streets are paved with diamonds.
17 April 2008 | 2 comments
i took a bit of time to walk around soho and tribeca today, continuing my trend of hanging out in areas of new york city where i worked in my flush-with-hope post-college years. and this caused me to add to the ever-growing list of places that don’t exist anymore, except in my memories:
riverrun cafe, 176 franklin st. humongous burgers that were wrapped in english muffins that i can still taste to this day. cheap, but good, draft beer. also: this was where i found out who, exactly, steve keene was. now a furniture store.
village idiot, 355 w. 14th st. i saw the tonya harding sex tape here during a bn.com happy hour; it also had a huge, scary scorpion tank. a popular venue for post-work socializing at bn.com (happy hour started at around 6 p.m.) and mlb.com (happy hour would start right before last call). i played pool here but was never very good. now empty because the yuppie lair with leather chairs and poorly mixed drinks that chased it out had financial problems and closed late last year.
red light lounge, 50 9th ave. along with its catty-corner neighbor gaslight, the prototype for my favorite type of bar: the divey, poorly lit space lined by velvet-covered couches that were vomiting stuffing. now empty after it became the ill-fated, lousy-food-plagued pizza bar, best known for being the venue outside which remy ma popped a “friend” of hers.
i should probably quit it with the meatpacking-district reminiscing, since by this time next year it’ll completely be paved over with doucheterias. sigh. but i will note that tribakery is gone, too, and it’s been replaced by the restaurant that employs the not-even-good-by-reality-villain-standards spike from top chef.
nb: this album would provide a fine soundtrack to reading the above bulleted items.