Neighbors for bars
To The Editor:
I saw your article in this week’s Express (news article, March 31 – April 6, “Tribeca bars hope law won’t be the last call”) – it’s very good, but I have concerns about the story and the representation of opinions.
Quite specifically, I’m dismayed to see that the most consistently and ubiquitously quoted commentators from the neighborhood are Peter and Janna Townsend. I believe that they are not appropriate representatives of the consensus opinion of the neighborhood, and I think their position is unrealistic and unfair to the bar owners, patrons and fellow residents.
As a resident of a nearby neighborhood, I frequent the area and I’ve found no justification for complaints about disruptive noise or behavior from the existing establishments. These businesses are neighborhood dining and nightlife destinations, and there are certainly local people who think these places are worth patronizing. I don’t think those customers’ voices are being adequately represented in the ongoing story as it is reported in the Express. There must be more than eight frequent customers if these establishments are making enough money to pay rent, and they’re not all coming in from New Jersey; surely, the patrons would outnumber the persistent persecuting protesters.
Also, I find it absurd that these residents live a block from an off-ramp from the Holland Tunnel, and that their biggest noise complaint is with Liquor Store Bar. But that’s just piling on. In any case, the Townsends and their associates are clearly antipathetic about nightlife establishments in Tribeca, and that’s not true of all Tribeca residents. We should hear more from people who do not find these bars and restaurants problematic. Those people are not likely to attend community board meetings just to say, “Everything’s fine!” But they are out there, and their voices should be heard.
Brian Van Nieuwenhoven
Houston we have a problem
To The Editor:
A week ago I was invited to an event at a bar/restaurant on Bowery near its intersection at Houston St. Having taken the bus one stop too far, walking back north I became frightened for my life as a New Yorker. Although I’ve been in Manhattan for over 25 years, I grew up in Queens. Accordingly, I’ve read opinions as to how major construction on Houston St. will turn it into a Queens Boulevard of death. Yet before major construction to Houston St. begins, I saw the walls closing in. The Avalon projects, one on the north side of Houston at Bowery and one on the south side, freaked me out. It is unfair to Queens Boulevard to suggest that Houston St. is headed in as bad a direction. Houston will not only be worse than Queens Boulevard, it will be worse looking. As I looked left and right, the Avalon projects created a metal and glass cavern between Bowery and Chrystie St. that, for whatever reason, brought to mind something out of Robocop.
Rather than giving pedestrians any space on the sidewalk, as Queens Boulevard does with its apartments set off with landscaping around them, these two mirrored buildings hover over the street creating a claustrophobic drive through.
Queens Boulevard is dangerous because it’s so big. Houston St. will be dangerous because it’s so small. Additionally, not every commercial enterprise on Queens Boulevard is a bar.
What will happen once all of the residential construction is completed around Houston and Bowery is not guesswork. People who do not drink responsibly will stumble out of the bars, on weekend nights especially, and wreak havoc with pedestrian and vehicular traffic. This will cause accidental injury and, I fear, death. This is even before any reconstruction is done on Houston St. What these developers have done to a main New York intersection is vulgar. Other than the few “affordable” apartments, those buildings will undoubtedly turn into quasi-N.Y.U. dorms as well as housing for young transients whose parents subsidize them to do the “New York thing.” I happen to agree with the many community activists who think we have enough drinking destinations Downtown, especially given the emergence of the Meat Market, Alphabet City, First, Ludlow, Orchard and Clinton Sts. Hey, they even sell wine in an N.Y.U. dormitory now. We don’t need more bars on Bowery but surely they will soon be surrounding the crass architecture that is the Avalon projects. As far as that area is concerned, I guess an old song says it best:
“The Bowery, The Bowery. I’ll never go there anymore!”
Billy Sternberg
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