Sazon (Katie Sokoler) Angry Tribeca residents gathered at a Community Board 1 meeting Wednesday to confront the owner of Sazon, a newish bi-level Latin Caribbean restaurant and lounge. The basement salsa parties have become quite popular, and that's upsetting some neighbors like Barbara Spitzer, who decried the "party atmosphere... Reade Street feels like I’m living on Seventh Avenue." Another resident complained, "People are coming here to have fun. Fun is good, but it’s not very good on a residential street." Then owner Genero Morales detected a whiff of racism against his largely Puerto Rican clientele, and that insinuation infuriated Spitzer: "You really shouldn’t go there. It’s really inappropriate, and it’s quite offensive." The protests come at a bad time for Sazon, which is still waiting for liquor license approval from the SLA and has been selling booze under temporary licenses. Tribeca Committee chairman Peter Braus agreed with the neighbors, and told Morales, "There’s a discrepancy, clearly, between how you represented yourself [in January] and how the community perceives you." Morales is taking steps to quiet down, but downtown community boards won't really be satisfied until all bars are relocated to a designated "fun barge" somewhere off the southeast tip of Staten Island.
