The bar-restaurant at 126 First Ave. between East Seventh Street and St. Mark's Place will close as Lunasa after service tonight. But the place will remain the same, except for the name.
The owners offer this explanation on Facebook:
We have some really sad news, today is the last day of Lunasa. After almost 12 years in the East Village, Lunasa will cease to exist from closing time tonight forth. We want to take this opportunity to thank all of our loyal customers, our not so loyal customers and even the irregulars that have graced our door over this time. You all mean so much to us and you are the reason we have managed to stay open for more than a decade. We feel so blessed to have met you all and we will cherish the memories (well some of them anyway).
The truth is very few of you could pronounce the bloody name so you lot are partially responsible for its demise, we never thought for a second all that time ago that 6 letters would be so difficult to say properly, it's only 3 syllables for feck sake! Now we know why so many immigrants changed their names after arriving in this beautiful new world.
Well now is the time for us to do the same (this is not all bad news), while the name Lunasa is getting buried, a new name has been carefully chosen with pronunciation as the primary element in the rebranding process. It is a 7 letter word but the key is it only has two syllables, so we are mildly confident that we won't hear similar abominations we heard with our beloved Lunasa.
Ladies and gentlemen we'd like to introduce you to The Grafton. Named after one of Dublin's most famous streets, The Grafton will be very much like Lunasa, except you just won't have to repeat yourself four times to your friends when your telling them where you are.
Tonight is Lunasa's last night and we'd love to see you, swing on by to say so long and tomorrow is the first day of a new era as The Grafton, so swing on by to say hello.
