This will be the third business here in fairly quick succession...
Previously on EV Grieve:
A Cure for this location?
Graffiti vandalism is apparently so cool that an East Village hotel has decided to fake it.
In a wacky attempt at earning street cred, the swanky Cooper Square Hotel has commissioned four graffiti "artists" to tag the Fifth Street wall of an adjacent building it recently bought.
One of the taggers, Joyce Pensato, was going to town yesterday on her section of the mural, which the hotel owners hope will be finished by Nov. 10, and then updated annually.
Pensato and three others -- who go by Nick 1, Vizie and Shinique -- were each paid to fill one quarter the wall.
His section spells out the words "Tropical Fantasy," a tribute to a friend who died over the summer and a reference to a local soda company.
Klus Ortleib, the hotel's managing partner, wants the place to fit in with the edgy local art scene.
"When I came up with the idea, people said I was crazy," he said.
At least one tenant of the tagged building agreed.
"They came in without regard for others," says Katy Able, 63.
"They say they can't fix a leak because they don't have money, but now they've paid to have a crane to put up graffiti."
Anyone hazarding a guess about the demographics of Manhattan might name the East Village the youth capital of the island. It's a place where anyone over 30 starts to notice that her standard fashion go-to's are suddenly has-beens and that everyone else in the environs has preternaturally dewy skin. One friend decamped from the neighborhood when she turned 32 and decided that that was too young to be the oldest person in her building...