the next FELONY LOUNGE - this Friday in Brooklyn
Category: Parties and Nightlife

6:52 PM - 89 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

NEW YORK POST story about the Lower East Side

What do you folks think of this?

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LUXE LANDS DOWNTOWN

By MAUREEN CALLAHAN
January 27, 2005

JASON Gordon, a 27-year-old book publicist whose blog, ProductshopNYC, covers the downtown music scene, says he knew the Lower East Side was over when "one of my mom's friends had her 50th birthday party at Tenement."

"That place" - a tiny restaurant that once catered to hipster spillover from neighboring Ludlow Street institutions like the Pink Pony and Max Fish - "has become like a bar mitzvah reception hall within the past year," he adds.

While the gentrification of the Lower East Side - long inhabited by struggling artists and musicians, and home to dive bars, vintage shops and small rock clubs - has been progressing for quite some time, locals and small business owners are stunned by the sudden influx of luxe.

Small bars are shutting down and other establishments are going upscale to cater to the new weekenders who are colonizing the once rough-hewn area.

"The problem with the Lower East Side," says Lockhart Steele, who covers Manhattan real estate on Curbed.com. "is that it's facing change that's out of proportion with the scale of the neighborhood."

Robert Sacher is closing his 10-year-old Luna Lounge on Feb. 28; a developer bought his Ludlow Street building to make way for an apartment complex.

"They're turning the Lower East Side into SoHo," Sacher says. "The businesses that are being forced out are being replaced by businesses that cater to people who can pay $16 for a plate of chicken."

When Sacher was informed his lease wasn't going to be renewed, he looked into moving Luna down the street, to a space formerly occupied by a club called Torch (which burned down).

He was priced out; the space sold for $2 million and is now home to a week-old, three-level nightclub called Libation; the opening-night party was handled by Lizzie Grubman.

"We had a lot of models, a lot of record company people, celebrity types," says owner Denis Keane. "That guy from 'Oz' was here."

Libation, located just a few doors down from scenester rock hangouts like Max Fish and the Dark Room, is very spacious, very pristine - and very beige. The wall behind the bar is fitted with two plasma TVs. The second and third levels are private party spaces; there's also a VIP area with a minimum bottle charge of $250.

"We want to raise the level of what's going on around here," says Keane, who has run low-key Irish pubs in Midtown and Queens.

"We hired a manager who used to work at Jean-Georges. We have a big cocktail consultant. We hired our own security, a lot of ex-law enforcement."

Keane says his space isn't catering to "the poor artist type."

"I'm seeing the trendy first-responders: people in funky clothes, with a few dollars in their pocket, or a Black AMEX," he says. "I had one Wall Street guy come in with 100 people. He just threw his card down and said, 'Charge it!'"

The Lower East Side real estate revolution started with the Hotel on Rivington. Yet to be completed, the 20-story, glass-and-steel structure - with rooms starting at $275 a night - may seem like a striking anomaly among the area's five-story structures, but it's led to a slew of other luxury projects.

Hotelier Jason Pomeranc, who owns the swank 60 Thompson, begins construction this month on a 22-story hotel on Allen Street, where a new luxury loft building (with condos that went for up to $1.5 million) opens in March.

A lot on the corner of Houston and Eldridge reportedly has been sold to a developer for $4.5 million. Avalon Chrystie Place, which will have 361 luxury rental apartments (the developers say they haven't set prices), is under construction on Houston.

And the rent asked on a vacant restaurant on the corner of East Broadway and Essex is currently $30,000 a month, according to LoHo Realty's jacob Goldman - who finds that Park Avenue price staggering.

"I mean, it's not Tavern on the Green," he says. "What are they thinking?"

Long term, "you are going to see a diminishment of live music downtown, because of the rents," says Fez owner Josh Pickard, who is closing his legendary Village club (where Ryan Adams played his first New York solo show) in March.

"There's the rise of real estate values, plus issues with neighbors and noise control, which has become more stringent under Bloomberg," he says.

Other venerable clubs and restaurants are capitulating to the area's changing clientele. El Sombrero - the tiny, run-down Mexican restaurant on the corner of Ludlow and Stanton affectionately known to residents as "The Hat" - is trying to appeal to the area's new night-trippers: The once-kitschy interior now resembles a miniature hotel lobby, and the beloved summer tradition of selling margaritas to go is (very quietly) no more.

"Fridays and Saturdays are just amateur nights. The floodgates open everywhere, from Jersey to Long Island to the Upper East Side," says 33-year-old Jason Consoli, who hosts a weekly party at Lit. (His flyer reads, in part, "Weeknights keep the a--holes away!")

Though located a bit north of the Lower East Side, Lit suffers an influx of weekend warriors.

"Lit's a dive bar; it's a rock bar," Consoli says. "People who live on the Upper East Side - their idea of getting crazy is to go hang out with the punk rock kids. But they don't really like to hang out with these people; they don't really like this music.

"If you walk up to the door and they recognize you, or you look like you belong there," says Consoli, "you get a hand stamp and you can go downstairs. If you don't look like you belong there, you don't get a hand stamp, and you have to stay upstairs."

Jason Baron, owner of the 6-month-old bar the Dark Room, says the bridge-and-tunnel factor is so high on Friday and Saturday nights that he steers clear of his own establishment. "I go over to my friends' houses to drink," he says.

Curbed's Lockhart Steele, who has been chronicling every change on the Lower East Side with a jaundiced eye, is trying to remain cautiously optimistic:

"I'm not opposed to all this change," he says. "I think there are just large forces beyond our control. It's the slow drift downward from SoHo and the East Village."

Yet he admits the neighborhood's rapid shifts - culturally and commercially - seem inexorable.

"The indication that a neighborhood's already over," he says, "is when the first wave of cool places is already out of business."

- Additional reporting by Sara Stewart and Andy Wang

12:41 AM - 89 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

NEW YORK POST story about "open bars"

Sorry if I offended the "cheapies" in that story -- the sissies who can't afford a $1 drink, or not tip the bartender on that dollar drink.

Comments anyone?


Excerpt from the New York Post's "Sip-Sip-Hooray" story of 12/9/04:

Bar owners are facing especially stiff competition this year due to a rush of new rock club openings, including Rothko, Delancey, Trash and Eleven.

"Another 10,000 rock-loving people from the Midwest did not move into Williamsburg or the East Village," says Jason Consoli, who hosts the Thursday night "Restricted" party at Lit, a Second Avenue rock club where you can get vodka or a Bud for a buck.

Four months ago, he started offering free beer, but the freeloading got out of hand.

"It was overwhelming. Some people would have to wait for 20 minutes to get a drink. It was a free-for-all. If you can't pay a buck for a beer, you don't deserve to be here," Consoli said.

3:47 PM - 89 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

DJ BOOTH ETIQUETTE

Fucking hilarious, and pretty true! Thanks to Jenn for forwarding this:
(a few modifications added to apply to RESTRICTED)


WHAT NOT TO SAY TO THE DJ

1. "Can you play something we can dance too?"
In the meantime The Rapture is on. If you can't dance to The Rapture you must really suck in bed.

2. "If you play this song I'll get laid."
Then go home, listen to the whole album and have a marathon.

3. "Can you play it next cuz we're leaving soon?"
The only person who gets away with that is the one who signs the DJ's check, and that person does not make very many requests.

4. "What are you playing next?"
I guess you'll find out. Patience is a virtue

5. "Can you play Fuck You Like An Animal?"
The name of the song is "Closer" you moron.

6. "Everybody Wants To Hear It !"
Oh sure you polled everybody in the club, and you as their spokesperson, are requesting the song.

7. "Hey man, nobody can dance to this."
It's not advisable to say this when the floor is packed! However even if there is only one person dancing it still contradicts the statement.

8. "I don't know who sings it and I don't know the name of the song, but it goes like this...."
Please don't sing to the DJ, he does not want to hear a rendition of your favorite song.

9. "Everyone will dance if you play it"
HE won't, so I guess that blows a hole in that theory.

10. "I don't know what I wanna hear, what do you have?"
The STUPIDEST question. It's alot easier for you to have another drink and figure it out than have him recite every album he has.

A FEW SIMPLE RULES

If the DJ has one hand on the mixer and the other on the cd player or headphones, don't bug him, he's either mixing or cueing.

The floor in the booth is not an ashtray.

Don't put your drinks near, or hold them over the DJ's components or records.

You are only allowed to sing in the booth if you actually wrote the song. So unless you are Taime and he's playing "Bathroom Wall" or Kenny and he's playing "Paint You A Picture" don't sing in the booth.

Don't give him your lame ass demo cd and ask him to play a song that probably sucks, he will just discard the cd and keep the cheap case for one of his mix cd's.

And above all always tip your DJ in some form whether it's with greenbacks, flashing him your tits, an Apple Martini or something else he might enjoy. Please follow these simple guidelines and you and your DJ will get along just fine.

11:19 AM - 89 Comments - 7 Kudos - Add Comment

"Common People" from Pulp...

I was one of about 50 dancing to the song "Common People" from Pulp last night at the Royal Oak in Brooklyn. Everyone was dancing so passionately, and then it occured to me that half of these people were trust fund kids and have no idea what it is to be one of the "Common People." I say fuck you to that, slummers...

3:58 PM - 89 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment