Back on April 26, a worker at the newly unveiled 219 First Ave. told EV Grieve reader Greg Masters that a Starbucks was opening in the retail space here...
Of course! But you never know with such intel from construction workers.
Anyway, in the last few days, paper went up on the windows here at East 13th Street ...
A newly issued work permit points to the incoming tenant...
Well, a Starbuck singular.
And while we let that sink in... might as well bring up again that the ground floor here once housed the Mee Noodle Shop, a favorite spot for Allen Ginsburg.
As the Times noted in its obituary on Ginsberg from April 1997:
Ah Lan Chong, a waitress at Mee's Noodle Shop and Grill on First Avenue, which was Mr. Ginsberg's favorite Chinese restaurant, remembered Mr. Ginsberg in simpler, less heavily freighted terms.
Sure, she knew he was someone important, someone artistic. She could tell that from overheard conversations and from the way other diners would sometimes point at him when he entered. But to Ms. Chong, he was mainly the unfussy man with a dependable hankering for steamed flounder in ginger sauce. "When he came in," she said, "we knew what he wanted."
And so it goes...
Previously on EV Grieve:
Today in rumors of another Starbucks opening in the East Village
219 First Avenue ready for a chain store, probably
