In a smoke-choked Manhattan tavern, Cynthia Candiotti asked a neighbor for a light and took a deep drag on her cigarette, savoring a last barstool puff before the city outlawed smoking in bars and nightclubs.
For Candiotti, 26, the ban is a double whammy: "I can't tell you how many dates with cute guys I've gotten by looking into his eyes while he lights me up. That's as good as smoking."
With fear, loathing and lament, the city of Frank Sinatra, Humphrey Bogart and Philip Morris USA was ushering in the smoke-free age Sunday, one tick after midnight.
Goodbye to the cloying smell of cloves. The wispy white rings that settle into a layer of haze at bars, pubs and nightclubs. The smoker's hack and smelly clothes after a night out, whether you smoked or not. The phone number written on a matchbook cover.
"First they cleaned up Times Square, then they said you couldn't dance in bars or drink a beer in the park. Now you can't even smoke when you go out on the town," said Willie Martinez, 37, who sat, chain-smoking, in an East Village bar. "This is like no-fun city."
The Board of Standards and Appeals ruled at the end of last month that the Department of Buildings was wrong to issue permits to add two extra floors to two East Village tenements.
The B.S.A. ruled that the additions to the five-story buildings at 515 E. Fifth St. and 514-516 E. Sixth St. violated the state’s 1929 Multiple Dwelling Law in regard to fire safety and elevator requirements.
In conjunction with the Four Leaf Fifteens Rugby Tournament in New York City, the typical after-tournament social has been replaced with a 1000+ participant rugby pub crawl around Lower Manhattan.
The pub crawl begins at 2:30pm after the first teams are knocked out of the tournament at Randall's Island, with over a half dozen bars and restaurants participating. You won’t want to miss the free mechanical bull riding competition around 4:00pm.
The second stop will begin around 6pm and include five new bars with different drink specials, all located a few blocks north on Avenue A. As teams are eliminated from the tournament or their final ends, they will want to hurry down to lower Manhattan to join the other players, ensuring this will make history as the largest rugby pub crawl in US history.
The final stop of the pub crawl, starting around 8:30pm, will include around a dozen more bars and restaurants, all with new drink and food specials, on Avenue’s B and C. All three stops will be within walking distance of each other so there’s no need for cars or taxis.
Pub Crawl details (more to be added)
First Stop: 2:30pm-6:30pm
Location: New York’s Lower East Side
Participating Bars: Mason Dixon, Fat Baby, Bondi Road, Donnybrook’s, Lucky Jack’s
Participating Restaurants: Tuck Shop Aussie Meat Pies, Mason Dixon, Ray’s Pizza
Sample specials: $20 all you can drink for 2 hours; $3 beers, $3 well drinks; 10-20% off food
Second Stop: 6:00pm – 9:00pm
Location: Avenue A between Houston and 2nd Street
Participating Bars: Nice Guy Eddie’s, Library Bar, 2A, Double Down Saloon, Kelly’s
Participating Restaurants: Tuck Shop Aussie Meat Pies, Ray’s Pizza
Sample Specials: $2 PBRs, $2 beers; $3 beer and a shot; 2 for 1’s; 10-20% off food
Third Stop: 8:30pm – Midnight
Location: Avenue’s B and C between 2nd Street and 10th Street
Participating Bars: Croxley’s Ales, Mama’s Bar, Rehab, Poco (SB3), 7B, Duke’s, the Porch, Ten Eleven, East Village Tavern, the Royale
Participating Restaurants: Tuck Shop Aussie Meat Pies, Café Rakka, Zaitzeff Kobe Burgers, Bite Me Best
Sample Specials: $3 beers; $4 Jacks; $5 martinis and margaritas; 10-20% off food
Activities planned:
Bull Riding Competition
Tournament trophy presentations
Shoot the Boot bar
St. Baldrick’s head shaving
50/50 Raffle
We’ll have plenty of bracelets to hand out as well – you’ll need to make sure to wear them in order to get these amazing discounts. You'll need to be attending the Four Leaf 15s Rugby Tournament (free for spectators) to get a wrist band.
A thousand rugby players invade New York for the Four Leaf Rugby Tournament on Saturday on Randall's Island. Fifty rugby teams from around the country will compete from 8AM to 7PM while spectators eat free food and drink free beer. A free "Try Rugby" clinic will be offered for kids under 14. After the last game, you can join the 1,000+-participant rugby pub crawl through the East Village and Lower East Side.
A laid-off computer programmer is putting on the Unemployment Olympics next week at Tompkins Square Park in the East Village.
The jobless can take a break from scanning the classifieds and updating their résumés to compete in events like the Fax Machine Toss and the You're Fired Race.
Nick Goddard, 26, came up with the idea when he lost his position last month, and he got a permit to stage the Olympiad at the ballfields at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday. "Maybe it will lift everyone's spirits a little," Goddard said yesterday. "Originally, my thought was just to make people laugh."
There will be four events, including Pin the Blame on the Bosses featuring blindfolded competitors - and a stress-relieving piñata.
All so-called Main Streets are not alike. In Manhattan, main thoroughfares like Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street have gone through massive changes -- yet they maintain anchor tenants that bring people back over and over. So it is with the Bowery. In the third installment of the Main Street NYC project, WNYC's Brigid Bergin takes us to a five-block stretch of this street with an infamous reputation and ongoing transformation.
In the scenes, we are elsewhere informed, Duff is looking to "score" some "stuff," and acts all mouthy to Ice-T, who says something "street."
