Make Way For The Methadone Clinic!

Florence Fabricant notes that European Union, the East Village “gastropub” that was denied a liquor license back in March, has closed.

Then Again, Maybe It’s Better That Manhattan Remains The Only Borough Without A Beach (Suckas)

“It’s safe if you know what you’re doing” doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence, but I’m listening:

Decades have passed since advocates began their push to rid the Hudson River of industrial waste, and the city has worked to beautify Manhattan’s once-desolate West Side with grassy parkland for joggers and bicyclists. So why not add a beach?

Some state officials and environmentalists want to develop one along the river just steps from the Meatpacking District when a city sanitation department depot relocates by 2012.

The plan faces technical and regulatory hurdles and could take years to complete, but perhaps the most daunting challenge will be persuading locals and tourists alike to take a dip in the river, with its reputation as a floating funeral home and garbage dump.

“Haven’t they found bodies out here?” asked Sephora Rosario, 32, staring out at the choppy water not too far from where she grew up. “Who would jump in there?”

Often, those quickest to dive in are the environmental advocates who say the Hudson River is far cleaner than it has been for most of the last few hundred years.

“I’ll swim in the Hudson now,” said Carter Craft, director of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, which works to increase funding for city water access and ecological protection. “It’s safe if you know what you’re doing.”

The King Of Zabaristan Has Decreed It, And So It Is

The Zabar East Side Hegemony asserts itself, ensuring its top-dog status in the neighborhood:

A proposed green market on the Upper East Side has bought the farm — thanks to a scorched-earth campaign by high-end grocer Eli Zabar and some local residents.

Community Board 8 had voted last month to allow eight vendors to sell fruit, vegetables and cheese in the playground of PS 6 at East 82nd Street and Madison Avenue for a few hours on Saturdays.

But despite the vote, Tom Strumolo, of the Council on the Environment of New York, said yesterday he decided to seek another location after a meeting with residents.

“They were very adamantly opposed,” he said. “I was led to believe they would picket” the site.

“I didn’t want my growers to be subjected to that sort of behavior,” he said. “They have trusted me for many, many years to bring them into a place where they will be welcome.”

Zabar, who owns E.A.T. on Madison between 80th and 81st streets and Eli’s on Third and 80th Street, has been a vocal opponent.

He contended “that he’s trying to run a business and they would compete with his business,” said Board 8 President David Liston.

Pamela Matson, who has two children at PS 6, complained Zabar “owns the neighborhood.”

“I would love a green market,” she said. “A green market here is no messier than the kids.”

. . .

Zabar was in Europe and could not be reached for comment.

Bwahahahaha!

Tall Order

It’s difficult to protest a concept, but Upper West Side residents are doing just that:

Pushing grocery carts, waving signs and chanting slogans, more than 100 Manhattan residents rallied yesterday to protest the gentrification of their neighborhood.

Residents expressed disgust that their local C-Town supermarket had been shuttered — claiming it was closed to make way for luxury apartment towers in the area bordered by Columbus and Amsterdam Aves. and 97th and 100th Sts. “This neighborhood was created to accommodate the diverse people who live here,” said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

“They’re taking everything from us,” said Joan Sandler, who said she has lived in the neighborhood for more than 30 years. “It’s one of the last diverse communities left.”

Your Friendly Neighborhood Maggie Gyllenhaal Still Roams In Jane Jacobs’ West Village

Life on the stretch of Hudson Street in the West Village which Jane Jacobs wrote about in her 1961 book Death and Life of Great American Cities goes on pretty much as she described it:

. . . [L]ately residents are “having more babies,” says Fran DeMastri, a veteran daytime bartender at Jacobs’s old haunt, the White Horse Tavern. (Bars keep the street “reasonably populated until three in the morning and . . . always a safe street to come home to,” Jacobs wrote.) Neighbors who may not know their local “fruit man,” as Jacobs did, keep tabs on nearby celebs. Sitting at the White Horse at noon, executive recruiter John Carreras replaces Jacobs’s survey of longshoremen and tailors with a tally of nearby names: Lou Reed, Julianne Moore, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Stipe, Hilary Swank . . .