P&G BAR

The Daily News today examines the ongoing retail turnover on Amsterdam Avenue, where rents now hover around $250 per square foot.

"It's no longer full of beer halls and guys with backward baseball caps watching the game," said Rafe Evans, a broker at Walker Malloy.

Oddly, the article makes no mention of the neighborhood's most recognizable beer hall, the endangered P&G Bar, which is expected to take down its iconic (and landmark-designated) signage and move out when its lease expires on Dec. 31, after more than six decades at the corner of Amsterdam and West 73rd Street.

Its latest rumored replacement: Baby Gap.

Salumeria Rosi, an Italian-style specialty foods store, joins trendy chocolatier Jacques Torres as the P&G's new neighbors on the rapidly changing block.

"The stores now have style where, before, they were utilitarian," said Stu Morden, managing director at Newmark Knight Frank, which inked the Salumeria deal.

Guy walks into a bar, says to the bartender: "Same shirt as yesterday, Charlie?"

Same shirt, same shit, different day.

Indeed, change is rare around the old P&G Bar, founded in 1942 at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and West 73rd Street, where around 5 p.m. on Thursday regulars compared bowling scores over Budweisers while horse races flickered on an old boxy TV set in the background.

But change is happening outside the bar.

Scheduled storefront renovations have finally begun on the building. The bar's prior dark-green facade has been stripped away and new windows with light green trim are being installed.

Yet the defiant Chahalis family, which has owned and operated the bar for the past 60 years, refuses to budge and has rebuffed buyout offers from the landlord. (The bar's lease is up at the end of 2008.)

"WE WILL BE OPEN DURING STOREFRONT REPAIRS," according to a sign on the door.

Relations between the contractors and bar goers have been strained at times during the past few weeks, according to a bartender, who scoffed at the notion of unplugging his ice machine so a worker could plug in his drill.

Folks who frequent the place are anxious for construction to wrap up. Said the bartender: "They could've put up the World Trade Center by now!"