We Are All Bridge And Tunnel Now

All your venues belong to us now that “Downtown has moved to Queens”:

Robert Prichard hopes to illuminate Long Island City with some emphatic Times Square-style signage.

“I’d like it to be visible from the 59th Street Bridge,” he said. “First, it flashes ‘Queens,’ then ‘Bridge,’ then ‘Theater,’ and then ‘Queensbridge Theater.’ And then maybe an arrow that lights up and points down to our loading dock.”

Mr. Prichard, 52, has long had a flair for the dramatic. This is the same guy, after all, who nearly a decade ago led a conga line up Avenue A in protest of the city’s antiquated cabaret laws.

Nowadays, he’s participating in a perhaps farther-reaching kind of procession — the ongoing exodus of artists, musicians and other creative types abandoning Manhattan in droves.

Adopting the slogan “Downtown Has Moved to Queens,” the former Lower East Side stalwart is partnering with developer Michael Waldman to open what he called a “rock ‘n’ roll supper club, similar to a Bowery Ballroom or a Mercury Lounge with a restaurant — a first for Long Island City, a first for Queens.”

Scheduled to open this summer, the 5,000-square-foot Queensbridge Theater, located at 37-31 10th Street, may be somewhat unique in concept. (After the nighttime entertainment ends at 4 a.m., the proprietors intend to open back up just three hours later for breakfast, with homemade bread baked fresh on the premises.)

Bwahahahaha!