Results tagged “close”

    

It looks like would-be Coney Island developer Joe Sitt has gone all Henry F. Potter this Christmas, sending workers out last night to put up "For Lease" signs on boardwalk properties owned by his company, Thor Equities. A commenter on the Coneyisland.com message board snapped some photos last night and this morning, depicting the signs above such indispensible boardwalk mainstays as Nathan's and scruffy dive bar Ruby's Bar & Grill.

Our favorite Coney Island Boardwalk joint, Ruby's Bar & Grill, might not survive to see another summer! Kinetic Carnival reports they have yet to receive a lease for the 2009 season, whereas last year they had already been given a renewal by August. The indispensable dive bar's demise was portended back in May, when the floor collapsed beneath a man using their bathroom, causing him to fall ten feet into the basement. The fact that he fell into a rat infestation didn't help the situation, and Ruby's was closed the following day by a health inspector. There are currently no negotiations with landlord Thor Equities, and it's unclear whether other Coney Island staples like Steve's Grill House and Cha Cha's will also go the way of Astroland. Some fear that this year's Polar Bear Day Party at Ruby's may end up being their last hurrah.

Argh, must everything that makes life worth tolerating in New York City be systematically eradicated? According to Alexis Soloski at the Village Voice, the Ohio Theatre on Wooster Street will soon be extinct. The building that houses the illustrious avant-garde theater is being sold by its owners because "maintenance expenses and preservation of the façade required by the city created an untenable financial burden," and artistic director Robert Lyons has no illusions about affordable rent under the new owner. Which sucks because the 24-year-old Ohio—currently occupied by Les Freres Corbusier's Dance Dance Revolution—plays host to some of the most exciting theater on earth. As Claudia La Rocco at WNYC put it, "That’s just great: protect the façade but not the beating heart underneath...As a friend put it yesterday, 'it’ll be a real shame if the legacy of the Bloomberg administration and the boom years is a handful of bland generic populist cultural centers.'" [Photo cred]

Unmoved by a petition signed by over 4,500 people, an Upper West Side landlord has refused to renew the lease on the 66-year-old P&G bar, whose iconic sign is familiar to many from cameos on Seinfeld (and its ideal proximity to the Beacon Theatre). So Steve Chahalis, the fourth-generation owner of the bar, located at Amsterdam Avenue and 73rd Street, has decided to relocate a few blocks away. He's putting on a brave face, and tells the Observer his new subterranean location is more than four times bigger than the original. (There's also a stage and a full kitchen.) But the Observer worries that moving the famous sign will be logistically impractical and also require approval from the landmarks commission. Also, what will neighbors like the Museum of Natural History think of all that neon?

Looks like the little park that could...couldn't. The Williamsburg waterfront park, dubbed East River Park, opened just last year, but now the NY Post is saying it "will be shut for the winter as part of Gov. Paterson's sweeping budget cuts." While the closure will only be from January to March (clearly not the time to be sitting on the waterfront anyway), the NYC Park Advocates group noted, "Closing a park is unheard of in modern times." Perhaps when it makes its triumphant comeback it will have better landscaping, allow pets and extend hours (currently it's opened from 10 a.m. to dusk).

The Dow and the S&P 500 both closed down about 5% today in a day of heavy losses. The Dow was down 443 points and closed below 9,000 amidst fears of a prolonged recession that even superhero President-elect Obama may be not be able to turn around. "Everything is so dismal right now, it's just an endless flow of bad news and no one wants to buy," despaired equity trader Dave Rovelli, who could really benefit by reading today's heartwarming good news about the Starbucks wedding proposal! CNN reports that investors are fearful about tomorrow's big monthly jobs report. Also, too, October retail sales from the chain stores were mostly "abysmal," the housing market is still collapsing, and even the recent dip in gas prices has not improved consumer spending. "People are realizing that the recession is going to drag on until at least the end of 2009," Rovelli whines. LA LA LA LA Can't hear you, Rovelli! Starbucks wedding proposal! Doggie costumes! Sasha and Malia get a puppy!

Artist Olafur Eliasson's ambitious and controversial waterfall installation ends today after a 15-week run, leaving sick trees, irritated residents, and a collective 'meh,' in its wake. Last week tests conducted by Cornell University concluded that the soil at the River Café, just downwind from the Brooklyn Bridge waterfall, had salt levels almost 10 times higher than normal. “Those levels are amazingly high, and if that level of salt was in the soil for a long period of time, the plants wouldn’t survive,” soil expert John Ameroso tells Brooklyn Paper.

First the financial crisis, now this. Nostalgic sweet tooths are now screaming vainly for ice cream in Hartsdale, New York, where the first Carvel on earth closed yesterday after more than seven decades in business. Legend has it that company founder (and beloved commercial spokesman) Tom Carvel opened the depression-era soft serve icon at the location because that's where his self-made frozen custard trailer broke down with a flat tire on Memorial Day 1934—business was so good at the spot he stayed put, built the store, and even lived out back with his wife for a while.

Despite a record-breaking month for advertising revenues, The Sun published its last edition today. Started in 2002, the neoconservative daily lasted just long enough to publish on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, surviving into year 5769 of the Jewish calendar. Editor Seth Lipsky addressed the staff in the paper's Lower Manhattan newsroom yesterday; excerpts from his remarks were published in today's edition:

This was always a risk, and all the greater is the heroism of our financial backers. Even at the end they were offering millions of dollars if we could find the partners we needed. I don't mind saying to you, as I have to them, that I very much regret — I will always regret — that we were not able to return to them the capital that they invested in us.

Continue reading "The Sun Hits Nadir, Burns Out and Sets, Eclipsed by Money Woes"

Tribeca’s 15-year-old Franklin Station Café will close next month, and the Downtown Express has a nice, long goodbye (928 words!) to the neighborhood mainstay. The French and Malaysian bistro, located at the corner of West Broadway and Franklin across from the 1 train stop, was one of the few moderately-priced places left in the increasingly cost-prohibitive neighborhood, and had long been a favored hang-out for locals.

Florent, the beloved Meatpacking District hangout set to close this summer after almost twenty three years in business, will at least be going out in style, according to Frank Bruni, who spoke with owner Florent Morellet yesterday. The bistro's long goodbye will last five weeks, with each week dedicated to one of the Kubler-Ross stages of grief. Week One, starting Monday, May 26, will be Denial, with the remaining four weeks themed as Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.