NY Times Talks Up Union Square

From the NY Times:

The latest record store to close in New York is a big one: the Virgin Megastore in Union Square. Following its announcement last month that the Times Square Megastore would close down in April, Virgin Entertainment Group North America will shut down the Union Square shop in late May or early June, a spokeswoman said, confirming a report in Billboard. Virgin will also close its Market Street store in San Francisco in April. The New York closures will leave Manhattan without a large-scale record store. Thousands of music retailers have shut down in recent years as CD sales have plunged, and Virgin has been closing most of its locations around the country since it was bought by the real estate companies Vornado and Related in 2007, but its high-traffic New York stores were said to be profitable.

Finally, the new Union Square playground, three times its former size, is open.

The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation has published a fantastic online photographic tour of all the historically important buildings in our neighborhood…. including our own building. So much fascinating history. The underlying message…. a lot of this history is constantly under threat.

View it here.

Sales are hot hot hot at 27 East 12th St., the upcoming skyscraper on the site of Bowlmor Lanes. Even though the building doesn’t yet exist, at least 20 of the 53 units, including both zillion-dollar penthouses, are sold. Movin’ on up.

Upscale Italian cafeteria Vapiano, at the corner of University and 13th, has closed for a big makeover. We’ll see.

Eater reports:

The 40-year-old icon Gotham Bar and Grill has shuttered again — this time for good. Earlier this year, it was the victim of a cyberattack in which it lost $45,000. “The restaurant could not claw back from the theft,” owner Cassandra Csencsitz said of the decision not to reopen. “The goal was to go back to our investors to reopen this fall, and time just kept going by until it became clear we could not reopen this fall or for the holidays. It is over,” she told writer Andrea Strong. This is the second permanent shutter since 2020, with Gotham closing permanently the first round in 2020 — after 36 years — before reopening in 2021. In 2019, Victoria Blamey took over the kitchen from longtime chef Alfred Portale. Chef Ron Paprocki, a former Gotham pastry chef, most recently led the kitchen.