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John Lennon's UWS hangout closing this weekend

By Lauren Johnston and Rolando Pujol | ljohnston@newsday.com

February 22, 2008

John Lennon's New York hangout Café La Fortuna closing

John Lennon and Yoko Ono memorabilia is prominently featured on the walls of CafÃ© La Fortuna. CafÃ© La Fortuna was a favorite New York hangout of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. (amNewYork Photo/ Rolando Pujol / February 21, 2008)

John Lennon fans have long flocked to an Upper West Side cafe to see the snug corner where the gifted musician wrote songs, drew pictures, and like other regulars, spent hours sipping rich Italian coffee.

But like many a mom-and-pop in recent years, Cafe La Fortuna found it tough to hang on in a neighborhood noted for its soaring rents and chain competitors. It will close on Sunday after 32 years.

Loyal patrons were alerted to the end by a typed sign posted in the window display that once housed the round, wooden table where Lennon and Yoko Ono were fixtures until his murder outside the Dakota, just a block away, on Dec. 8, 1980.

Randy Smith, 50, has lived above the cafe at 69. W. 71st St. since 1981. "I've been going there for the iced cappuccino and chocolate Italian ice for 17 years. I don't know where I'm going to go now," he said.

The letter, written by original owner Vincent "Uncle Vinny" Urwand, called the cafe a dream come true for him and wife Alice, who was the "heart and soul" of the place. Alice died in January, and it was hard, Urwand said Thursday, to think of the place without her. A friend, Michael Trapani, began running the place about five years ago.

Urwand said Thursday that he had a good relationship with the original landlord of the building, who recently died. The property is now owned by a real-estate group, 71st Realty Associates. Nearby rents have nearly tripled, and Urwand said a similar fate awaited Cafe La Fortuna.

Aaron Vaknin of 71st Realty Associates said the owners had three years left on the lease, but instead both sides agreed to a buy-out that would terminate the lease at the end of the month.

Vaknin said that a neighborhood hardware store he owns would take over the space.

Attempts to contact Trapani were unsuccessful.

Elizabeth Halliday, 45, who designed the cafe's Web site and spoke to Trapani soon after learning of its impending closure, said of Trapani: "He sounded very sad, like resignation. He said, 'Things change and we have to change with them,'" she said.

Indeed, the Upper West Side of 1976, the year the cafe opened, was only just beginning to revive after the arrival of Lincoln Center, Urwand recalled.

Cafe La Fortuna became a neighborhood institution, popular not only with visitors interested in the Lennon lore but also with regulars who cherished it for much the same reasons as Lennon and Ono did.

Ono was there as recently as a few months ago, Urwand said. Last year, Trapani gave Ono the couple's regular table as a gift. The cafe itself is a trove of Lennon memorabilia.

Diana Seifert, a long-time patron who lives next door, plans to be there on the last day.

"It's horrible," she said. "It destroys the character of the neighborhood. We have nothing left on the Upper West Side ... these small coffee houses and bookstores and things are what give the city its character, and we're losing it."

Urwand, who now lives in the Bronx, plans to stop by on Saturday to say hello -- and goodbye -- to friends at the place he said is named for his beloved wife's mother.

As he explained in his note: "Times have changed -- business has slowed, rents have risen and life moves on."

Staff writer Marlene Naanes contributed to this story.