myself that, like, this is all going to be pulled out in six days, I still can’t get it through my head. It’s sort of madness.”

Mr. Cecchini initially hoped to fight his untimely eviction. His business partner, gallery owner Gavin Brown, whose name adorns both the lease and the liquor license, didn’t want the hassle of a costly legal battle.

The business is expensive enough these days, what with the monthly rent jumping from $2,500 when the partners first opened the place in 1999 to the present rate of $13,500.

“The meatpacking district has grown up around us in the past decade,” said Mr. Cecchini, who has noticed a significant shift in clientele, as chic boutiques and trendy motels move into the once seedy area. “Most of the art world and stalwart regulars have been pushed out by the Williamsburg kids and bridge-and-tunnel crowd. I can show you a really amazingly funny little timeline that one of my bartenders drew. Under 1999, it says, ‘Models, rock stars,’ and under 2008, it says, ‘Moms and men from Europe.’”

It’s been a rapid transformation, said Mr. Cecchini, who compares the changes to Soho in the 1990’s, back when he managed the Soho bar Kin Khao. “I’ve watched the meatpacking district turn into Soho so much faster. The change was a decade in Soho. The change was three years in the meatpacking district—from tranny hookers to Stella McCartney.”

Years earlier, back in the 1980’s, Mr. Cecchini worked at Keith McNally’s illustrious Odeon restaurant. It’s not only where he met up with his future business partner, the gallerist Mr. Brown, but also where he made history. Sort of.

“I didn’t invent the cosmopolitan,” he stressed—reiterating a point that he tried to hammer home in his 2003 book. Many historians trace the modern cosmo recipe’s roots to either Mr. Cecchini or to a Miami bartender named Cheryl Cook. (“It was actually my agent’s idea to name the book Cosmopolitan,” he noted. “He’s like, ‘It’s the thing that has haunted you forever. You have to address it.’” )

“There was a drink called the cosmopolitan before,” Mr. Cecchini explained. “I basically made the drink that is now known as the cosmopolitan.

“When I got it, the cosmo was like a really crappy kamikaze, you know, dyed red,” he went on. “I just turned it into a sour. Really, it’s nothing but a vodka sour with a little dash of cranberry to make it pink, albeit a really well-made sour with Cointreau. I also used Absolut Citron, because it had just come out, and fresh lime juice and a little dash of cranberry.”

Mr. Cecchini first started bartending simply to pay the bills while pursuing his dream of becoming an author. But things worked out a bit differently. “I sort of reached the acme of my writing career, strangely, through bartending, and I also have reached the acme of my bartending career through writing,” noted the oft-published writer, whose work has appeared in GQ, Slate and The New York Times.

Now that Passerby is closing, the nightlife vet is considering opening another venue. (Several investors have already approached him, he said.) “I think a lot of what Passerby was was this strange collusion between Gavin and I. Him setting up the place and me running the space. It’s this sort of high-low aesthetic going on where it’s a dive bar, but it’s a very intellectual dive bar. Part of me is frightened that this was really successful because of exactly what it is and where it is. And if I go try to do it somewhere else, it’s a completely different set of parameters.”

In the meantime, he’s got plenty of other fodder from two decades behind the bar that didn’t even make the first book. (Another is in the works, he said.)

“Have I written about the toilets?” Mr. Cecchini pondered. “I got a call from a bartender on a Tuesday night, which is a relatively quiet night, and he’s like, ‘Dude, you’ve got to come down here.’ There was water just pouring out of the hallway. Someone had categorically smashed to pieces both toilets in both bathrooms with a ball-peen hammer or something. … I think about this when I see that Audrey Sanders has, like, carved wooden sinks at Pegu club and whatnot. In my bar, someone would take a chain saw to them in, like, 13 seconds.” Next Page >

When Coney Island stalwart Dianna Carlin talks about her “wild roller-coaster ride,” she isn’t referring to the rickety old Cyclone.

Last March, the gingery 34-year-old T-shirt designer from Detroit was facing eviction from her small souvenir shop on the boardwalk.

Nearby batting cages, go-cart tracks and a miniature golf course had already been demolished, as developer Joseph Sitt’s Thor Equities moved forward with a reported $2 billion plan to rezone and rebuild the ancient seaside amusement park into a glitzy Las Vegas-style resort, complete with luxury hotels and condos.

But unlike other vendors who agreed to keep their mouths shut in exchange for one final summer of sales, Ms. Carlin refused to sign the bulldozing landlord’s confidentiality agreement. Instead, she spoke out publicly—organizing a massive protest at City Hall with dozens of other disgruntled sideshow freaks from the shore.

One year later, Mr. Sitt’s controversial redevelopment plan is, in the words of one high-ranking city official, “dead in the water,” while Ms. Carlin’s charming Lola Staar Souvenir Boutique is still standing—expanding, in fact—with a second location opening later this summer inside the neighboring Stillwell Avenue subway station.

Heck, she’s even opening a roller-skating rink!

“It’s the beginning of the Lola Staar empire in Coney Island!” Ms. Carlin said, laughing, during an interview this past Sunday, as many Coney Island attractions, including the Cyclone and Astroland Park, kicked off a previously unexpected 2008 season.

“Everyone was talking today about the humongous contrast between where we were just one year ago and the way people are feeling now,” she said. “There’s been so much talk about the conflict and the zoning and people being scared about things being torn down and the last year of Astroland—it’s just been so heavy for so long. This season just seems so exciting and positive changes are happening. I think the roller rink is one thing that’s contributing to that.”

Ms. Carlin unveils her Lola Staar Dreamland Roller Rink this coming Saturday, March 22, inside the nearly 60,000-square-foot former Childs Restaurant building, a designated city landmark, with a splashy grand-opening party sponsored by Glamour magazine and fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger.

Glamour is filming the rink’s construction and opening party for an upcoming documentary, directed by Lisa Leone, about three women chasing their dreams.

Ms. Carlin had proposed the roller rink at a casting call last December. “The concept was to just take one of the vacant lots or vacant buildings and just bring life to it during this transitional time as Coney Island is redeveloped,” she explained.

“I think we were all really impressed how she had gone from someone who was about to be evicted from her store to becoming this sort of spokesperson for saving Coney Island and really maintaining the spirit of the neighborhood,” said Glamour associate publisher Leslie Russo, who, along with Mr. Hilfiger, sprung for roughly 300 pairs of roller skates and a rink floor composed of portable plastic tiles to help put Ms. Carlin’s proposal into action.

Taconic Investment Partners, which holds a 49-year lease on the historic Childs building, donated the space for the party.

“It’s a temporary installation,” noted Ms. Carlin, “which I’m hoping to grow into a permanent rink that will be built in the new development.”

She is continuing talks with Taconic about keeping the rink open throughout the summer. “In the meantime, we’re not doing anything with it,” said Taconic co-CEO Charlie Bendit, who’s awaiting possible zoning changes before fully redeveloping the site. “Why not make it available to the community?”

Both Ms. Carlin and Mr. Bendit readily admit that the Childs building isn’t the most ideal location for a permanent roller rink, however, because of its massive interior columns.

“There are six columns and they’re sort of, like, in the rink,” Ms. Carlin said. “It’s a beautiful building. It’s spectacular and amazing. But probably the columns are going to be a little bit of an issue.”

She hopes to move the portable rink to another site, perhaps as the ground-level tenant of one of Taconic’s forthcoming residential buildings: “How cool would that be? You’re inviting guests over and you’re like, ‘Yeah, I’m the apartment above the roller rink,’” she said.

“I’m going to consider all sorts of ideas,” said Taconic’s Mr. Bendit. “By all means, it would be something to think about.”

“I WOULD NEVER have foreseen myself being in this role,” Ms. Carlin told The Observer about her unlikely rise as one of Coney Island’s most prominent business and political leaders. “I think for a while I was just sitting back and being like, ‘Wow, somebody should say something. Somebody should do something.’ Next Page >

Innumerable authors, artists and musicians have inhabited the iconic Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street over the years.

But laser hair-removal specialists?

“I did laser hair removal, I did laser acne, I did laser wrinkle work, electrolysis, facials; I’m also a filmmaker,” said 55-year-old Marta Rodriguez, who’s been zapping bohemians’ blemishes and unwanted hair follicles out of a tiny, third-floor studio in the old arty hotel for the past six years.

Yet no longer: “They threw me out!”  read more » Next Page >

C’est fini for Jean-Paul Mouttet’s ancient tiny French bistro L’Entrecote.

The Sutton Place institution, staffed sparingly by Mr. Mouttet, 70, and two blond waitresses—one of whom is commonly mistaken for his wife—and frequented over the years by such luminaries as the late historian and restaurant buff Arthur Schlesinger, dished out its last plates of steak au poivre on Feb. 29.

“After 35 wonderful years of serving this very special neighborhood, I have decided it is finally the right time to retire,” Mr. Mouttet announced with a hearty “Au revoir” tacked to the eatery’s front door last week.

The timing was right from the landlord’s perspective, as well.

How do you say “I lost my lease” en français?  read more » Next Page >

When the imposing, 21-story neighborhood lightning rod Cooper Square Hotel finally rolls out its sprawling, three-floor bar and restaurant program this summer—complete with an angry-neighbor-friendly “soundbaffling” terrace—what will the developers do as an encore next door?

Another innovative noise-reducing restaurant? A whopping whole other shark-fin-shaped hotel? Perhaps the bigger question: Will affable hotelier Gregory Peck still be around to see it?  read more » Next Page >

David Kaplan was delighted to open his “dream destination” on East Sixth Street. But never again!

“I’ll never open another bar, another restaurant, a deli, a fucking bodega—I’ll never open up anything ever again in New York,” he said. “It’s awful.”

Typically more of a “no worries” kind of guy, Mr. Kaplan has become rather jaded since first setting out to open a restaurant with an “old-world sort of feel, that sense of permanence,” as he put it, a place that “doesn’t look new” but “looks elegant, classic, comfortable.”  read more » Next Page >

Robert Kremer used to fancy himself as sort of the next Hilly Kristal.

“We get CBGB’s business!” he proudly informed The Observer last summer.

The longtime proprietor of the Pussycat Lounge on Greenwich Street, who is sometimes likened to the actor Bob Hoskins with a Russian accent, was referring, of course, to the famously run-down yet highly revered rock ’n’ roll venue on the Bowery, which was opened in 1973 by the unlikely godfather of the New York punk scene, the late Mr. Kristal, and closed in 2006 after a lengthy legal dispute over hefty rent hikes.

Picking up some of the sonic slack in CBGB’s wake, Mr. Kremer was hosting up to six bands a night, six nights a week—some nights even double-booking!—in his upstairs “Catbar” on a makeshift stage cobbled together with tables from the defunct restaurant he used to run in the same space.

At the time, he claimed to be profiting more from the bands than from even the topless dancers strutting the catwalk downstairs in his old-timey gentleman’s club.

“Our main business, believe it or not, is from the music,” Mr. Kremer insisted. “The musicians, more than anyone else, do drink.”

Six months later, he’s not singing the same old song: “The rock people, they don’t drink enough!”

Or, at least, not frequently enough, or in consistent enough numbers, as far as Mr. Kremer is concerned. The club began regularly bumping bands this past December in favor of a DJ and two-for-one cocktails.

A pair of electric guitars still hangs above the cash register, but no one seems to plug ’em in anymore, save for the occasional Saturday night.

“I figured people would love to see [live bands] compared to everything being canned and, you know, the iPod,” Mr. Kremer told The Observer this week. “We get some bands, every couple of weeks they’re here. One day, they draw a mob. The next day, not even their girlfriends show up!

“I’m not the only one that’s having problems with the live bands,” he added.

Indeed, many live music operators have experienced even bigger problems in recent years: In addition to the shuttered CBGB, Tonic, a respected stage for avant-garde musicians on the Lower East Side, closed last April, citing skyrocketing rents and a “debilitating” regulatory environment.

The Continental, another mainstay of the East Village punk scene, where such legendary performers as Iggy Pop and the Ramones once played, abandoned live music in September 2006 in an attempt to simply stay afloat. The venue now focuses on the basics of bar survival: cheap drinks, a pool table and sports on TV.

Trigger, the club’s owner, complained to The Village Voice about all the overhead involved with the bands: “sound people and booking people, advertising, maintaining and repairing the PA and other equipment. It’s expensive, and for every great night there are 10 or 15 slow ones, because the arts scene, especially when it comes to rock ’n’ roll, just isn’t what it once was.”

LIVE ENTERTAINMENT VENUES in Manhattan, in general, continue to fold in the face of increasing operation costs and intensifying real estate and regulatory pressures.

This past October, Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction, a staple of the Lower East Side’s burgeoning burlesque scene, shuttered its doors after just two years in business. Its owners said steep mortgage payments were eating into the entertainment profits. The building is on the market for $4.9 million. Next Page >

Michael Angelo, the artistically named owner of the Wonderland Beauty Parlor on West 13th Street, has a far better idea for sprucing up old cobblestone-lined Gansevoort Square than, say, installing a fountain, or opening a farmer’s market, as others have suggested.

“A great statue of Florent,” he has proposed, “dressed up as Marie Antoinette, spitting water out and surrounded by pigs. I think that would be fucking fabulous.”

Mr. Angelo was referring to Florent Morellet, flamboyant owner of the iconic Florent diner at 69 Gansevoort Street, who has been known to dress up as the famous French monarch at his annual drag-queen-themed Bastille Day parties—though he might as well sport a coonskin cap, given his reputation as a neighborhood pioneer.  read more » Next Page >

Seattle native Alex Calderwood is fired up to finally be in New York City.

“We’ve been interested in New York for a long time,” said the co-founder of ultra-hip Ace Hotel Group, who recently relocated to Manhattan amid plans to open the first East Coast outpost of his fledging yet fashionable brand of lodgings later this year.

“On the West Coast, one of our No. 1 cities, as far as people coming to us, is New York,” he said. “So I think the converse will be true, that we will also have a great audience, a great appeal, hopefully, in the New York market.”

Mr. Calderwood and Co. are taking over management of the old Breslin Hotel on the corner of Broadway and West 29th Street, where massive renovations are planned over the next year to convert the shabby landmark residential building into a trendy hotel for tourists.

It’s a big job, as the ancient, 360-unit single-room-occupancy dwelling, opened in 1904, will require some rather commodious reconstruction. “We need to add bathrooms,” he said (the old hotel currently offers only shared facilities in the hallways), “and there’s infrastructure and things that eat up square footage. We’ll come in around 250 rooms.”

Mr. Calderwood and developers Andrew Zobler and Allen Gross hope to reopen a revamped Breslin with better plumbing, among other things, next December.

“We’re definitely on track,” Mr. Calderwood told The Observer this week, seemingly unfazed by recent litigation aiming to derail the modish transformation.

On Jan. 30, a lawyer representing several tenants who currently live in the Breslin will argue in court that alleged “veiled threats” and “interruption of essential services” in the months leading up to the planned hotel conversion has constituted an illegal form of harassment intended to drive out the rent-regulated residents.

If a judge agrees, then the city could revoke the necessary permits, spoiling Ace Hotel’s much anticipated Big Apple debut.

Recent living conditions, as described by angry residents in court papers, are a far cry from even the minimalist comforts that guests at existing Ace locations in Seattle and Portland are accustomed to: chronic heating problems, mounds of untended garbage piling up, elevators constantly malfunctioning—the doors of the lifts noisily slamming shut, swinging open, shutting, opening, over and over, like some chomping mechanical monster.

On one occasion last March, an elevator purportedly jammed shut, trapping a guy inside for nearly a half-hour as a firefighter tried to pry him out.

The shared bathrooms and common areas, meanwhile, are described as unkempt, to say the least, with “faucets taped with duct tape” and “a partition tied together with what looked like a shoelace.”

Amid all the alleged dysfunction and disrepair, unhappy inhabitants say they have been repeatedly hounded to accept a payoff and move out—and at least 150 or so already have, according to court papers—yet many choose to remain, clinging to the Breslin’s cheap rent and central Manhattan location.

One firmly entrenched resident even refused a proposed relocation to another rent-stabilized building, preferring to stay “close to work” in the run-down Broadway hostelry “rather than being in some shady area” in Brooklyn, according to her testimony.

Mr. Calderwood said he isn’t concerned about potential delays resulting from the lawsuit. “We’ve been working very, very closely with the tenants,” he said. “I’m confident that everything will work out for everyone.”

Perhaps that confidence comes from the fact that one judge already dismissed the residents’ complaints, noting that there was “limited documentation to corroborate the tenants’ testimony,” as city records showed relatively few building violations at the Breslin over the past three years.

“The evidence regarding these encounters demonstrates that the Breslin management made continued efforts to reach buyout agreements with as many tenants as possible, including financial payouts and relocations to rent-regulated apartments. This falls far short of harassment,” ruled Faye Lewis, administrative law judge, in an August 2007 decision. Next Page >

Neighbors have noticed some peculiar noises coming from inside the ancient Hotel Riverview in Greenwich Village.

Could it be the shrieking ghosts of the sunken Titanic, whose lost souls are rumored to haunt the former seaman’s flophouse—or, is it just the clamor of illegal construction?

In recent weeks, the Buildings Department has responded to multiple allegations of covert renovations occurring inside the Jane Street landmark in spite of a Jan. 8 stop-work order imposed upon the premises.  read more » Next Page >

Actor Robert De Niro used to be just another famous guest in the world of swanky hotels.

Now, he’s opening his own posh lodge in downtown Manhattan.

Standing seven stories high at the corner of Greenwich and North Moore streets, Mr. De Niro’s roughly 75,000-square-foot Greenwich Hotel, which is scheduled to open this spring, will include all the world-class amenities that one might expect from a wealthy, two-time Oscar winner: Moroccan tiles, Tibetan rugs, French doors, Siberian oak floors—even a fancy Tuscan-style restaurant and chichi Shibui Spa.

Room rates will be just as extravagant, starting at $725 per night.

And people will probably pay it—if not for the stylish surroundings or celebrity cachet, then perhaps because every other decent place in town is either entirely booked or equally expensive.

Given the rising demand for lodgings, with tourism rebounding to record levels over the past few years, the annual average room rate in Manhattan has escalated more than 50 percent since 2003 to nearly $300 a night, according to the city’s latest figures.

Mr. De Niro isn’t the only A-list luminary looking to get in on the lucrative action.

Hip-hop mogul Shawn Carter, a.k.a. Jay-Z, perhaps foreshadowed his own foray into the business when he first unleashed the celebratory rap lyric “after the show it’s the after party and after the party is the hotel lobby.”

The Grammy-winning former president of Def Jam records and part-time party promoter announced this past December that he, too, is planning to build a new high-end hotel in Manhattan with the help of CB Developers.

The reported $66.4 million, 150,000-square-foot project, located on the site of an old warehouse and parking garage on West 22nd Street, will serve as the flagship for a whole new chain of luxury lodgings called J Hotels. “Everything is in a very developmental stage,” noted Mr. Carter’s publicist, who declined further comment.

Fashion designer Giorgio Armani, meanwhile, is searching for a chic spot to create a New York counterpart in the next few years to his opulent Armani Hotel & Residences in Dubai.

For Mr. Armani, who announced plans in 2005 to open at least seven luxury hotels within 10 years, it seemed only in keeping with a grander vision of his eponymous apparel label becoming a complete lifestyle brand.

As the designer previously explained in a statement, “Today, more than ever before fashion has expanded to encompass our way of life, not just how we dress, but where we live, which restaurants we eat at, where we holiday and which hotels we stay in.”

Indeed, the hotel business, in particular, has become increasingly fashionable over the years.

Even the proprietors of many old, run-down Manhattan hostelries, including the Malibu on the Upper West Side and the Portland Square Hotel near Times Square, have lately undertaken major renovations and rebranding campaigns to keep up with the trendy boutique-hotel movement, which continues to raise the expectation level in terms of design and functionality far above the bare necessities of budget accommodations and standardized aesthetics of national chains.

Widely credited for pioneering the boutique model, hospitality guru Ian Schrager may be just as responsible for paving the way for the new celebrity hoteliers.

As part owner of notorious nightclub Studio 54, Mr. Schrager was already somewhat famous by the time he entered the hotel business in 1984. But after opening Manhattan’s highly stylized Royalton Hotel, with its famous lobby designed by Philippe Starck, in addition to the Paramount and the Hudson hotels, among others, Mr. Schrager transcended the usually ephemeral influence of a mere liquor-industry impresario, becoming a bona fide tastemaker and trendsettter.

His iconic rock star persona set the standard for the next wave of hip hotel operators, including jet-setters André Balazs and Jason Pomeranc, each of whom run chic hotels both in Los Angeles and New York. And each has made a name for himself on the social circuit, although neither was very famous to begin with. Next Page >

Restaurateur Danny Meyer gets a lot of credit for spearheading the retail renaissance around Union Square Park.

Opening his perennially popular Union Square Cafe in 1985 helped set off a seismic shift in real estate surrounding the notoriously nicknamed “Needle Park.” The area once overrun with junkies is now infested with foodies, who can easily score a quick fix at any one of the many top-rated eateries, including six operated by Mr. Meyer, within a five-minute walk of the park.

Imagine what commercial magic the Midwestern-raised hospitality guru might conjure up inside the park.

As co-chair of the neighborhood economic development corporation, the Union Square Partnership, Mr. Meyer, 49, is currently involved in the planned reconstruction of the ancient 3.6-acre square’s north end.

A collaborative effort with the Parks Department, the ambitious public-private project involves, among other things, renovating the park’s old run-down pavilion, built in 1930, and installing new plumbing, electrical, and heating and cooling systems, with the stated intention of converting it into a windowless restaurant space.

Construction is expected to begin this winter.

Yet, contrary to the critical acclaim typically associated with Mr. Meyer—the reigning king of Zagat Guide superlatives—the whole restaurant-in-the-pavilion idea has been getting some pretty bad reviews.

Ever since Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe first uttered the ‘R’ word back in October 2004, in fact, neighborhood activists and local politicians have railed against the proposed restaurant as a blatant example of the continuing commercialization of the public park system.

“In neighborhoods like Union Square which are starved for green space but already overwhelmed by dining choices, it is terrible public policy to continue to transform municipal parkland into a commercial engine,” opined State Assemblywoman Deborah Glick in her most recent December 2007 newsletter.

Mr. Benepe has argued that the eatery is “crucial” to the park’s continued vibrancy. “Why wouldn’t you want to bring hundreds of people into the park during the off hours to make it safe and vibrant?” he asked.

Adding a dash of mystery to the simmering brouhaha is the anonymous $5 million donation that’s partially bankrolling the reported $19.6 million reconstruction effort.

Skeptics have long suspected that the source of the secret funding might be someone bent on nabbing the forthcoming licensing contract to run the revamped pavilion eatery.

Could that mystery money man be Danny Meyer?

“That’s the speculation, of course,” a critic of the proposed restaurant told The Observer—speculation that Parks Commissioner Benepe adamantly denied: “It is not Danny Meyer, nor is it any other board member or anybody who has any business interest in the proceedings. It is strictly a charitable gift.”

Mr. Meyer, though, is not barred from bidding on the contract. Mr. Benepe confirmed that “from the city’s perspective,” there is no conflict of interest, despite his position with the private-sector group that’s partially funding the reconstruction. “This is a city project,” Mr. Benepe said. “The city has the final say on all aspects on the final design and operation.”

The usually hospitable Mr. Meyer himself declined to be interviewed for this article.

But who better, really, to shepherd Union Square Park into a thriving dining destination than the guy who transformed nearby Madison Square Park into one big line for brisket-infused burgers?

Indeed, Mr. Meyer’s Shake Shack might be the best example of the anti-commercialization activists’ worst fears.

Just last week, construction crews were digging up a section of Madison Square Park in order to install a new outdoor heating system so that Mr. Meyer’s ravenous disciples might bask in the glorified fast-food stand’s alfresco splendor no matter what the weather. Even without the heaters, some customers still turned out for a brisk lunch last Thursday on the coldest day so far this season, braving bitter windchill in the single digits for some warm cheese fries and hot chocolate. Next Page >

New Year’s Eve was a fleetingly spirited affair at swanky PM Lounge in the meatpacking district.

Packed with revelers, the two-story, 3,900-square-foot building on Gansevoort Street heaved with thumping beats, as an advertised open bar approached its sixth consecutive booze-fueled hour at 3 a.m.

“It’s pretty happening,” said one patron, Ben, 27, standing behind the velvet rope in a shiny checkered shirt, smoking a cigarette, while a stretch limo idling out front blared “Hotel California.”  read more » Next Page >

What a difference a duvet makes.

Four years ago, the proprietors of the old Roosevelt Hotel planned to put the place up for sale.

Revenues were down, as the city’s tourism industry still had not fully recovered from Sept. 11. But the owners were sitting on a veritable gold mine: a whole one-acre block with a fancy Madison Avenue location, rising right around the corner from Grand Central Station.

Forget the horrendous hospitality business. Talk about a prime spot for a new office tower!

All the big names were rumored suitors for the seemingly doomed hotel lot. Among them: Donald Trump, Harry Macklowe, Vornado Realty Trust, the Related Companies. Mr. Trump, for one, reportedly offered $244 million for the location.

The sale never happened.  read more » Next Page >

Sam Chang isn’t your typical New York hotel developer.

While others strive to emulate the chic boutique model, popularized by luxury lodging pioneer Ian Schrager, Mr. Chang has taken an alternative approach, bringing the suburban-style comforts of national hotel chains to urban explorers across the five boroughs.

Sure, even Mr. Schrager himself has a new line of hostelries now in the works under the Marriott moniker. But it’s hard to imagine him ever erecting a Holiday Inn Express, Comfort Inn or Candlewood Suites—much less sticking them all on the same block, as Mr. Chang is doing on West 39th Street.  read more » Next Page >

Sean Sweeney isn’t planning on dining at Lola anytime soon.

“I don’t want spittle in my grits,” he said.

Indeed, Mr. Sweeney probably would be persona non grata at the controversial soul-food restaurant at 15 Watts Street in SoHo, which finally opened for business, much to his chagrin, nine weeks ago.

Mom-and-pop proprietors Tom Patrick-Odeen and Gayle Patrick-Odeen have told The Observer that their longtime neighborhood activist foe would be treated like any other customer—if, that is, he ever dared to tiptoe through the front door.

But, at this point, choking back spit would require some serious self-control.

After more than three years of costly legal bills and contentious hearings—at times intensified by racially charged rhetoric (“They tried to portray us as a hip-hop club,” Ms. Patrick-Odeen has claimed)—the bitter standoff continues.  read more » Next Page >

City inches toward approving wrecked Village watering hole’s restoration.  read more » Next Page >