We haven't been there in quite a while, but this is still unwelcome news: The funky Lower Manhattan strip club Pussycat Lounge has folded. The dive, which opened in 1969, was not your average topless joint; the clientele was a curious mix of hipsters, nightcrawling bankers, and transgressive alt-theater types; and the bar upstairs from the strip show was taken over by a fun, libertine dance party on Saturday nights. Times have changed: A neighbor tells Grub Street that the lounge was forced to close last year by the DOB for construction without a permit, and this was after the DOB found the whole building structurally unstable. The club's website [NSFW?] is still up, but the phone is no longer in service. more ›

The owner of the downtown topless bar Pussycat Lounge is attempting to get the building that houses his business landmarked in order to prevent the club's destruction by an expansion-minded hotelier. The latter is Sam Chang, who currently has 20 different hotel development projects under way in Brooklyn and Manhattan. An article in The Observer reports that Chang has three hotels in the works in the neighborhood surrounding the Pussycat Lounge––a 300-room hotel on Greenwich St. next door, a 350-room hotel behind the club on Washington St., and a 186-room hotel at Trinity Place. Chang already owns the building that houses the Pussycat Lounge, after purchasing it in 2005. more ›

article about the annual Air Guitar Championships in Oulu, New Yorkers Kriston Rucker and Cedric Devitt traveled to Finland to attend the event and discovered it lacked an American competitor. Back in the States they founded US Air Guitar and held their first qualifying event at the Pussycat Lounge in the Financial District. Little did they know about the untapped, overwhelming enthusiasm for air guitar in this country as hundred of amateur rockers came out for that qualifier and a subsequent one in Los Angeles at the Roxy. more ›

NY Mag's Best of New York is out. Want to know what's good in your hood? Here's a handy little chart that will direct you to just that. Here's a glance at some of the more fun categories: more ›

Little Brooklyn, Burlesque Star more ›