Results tagged “nightlife”

The Beatrice Inn shut down earlier this year after neighbors had enough of the A-list crowd partying it up at all hours. As the same war is being waged by neighbors of the Jane Hotel, against their late night ballroom antics, word is that the Beatrice may reopen.

Chelsea's Bungalow 8, home to late night celebrity sightings, is shutting down operations. CityFile reports that the Amy Sacco-owned lounge has long been rumored to be closing, but now it's really happening. They shut down for "renovations" weeks ago, but allegedly have no plans to reopen... and their phone line has been disconnected.

The business group spearheading what they hope to be the next era of the Limelight—retail—presented its plans to a local community board this week and were met with a great deal of skepticism and suspicion. The Limelight Marketplace group is hoping to put a mini-mall into the onetime church whose eye-catching building along Sixth Avenue in the Chelsea is only eclipsed by the stories of the drug-fueled and freak-filled nights that went on inside its walls during its era as one of clubland meccas of the '80s and early '90s. But instead of being eager to welcome in retail stores to replace the bad reputation of Peter Gatien's club, the Flatiron community board instead came off sounding like Reverend Moore in , expressing fears that the new plan was a ruse to return to days past. The Board Landmark Chairman recommended rejecting the proposal because he worried that the retail proposal is "one big dodge to get a club going there." He also pointed to a large empty space in the floor plan that would be "perfect for dancing." The development group denied they had any intention of shaking up their plans, only saying about the new space, "There's going to be nothing else like it."

Despite the efforts of Chloe Sevigny's t-shirt, it looks like the West Village's Beatrice Inn, which has been closed since April, will not reopen. The NY Post reports that in order to get the party started again, "they'd have to pay $23,000 in fines, install a fire door that matches the period exterior of the building, and put in a sprinkler system." And since their liquor license runs out next year, and will not be renewed at that time, the owners have decided to call it quits. Looks like the neighbors win this one. In the past they had complained about the club, including the late-night traffic that streamed into an apartment upstairs which was used as a VIP lounge for the often A-list clientele. Owner Paul Sevigny even moved one such neighbor into the VIP lounge apartment rent-free when he complained about the noise in his own residence, which was above the noisy dance floor.

Lounge 47, a restaurant and bar with a capacious back yard on Vernon Blvd in Long Island City, has had a tough time making peace with some neighbors who say the noise and smoke from the patio is unbearable. Next door neighbor Beth Garrett and her husband have installed large signs on their property begging Lounge 47 patrons to pipe down, and a growing group of locals want the State Liquor Authority to revoke the liquor license, which was recently renewed. (The Garretts have also been accused of spraying their hose over the fence onto diners.) The current owner is now trying to sell the place, but the potential buyer wants to make sure he'll be able to transfer the liquor license.

Michael Musto has been writing for The Village Voice for twenty-five years, best known for his weekly gossip, pop culture and nightlife column, La Dolce Musto. The column still runs weekly in the paper, now along with regular updates on his blog, La Daily Musto. He's been a recognizable face on TV for years, as one of the regulars on E!'s Gossip Show in the '90s and as a VH1 commentator earlier this decade. Nowadays he can be seen regularly on Headline News and bantering with Keith Olbermann on Countdown.

While you were out enjoying the night for no reason, others were out enjoying the night for a cause. And that cause is to be able to enjoy many nights, more often, forever and ever. The Nightlife Preservation Community... is something that exists, and it was launched by the NY Nightlife Association on Monday. It's here to help you go out more often, stay out later, and age quicker—like Chloe Sevigny over there.

          

Nightlife impresarios Cornelis Craane and Paul Coleman Drohan, whose pedigree extends to old school clubs like Palladium, The Roxy, and China Club, have just opened this new venue that hearkens back to the messier '80s era of NYC nightlife, before the hedge fund bros took over with their $1,000 bottles of Absolut. Located in the Flatiron District, the duo hopes The Imperial will "recreate a fantasy playground reminiscent of the Warhol-Basquiat club days where art takes center stage." So they brought in Ryan Rish, a former photo director for Bombin Magazine, to curate the fly space with work by a small army of guerrilla street artists.

New Yorkers like to go out. A lot. A website aptly called Outalot allows fast and easy browsing of three nightlife basics: restaurants, bars, and movies (Gridskipper calls it "menupages-meets-yelp").

MOVIE: Every national election year reminds us of that part in The Dark Crystal where the hideous Skeksis systematically drain the Gelfling’s “essence” and drink it to increase their power. If you don’t know the scene we’re talking about, you need to go see it on the big screen tonight – a regular-sized TV monitor just doesn’t do Jim Henson’s creepy masterpiece justice. The one-night-only screening will be introduced by one of the film’s puppet makers, Cheryl Henson, daughter of Jim. She’ll be joined by Robbie Barnett, who operated some of the main Skeksis; the pair will sign merch after the screening.

Williamsburg missed a crucial stage of gentrification; the phase where gay people were supposed to pioneer a neighborhood before the young hipsters could supplant them. The social hop-scotching has left gay people out in the cold in Billyburg, unwelcome in what should be a pioneer ghetto. The nightlife reflects the less-than-edgy environment that marginalized NYers try to seek out.

“There’s like one go-go boy, what is that?” grumbled Matthew Kane, a scruffy 22-year-old photo agent. Still, he gazed at the sweaty man and reported, “He’s relatively hot, like hipster hot — you know, vaguely alternative and imperfect.” That description could also apply to Sugarland, where nearly everyone was under 30, weighed less than 160 pounds and wore a V-neck T-shirt and about three days of beard.

Continue reading "Gentrification Fast-Forward"

Panic gripped a sizable number of New York night crawlers last fall when both the holiday-timed Motherf*cker freakfest and popular posture party Misshapes were derailed within months of each other. Today the Times checks in on distraught survivors like one Melissa Maino, partygoer: “It’s been rough. Going [to Motherf*cker] was what I depended on for New Year’s Eve. [Its end] was definitely heartbreaking.”

Some time ago the New Yorker ran an amusing “Talk of the Town” feature on nightlife crusader Roy Den Hollander, who, unlike most nightclub scolds, isn’t fighting against excessive noise and loose morals – he’s out to put a stop to the scourge that is Ladies’ Night. And not because he disdains the ladies or the night, but because Den Hollander, attorney at law and self-styled pick-up artist, sees it as yet another way The Man tries to keep down the, er, man.

Zagat's updated Best of Brooklyn 2008 guide was released yesterday, filled to the brim with all that the city's largest borough has to offer, including 216 restaurants, 141 nightspots, 355 shops, 25 tourist attractions and more. Like all Zagat guides, this one is a complilation of surveys from the public and each entry is rated on a scale of 1-30. The guide is broken up into five sections: Dining, Nightlife, Shopping, Gourmet Shopping & Entertaining,...

Until last weekend I had just a vague sense of what life in mid-19th century New York was like for the masses – filthy, brutal, corrupt, vulgar, smelly and desperate for dentistry. Now, thanks to a spellbinding 50-minute theatrical tour led by the Axis Company, I’ve got a vivid picture of what passed for living on the city’s streets in those days. The play is called A Glance at New York, and though you’ve probably never heard of it (neither had I) it was a smash vaudeville hit in 1848. Earlier this year the company delivered a high-octane revival to the Edinburgh Festival, making it an unlikely hit all over again.

See, one thing about this show is that, while it makes the city an important character, the actual locations can't always appreciate the personalized credit that comes with the screentime. When you've got 14 year olds carousing about the New York nightlife scene without too much conflict or legal controversy, a club wouldn't be so brash as to openly advertise such laissez-faire door policies, right? Nobody wants to glorify such illegal behavior at their establishment, right? RIGHT?

Forbes has released the results of their 7th annual Best Cities for Singles poll, and unlike last year...NYC is in the top 3, ranking #2 overall. An unprecedented rating for us!

The Observer people watches the people watchers this week with a piece on The Bench. Almost too ridiculous to report on, the Lower East Side American Apparel happens to have a hot spot outside of its windows which has become the "epicenter of perhaps the hottest 'anti-scene' scene on Saturday nights." Exactly the kind of thing you'd expect to be forged outside of an American Apparel, it even has founders - including DJ Big Black Matt Goias, and a MySpace profile.

EVENT: GRBG is helping in the celebration of the “Gangs of New York” Fall ’07 collection. Enjoy a photo exhibit of the fall look book shot in Coney Island, a screening of The Warriors and free Rum!

Will Manhattan's clubs be moving to the 10013? With the group that opened Cain on 27th Street having opened Gold Bar at 389 Broome Street in February; and uber-promoter Danny A having opened the VIP-only Upstairs on Spring Street and Broadway, The Observer is reporting on a move of "clubland" to Chinatown.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a person under a train at West 31st St. and 7th Ave. in Manhattan (the 1 line), a triple shooting on Elder Ave. in the Bronx, and an unconscious baby on Hylan Blvd. on Staten Island.
• The used anti-tank weapon that a NJ woman found on her front lawn was traced to a Marine, who had thrown the missile tube in the trash.
• A white-painted "ghost bike" memorial for a cyclist killed in NYC traffic was removed from its Brooklyn position, possibly by the city, raising fears that the unofficial tributes to dead riders could be endangered.
• In a bid to cut down on time spent waiting in lines, a new ferry service operator to the Statue of Liberty will allow advanced ticketing with scheduled departure times and offer downloadable podcasts with historical information.
• WNBC's Roseanne Colletti goes looking for the best coffee in NYC, with assistance from Zagat's.
• New York magazine's guide to rooftop bars around New York City.
• Curbed notes how 91st St. residents in Manhattan are trying to palm off a proposed bike path onto 89th St. instead.
• Kevin Walsh of ForgottenNY examines the different looks of the southern portion of Brooklyn's Bedford Ave.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a motorcycle jacking at 230th Place and 148th Ave. in Queens, shots fired at police at Gates and Nostrand Aves. in Brooklyn, and multiple pedestrians struck at Coney Island and Ditmas Aves. in Brooklyn.
• State and city politicians broke ground in the Bronx yesterday on a new Metro-North station stop at the under-construction Yankee Stadium. It's hoped that the transit option will cut down on auto traffic from upstate fans driving to games.
• The FDNY's officers (e.g., lieutenants, supervisors) will get a 4% pay increase retroactive to March 20th, and annual increases of 4% each year for the next three years. It nets out to a 17% salary increase.
• A tip led police to the arrest of two women in the brutal 2003 killing of a 91-year-old woman in a robbery that gained them a gold chain snatched from the woman's neck and a stack of bath towels.
• Long Island animal-cruelty authorities are offering a $20,000 reward in an effort to find out who tied a two-year-old dog to a tree, doused it with gasoline, then lit it on fire and left it to die.
• The Nautica New York City Triathlon is tomorrow and there will be significant traffic disruptions on the West Side and Henry Hudson Highways and 72nd St. NY1 has the details.
• It's Saturday, so Canada's Globe and Mail takes a look at which city has the better 24-hour, never-sleeps nightlife, London or New York.
• If Jay-Z's mom bought him a computer with Microsoft Excel when he was little, instead of a boombox.
• There's still some time to get to Coney Island to catch the headliners of today's Siren Festival. Here's the schedule.
• Helmet-cam video of a NYC bike messenger on the talk show "Ellen".

The Copacabana, perhaps best known as the muse for Barry Manilow's song of the same name, is closing this weekend (the papers are reporting last night, however their website has a flyer for a Last Dance, tonight).

A new noise code will go into effect tonight/tomorrow morning when the clock strikes midnight, and that clock better have muffled bells. It's the first comprehensive overhaul of noise ordinances in about 30 years and was proposed by Mayor Bloomberg three and a half years ago. It's mostly oriented towards bars and clubs, where a growing nightlife presence in neighborhoods like the Lower East Side has left many residents sleepless. The New York Times notes that noisy cars and motorcycles will be completely banned from the city, there will be a limit on how long dogs can bark continuously, garbage trucks will be required to stay at least 50 feet from residential buildings between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., construction noise must be mitigated (Adrienne Shelley was killed for complaining about construction noise), and ice cream trucks will have to go quiet when parked curbside. We wonder if this will have any effect on the creative siren-DJ stylings emanating from police cars. Either way, enforcement of the new code may be spotty because the Dept. of Environmental Protection only has 26 noise meters. The police have 80.

Times Square has always offered a nice dose of "weird," whether it be in the pre-Giuliani days or its now more Disney-fied incarnation. Now some more strange will be saturating the area, in the form a famous Odditorium. Yes, tourists will be able to see things like locks of Abe Lincoln's hair after having a nice meal at the Olive Garden.

The New York Times has an interesting story today on Sion Misrahi and the Lower East Side he helped transform. If you've walked down Rivington St. a few times, you've probably noticed the Misrahi Realty storefront business. Its owner is Sion Misrahi, who sold pants for his father in the neighborhood when he was fourteen. When it began to gentrify, he worked to classify the old bargain-shopping district as a landmark area. Then he decided to start marketing real estate in the neighborhood to nightlife businesses. The Times separates the changes into four parts: "shmattes to hipsters to bulldozers to tourists."

AMNY continues the ongoing story about clubs and venues in New York closing. They report on the irony of it all:

After City Council recently passed a bill to regulate pedicabs, Mayor Bloomberg decided to wait a bit longer before signing it (however, he did sign three bills about nightlife safety). Angry pedicab owners seemed to influence the mayor, pleading that the bill would contradict the 2030 sustainable city initiative. Bloomberg has until March 30th to decide whether to sign, veto or leave it alone. If left alone, the bill would automatically become law.