Results tagged “bar”

A surveillance company employee erased a minute of bar brawl videotape as a favor to a cop implicated in a bloody fight in a Bay Ridge bar Saturday, sources say. Jasmin Pontic, an employee of Vanguard Computer Systems, has been charged with tampering with physical evidence and obstructing governmental administration, according to a defense lawyer representing two suspects arrested in the case. Attorney Arthur Adalia says he suspects Pontic deleted the footage as a favor to Officer Paul Aparo. more ›

Well, isn't this just darling. Mark Grossich (the guy behind such upscale cocktail lounges as The Campbell Apartment and The World Bar in The Trump World Tower) has opened this plush new venture in a former post office on the ground floor of the Empire State Building. (The whole building was recently renovated to the tune of $500 million—every window was replaced with energy efficient ones.) Called The Empire Room, the 3,500 square feet lounge is filled with art deco flourishes, lots of mohair upholstery, velvet, embossed leather and polished stainless steel. This is the place to break out your finest monocle and forget all about that vulgar recession, with the help of a few fancy cocktails. more ›

It's nice to see the great recession hasn't snuffed out everyone's ambitions; take, for instance, this triple-decker restaurant and bar opening tomorrow night in the gigantic space formerly occupied by Wild Salmon. Called Zengo, the Latin-Asian fusion restaurant is the work of Mexican chef and restaurateur Richard Sandoval (Maya, Pampano) and Chef de Cuisine Akhtar Nawab (Elettaria RIP). Maestro Placido Domingo is a partner in the project, which also has locations in Denver and D.C., and the design is by big shots AvroKO. That's some serious firepower, which they're hoping will break a streak of failures at this daunting (cursed?) location. more ›

We've all spent countless hours sitting around a bar passionately vowing to boycott various injustices (right?), but does anyone ever actually follow through? Ask the inspiring patrons of Nevada Smith's, the rabidly popular East Village soccer bar, who have vowed to boycott the bar until two of their most beloved enablers bartenders get their jobs back. EV Grieve reports that the troubles began last week when the bar was shut down for a day due to alleged underage drinking. more ›

At a new Gramercy pub, happy hour is whenever the market demands. The Exchange Bar and Grill may charge up to $8 for a pint of Guinness, or as little as $4. Using a flashing ticker tape like Wall Street’s the bar, to open April 1, will determine its menu prices as though they were stocks. The price of beer, hot wings or fried calamari will fluctuate unremittingly in 25 cent increments, within a two-dollar range of a median cost. "It's supply and demand," co-owner Damon Bae told the Post. Maybe helicopter commutes to Wall Street should be priced the same way. more ›

Investigators have released surveillance videos of a man they believe viciously attacked and possibly sexually assaulted a woman in a Midtown bar after she refused to dance with him. Cops are trying to track down the suspect, who allegedly followed a 30-year-old nurse into a bathroom early on Thursday, barged into the stall, and left her bloodied and unconscious with a fractured skull, a broken nose and a broken eye socket. more ›

A man attacked and possibly raped a pediatric nurse in a bathroom stall in the midtown bar Social, police said. The perp fractured the 30-year-old woman's skull, and broke her eye socket and nose after she reportedly refused to dance with him in the three-story Eighth Avenue bar and lounge. more ›

Two state legislators from Brooklyn are leading an effort to tighten a loophole in a State Liquor Authority rule prohibiting bars from opening within 200 feet of schools and places of worship. This would save pious worshipers from temptation by the devil's spirits, and prevent their prayers from being distracted by the sounds of sinful barroom chatter. The current law allows liquor license applicants to measure the distance from door-to-door, but if the new bill passes (it was already approved by the Senate), the SLA will start measuring it from the property lines. more ›

Remember the van that drove around your college town at night, picking up alcohol-warmed students and their bottles of Old English, ostensibly protecting women from threats in the bushes? According to a Times Style piece, New York has its own neon version of the free drunk bus except instead of dropping you off at your outdoor drinking destination (the cemetery was always a good bet), it runs on a circuit from Williamsburg to a West Village bar called the Rusty Knot, where riders—lubricated by the free Buds on board—are deposited to empty their wallets. more ›

On Friday night gunmen were firing all over the city. Police reported three fatal shootings over the course of just five hours, the first stemming from an argument at a Crown Heights party. Ahmed Hoyt, a 31-year-old from Queens, was out in Brooklyn when a fight inside the Troy Avenue apartment was taken to the sidewalk. He was shot in the head at 10:26 p.m, reports the Post. Back in Queens 22-year-old Kalif Canady was also shot in the head, but he was close to home, police say. At 1:17 a.m. he was at his car near the Astoria Houses, when he met his killer and his maker. The last shooting of the night was Kevin Grant, also 22. He was shot and killed during a 3:30 a.m. bar fight on White Plains Road in the Bronx. more ›

Are baby bans seeping over the Park Slope line and into Windsor Terrace? According to Courier-Life, Double Windsor owner Jeff Switzer says their policy of no babies after 5 p.m. has been in effect for a few months now, and was instituted after some feedback from patrons. He says, “It’s more of an issue between people that live in the neighborhood than it is with us. Most people who come to the bar would prefer not to have babies in the bar.” And the debate rages on! more ›

There are, unsurprisingly, conflicting accounts about who started a violent melee between roughly a dozen off-duty firefighters and a group of cousins in a Bay Ridge bar early Saturday morning. The fight started as Sinan Selmani, a soccer coach at St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights, passed out shots to his cousins and one of them, Luan Leka, 21, spilled his drink on a firefighter. The NYPD and FDNY say the firefighter demanded an apology and instead Leka punched him in the jaw, while a lawyer for the cousins says Leka did apologize but the firefighter was still irate. And when Selmani intervened, the firefighter punched him, sparking the brawl. more ›

[UPDATE BELOW] Here we go again! Bruce Springsteen, barstool musician and voice of the working class, is suing a bar. The Daily News reports that he's the face behind the latest copyright infringement lawsuit. more ›

A boozy brawl between more than two dozen firefighters and four unlucky civilians early Saturday morning left one man with a broken eye orbit bone, a broken collarbone and broken shoulder. The city's Department of Investigation and the NYPD are investigating the fight, which broke out at the Salty Dog in Bay Ridge after one of the civilians, a 21-year-old, reached for his shot glass and spilled a little booze on one of the firefighters. "It looked like he was saying ‘I’m sorry’ and the firefighter started yelling and screaming, and one of his buddies came around and punched him the face," witness Larry Johnson tells the Post. Pandemonium ensued, and judging from Johnson's account, the only thing missing was a ragtime piano player dodging pint glasses. more ›

Not long ago we had time to kill before a Broadway show and stopped by our beloved theater district refuge, the cozy warren of a bar at Frankie & Johnnie's, which started out as a speakeasy back in 1926. But instead of finding asylum in the steakhouse's semi-secretive bar (accessed through the kitchen) we were dismayed to discover it reconfigured as a terribly-lit spot above the staircase, by the dishwasher, with sports on big TV screens! Ugh. The bartender (who was not the elderly, sagacious gentleman we'd come to expect) received a full white wine about it, and apologetically explained that because of structural problems, the bar had to be moved (and made soulless!) during renovations. Truly a terrible turn of events, but at least it's not all bad news. more ›

The war on Park Slope bar babies continues! The NY Times published a rant from 20-something year old Risa Chubinsky, who lives in the neighborhood and says she refuses to share her bar space with infants. She opines, "No matter what breeders might think, bars are not family-friendly. If I am out drinking and sobbing about a bad breakup, I don’t want my cries to compete with those of an infant sitting next to me. If I go to the bathroom to correct my wayward mascara at the end of a long weekend night, I don’t want to watch a baby being wiped down on the soggy sink counter." more ›

A Columbia University educator accused of punching a female coworker after a racially-heated argument skipped his court appearance on Monday. After failing to appear in court, a bench warrant has been issued for the arrest of associate urban-planning professor Lionel McIntyre, and a judge ordered that his parole be revoked, according to the Columbia Spectator. more ›

After a moose head may or may not have attacked a patron at a restaurant on the Lower East Side, PETA has decided to speak out against taxidermy. They ask bars and restaurants to shed their stuffed animals, for "No amount of Zinfandel can ease the anxiety and sadness I feel under the glassy-eyed stare of a dead moose or deer head." But taxidermy has become a fixture in some establishment's aesthetics over the years (Home Sweet Home, Union Hall and Freeman's, to name a few), and they may not be willing to let go of their furry friends. more ›

Is the world’s first steampunk bar (according to owner Andy Heidel) at risk of shutting down before it even gets started? The Brooklyn Paper reports that Prospect Heights' Way Station has high hopes of becoming a live-music venue... but can't seem to get a liquor license. more ›

A man who was beaten by an underage drunk in front of a Wall Street-area bar is suing the pubs that served the young boozer and police who purportedly witnessed the brawl and didn't break it up. more ›

Tarlach MacNiallais is a gay activist from Belfast who helps run the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization, which fights for homosexual inclusion in NYC's annual St. Patrick's Day Parade. Around 12:30 a.m. on Saturday, he says two security guards at the Jackson Heights nightclub/restaurant Guadalajara De Noche assaulted him because he was dancing with a man. A police source tells the Post, "[The bouncer] said, 'You can't do that here, this is not a gay bar.' " MacNiallais replied, "I have just as much right as anyone else." Then they allegedly wrestled him to the ground and dragged him away from the other dancers, before punching him, kicking him, and smashing a chair over his head. more ›

Click on the images for details on newcomers Spot Dessert Bar, Obao, Lucy's Cantina Royale, and the latest at Emporio and Death & Co, which just introduced their fall menu. more ›

Last week we noted the opening of a charming new restaurant/cocktail lounge/jazz bar called The Manhattan Inn in Greenpoint (located on Manhattan between Bedford and Nassau); but as you can see this place is so good looking it merits its own feature. This weekend we were actually lured there twice; the first visit was occasioned by our desire to wait out the Saturday afternoon rain and read over cocktails. The back room was uniquely suited for our purposes, and the Manhattan's Manhattan ($9) was as big and inviting as a heated private lap pool. (The classic specialty cocktail menu is from James Endicott, formerly of Per Se and Allen & Delancey, and there is also wine and craft beer on tap.) more ›

Police arrested a Columbia University architecture professor suspected of punching a female colleague in the face in a racially charged bar brawl on Friday. Professor Lionel McIntyre, 59, allegedly struck Camille Davis, a production manager in Columbia's theater department, after arguing with her and another man about "white privilege" in Toast on Broadway and 125th Street. more ›

Brooklyn's oldest gay bar may be forced to close following the sale of its Crown Heights building. The Starlight Lounge — which also claims to be the city's first black-owned gay bar — might be evicted because the new owner of the property apparently wants the building "empty." more ›

What's really behind the bar at Brooklyn watering holes? Hopefully you'll never find out, but the Brooklyn Paper reports on some of the makeshift security systems barkeeps keep hidden from their patrons. more ›

The lovely-looking restaurant and bar The Breslin begins lunch service tomorrow, and co-owner Ken Friedman (The Spotted Pig) is planning on serving alcohol despite objections from the Masjid Ar-Rahman mosque across the street. Earlier this month the mosque’s leaders called a meeting with Friedman at The Ace Hotel, where The Breslin is located, and asked, "Can you move the bar?" Friedman's response makes us want to hurry over to The Breslin right now for a dram of Laphroaig to show our support (and drown out the voices): more ›

A Staten Island man died early Sunday morning while trying to back his SUV out of a tight parking space in a pub parking lot. Oleg Kantarovich had gone outside to pull the car around for his wife, who was celebrating her 30th birthday, so that she wouldn't get caught in the rain. Police say he was leaning out of the front door of his 2007 Audi SUV as he backed up because it may have been difficult to see through the tinted side window. more ›

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. more ›

Adding to the mix of venues and restaurants in the neighborhood, a new (gorgeous) space combining space focused on food has opened in Williamsburg. The Rising Tide is a new culinary and events loft that was built over the summer and is now open to the public. This is the same space that will soon be seen on IFC's Dinner with the Band (starring chef Sam Mason). "The Rising Tide is a unique production and events studio, located in a two story loft in Brooklyn." Measuring in at twelve-hundred square feet, if you aren't looking to film a show (because, you probably aren't), it can even host dinner parties for up to forty people. more ›