We've heard these rumblings for weeks... now it's official: Life Cafe on Avenue B and 10th Street is closing after 30 years. Perhaps for good.
Per the Life website:
Dear friends,
On this auspicious day of 9/11/11, after 30 years in business, I am closing Life Cafe East Village this evening “until further notice.” I’m doing this due to issues around building repairs the landlords were supposedly going to complete one year ago. Until the landlords complete the repairs, I will remain closed. We anticipate a rebirth of Life Cafe sometime in the near future. Thank you for your loyal patronage over the years.
You are welcome to stop by as my guest today and raise a glass with me to Life!
Because Life is worth Loving.
Kathy Life
Michael Sean Edwards took these photos
14 comments:
The current "Life" Café is a mere shadow of the LIFE Café that so many of us enjoyed in the early-mid-80s before Kathy replaced beloved chefs and waitresses, removed the bookshelves, changed the menu to one that is more palatable to Yuppie interlopers and kicked out long time customers who gave the place its identity.
Nothing of significance is being lost with the demise of this place....
The cafe that many of *you* enjoyed in years past, you mean. Others of us always thought the food was yuppie-ish.
It's sad to see it go. It was there long before the yuppies.
Of course, she tried to food the yuppies! Can't stay open feeding the crackheads!
Eh, didn't go there much but still kind of sad. I like places where they have healthy stuff and i can sit outdoors for hours and people watch and read. It'll be a freaking bank soon. Life bank! No day but today!
Chicken sandwiches? Chips and guacamole? BEER? So yuppie it's unbelievable. AMIRIGHT?
Gett off your high horses people. It was a decent place, though a little overpriced. Losing a local, long established business is something that is happening much too often these days.
I am not sure how the menu here was Yuppie, but if you think this place was Yuppie, wait until you see what replaces it.
In before the obligatory high-horsey "I was here in the 80s, everything was better in the 80s, everything is shit now" comments.
Oh wait, too late.
Anyway, RIP for now Life Cafe. Hope you're not gone too long.
good memories, sweet garden, RIP old EVill again (and again) ... as Eden Bee reminds us: live today.
@chris
lol, im orig from morningside heights and I have to say yuppies or not, I liked it better when it wasn't full of crackheads.
I lived on their Mexican pizzas and bottles of Dos Equis in the mid-80s. Performance nights were excellent. If you weren't there you didn't know!
Right on Weevil: Those who weren't there haven't a clue....
As long as the one in Brooklyn is still making that amazing meatloaf, I'm all good!
Dos Equis!? Hilarious, one of the classic yupppie beers of the 1980's for sure.
I ate there for about 10 years until a sweeping staff/menu change a few years back got rid of another wave of regulars. It was the first place I considered myself a regular, so that was sad.
I'm confused about the possibly "permanently" closed status - it seems like they plan to re-open once the landlord finally does the repairs. The lack of repairs is why they've been hit with all of those health problems this year. The rats around there have gotten out of control. Runoff from the park, maybe.
It wasn't so much the yuppies that was weird about the place, it was the Rent fanatics after they repainted and put up a bunch of Rent memoriabilia. I don't blame them for doing it, obviously, but it added a touristy vibe.
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