Carol Albert, owner of the Astroland amusement park on Coney Island, announced today that she has given up trying to negotiate a new lease with developer Joe Sitt, to whom she sold her property in 2006 for $30 million. Albert had promised to shut down permanently if Sitt did not offer her a lease for two years at the same rate by 1 p.m. today. Sitt spokesman Stefan Friedman tells the Post the developer won't negotiate "through the media or with a gun held to his head." ...

Well, that's that. McCarren Pool – the giant Robert Moses-era landmark that's been revived as a music, theater, dance and film venue after decades of neglect – hosted its last free 'pool party' yesterday. The Bloomberg administration has allocated $50 million to renovate the pool for swimming, restore the historic bathhouse building, and build a year-round recreation center that is to include a skate park and an ice rink. After three years of presenting free......

The Gawker crowd was dismayed last night to find that Nolita bar Sweet and Vicious has abruptly closed. Former Gawker editor Jessica Coen relays a rumor on Grub Street that the place was seized by the landlord. And the Sweet and Vicious answering machine has this to say: "Thank you for calling Sweet and Vicious. After enjoying ten years at our 5 Spring Street location, and due to circumstances beyond our control, we are taking......

The NY Sun details the closing sale at the Nikos Magazine & Smoke Shop on Sixth Avenue and 11th Street in Greenwich Village. Nikos was "known for its wide selection of arts and science magazines as well as highbrow journals" but the space will now make way for a more traditional magazine shop that sells water, soda and Lotto tickets--one devoted customer from Denmark who visits when he's in NYC said he was "devastated." Back......

Troubled comedy hotspot Rififi (also known as Cinema Classics) will close tonight due to “an impasse with the landlord,” who is now “asking for substantially more money,” according to Matt Ruby's blog Sandpaper Suit. One "disillusioned ex-employee" tells Gothamist that “employees received text messages yesterday announcing tonight (Wednesday) as the last night open. One day’s notice, and there was a crazy insinuation that if more money had been made over the weekend the venue could......

Others may sit passively by while New York City loses 10 of its precious 235 Starbucks, but Andrew El-Kadi, who lives above a doomed Starbucks in Bay Ridge, is making a stand. He’s turning up the heat on Starbucks by handing out flyers and starting an online petition to keep his downstairs Starbucks open, because "when you feel strongly about something, [it] doesn't have to be limited to starving children in Africa or the Israeli-Palestinian......

Starbucks has released the full list [pdf] of 600 “underperforming” locations nationwide that will close between now and mid-2009; 10 of them are in New York City, with the majority clustered in midtown, two in Queens, one on Staten Island and one in Bay Ridge. Which means we’re left with a scant 225 Starbucks citywide – so get out and support your local neighborhood Starbucks! The closings will affect some 12,000 employees – er, partners......

The Tony, OBIE and Drama Desk-award winning rock musical Passing Strange will close June 20th after a six month run on Broadway, during which time the show failed to translate massive critical acclaim into box office profits. Attendance hovered around 50% capacity for most of the run, and producers’ hopes for a post-Tonys boost were dashed when Latino musical In the Heights dominated the awards. ...

The no-cover daytime jazz club EZ's Woodshed in Harlem is closing after two and a half years. Its owner, Gordon Palotnick, took a quixotic stab at sustaining the music that is identified with Harlem. Instead of a smoky late-night club, Palotnick opened a weekdays-only, daytime juke joint that only served soft drinks; and he didn't charge a hefty cover charge either. Despite his best efforts--immersing himself in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and......

Well, that’s that. Four years after gentrification forced them to relocate from their longtime space on Ludlow Street to Tribeca, Collective: Unconscious, a hotbed for experimental theater and art, will close for good. The funky little theater was adept at connecting broke performers with broke audiences and letting the sparks fly with minimal risk. The lease on the Tribeca space, where they moved in 2004, is up at the end of the month, and per......

Starbucks has announced it's closing 600 stores in the U.S., bringing the total number down to approximately 9 gazillion, most of them located in Astor Place. Stocks have fallen 24% so far this year, and its second quarter was its weakest as a public company. The Seattle-based chain says it will try to relocate employees to other stores, but thousands of layoffs loom. Financial analyst Sharon Zackfia tells the Times, “I don’t think it’s overly......

“You could be a transgendered elephant walking in here and as long as you pay your check, you’re fine,” diner Lars Hoel told the Times yesterday during his last breakfast at Florent, the 24-hour French bistro that’s been a Meatpacking District institution for 23 years. The transgendered elephant refuge closed last night after the gay pride parade and a private party for staff and friends of owner Florent Morellet....

When we spoke with Florent Morellet on Monday, he assured us that his 23-year-old Meatpacking District bistro – scheduled to close this Sunday at 10 p.m. – would not be occupied by a Bank of America or some similar abomination. But the Parisian restaurateur stopped short of divulging the space’s fate – the landlord had been seeking $35,000 in monthly rent and it was naturally assumed that only the most crass retailers could manage a......

Back in 1985, when the meatpacking district nightlife was all about gay clubs like the Manhole and, as John Waters puts it, not getting mugged after a night of “watching men pay good money to get pissed on,” Frenchman Florent Morellet opened a bistro in an old greasy spoon called the R&L. Open 24/7, the place soon became a magnet for all sorts of soulful misfits drawn by the open-minded spirit cultivated by Florent himself.......

The beloved 24-hour French diner Florent will be closing on Saturday with a big send-off, and lines have often been out the door as the end approaches. Today is no exception, as Eater reports, with the restaurant still packed despite the fact that the gas has been shut off. Reached today (his birthday) by phone at his lake house in New Jersey, owner Florent Morellet tells us that the gas was shut off over a......

With the Knitting Factory looking for a new home, and Luna Lounge being closed since April, all signs are pointing to the former moving into the latter. In fact, a sign on the front door of the now defunct Luna Lounge says as much. The closing of the doors came with a sad little announcement on April 26th via their MySpace page, stating "Thanks for all the good times, everybody." The venue had only moved......

The incessant stampede of beloved neighborhood institutions closing has a way of making your eyes glaze over and wonder it even merits mentioning anymore. But today’s tally of three (so far!) price-outs demands observation. Jeremiah's Vanishing New York – fast becoming the most depressing read in town – has the bad news of two of them. The first is Hopscotch, the 2.0 version of Avenue A’s Alt Coffee, renowned for its ‘No ODs Allowed’ signage in the filthy bathroom. Owner Nick Bodor had hoped to fancy it up for the yupsters, but it seems the local real estate market won’t rest until it’s a real estate office....

Some West Village restaurants can’t catch a break this week; first an old water main broke and flooded them out during Memorial Day weekend, now the city has been stone cold shutting them down. Eater has it that the Department of Health ordered Diablo Royale on West 10th Street to close yesterday for “unsanitary conditions” – a tipster says the inspectors faulted the restaurant’s flooded basement. Now the swank bar/restaurant Employees Only has gotten......

Brooklyn Paper has it that the smaller, funkier Tea Lounge in Park Slope, on Seventh Avenue and Tenth Street, is to close at the end of July. And you’ll never in a million years guess what the reason is! Turns out an obscene rent hike is forcing the neighborhood hang-out to move along and make room for, most likely, a Corcoran real estate office. Where have we heard this tune before? And so the tumbleweeds......

Some subway riders and transit advocates are upset about NYC Transit closing subway bathrooms between midnight and 5 a.m. for cleaning. As AMNY puts it, "Subway toilets are the pit stop of last resort," but many New Yorkers, whether they are "leaving bars, clubs, or their work shift," rely on them. One ironworker said, "Where do I go now? Wet my pants?" Others suggest the closings will mean worse things--one station agent says, "If......

Tribeca’s 15-year-old Franklin Station Café will close next month, and the Downtown Express has a nice, long goodbye (928 words!) to the neighborhood mainstay. The French and Malaysian bistro, located at the corner of West Broadway and Franklin across from the 1 train stop, was one of the few moderately-priced places left in the increasingly cost-prohibitive neighborhood, and had long been a favored hang-out for locals. No surprises here, folks; the closure was brought on......

Glory Days, the new musical written by a pair of twenty-somethings from Virginia, closed after its official opening night last night, joining such Broadway flops as Moose Murders and Teaneck Tanzi in the illustrious "Open/Close Club." The negative reviews proved too much for producers, who chose to pull the plug and eat their $2.5 million investment. In writing his delicate pan, Ben Brantley noted that the producers “have done this little, hopeful show no favors......

Photo courtesy jenie212. Woodhaven Lanes, the classic Forest Hills bowling alley, will close in less than two weeks, NY1 has learned. But this latest loss of a beloved NYC institution wasn’t due to the obscene rents that are sucking all the character out of our city, but rather a multiplying swarm of radioactive scorpions that have nested in the lanes’ shoes and balls. Kidding, of course it’s the obscene rent. Owner Jim Santora tells......

The earlier reports of the city’s sudden shutdown of Veniero’s pastry café have been followed up with some rather revolting details, sent to Eater by a tipster at the Department of Health. The beloved East Village institution, founded in 1894 by Antonio Veniero, had posted a sign on the door next to the DOH sticker blaming the shut-down on a “pest problem” caused by “a large Capital Improvement Project.” Pest problem, indeed: Veniero’s Café was......

When Hog Pit co-owner Felisa Dell sent an email to Eater on April 7th confirming the closure of her Meatpacking District BBQ joint, she insinuated that “the mayor and the State Liquor Authority are now only issuing Liquor Licenses until 2 a.m. It's very sneaky, but in 5 years the 4 a.m. liquor license will be a thing of the past, without any community input.” Today the NY Sun backs Dell up, reporting that many......

On the heels of Florent's closure comes news that another one of the Meatpacking District’s pre-millennial hang-outs will walk the plank: The Hog Pit, a Southern dive bar and BBQ joint that opened in the late '90s, is the latest casualty of the neighborhood’s astronomical rent increases. Co-owner Felisa Dell sent an email to Eater today confirming the closure, which was brought on by a triple rent increase to 40K per month. The Hog Pit’s......

Florent, the beloved Meatpacking District hangout set to close this summer after almost twenty three years in business, will at least be going out in style, according to Frank Bruni, who spoke with owner Florent Morellet yesterday. The bistro's long goodbye will last five weeks, with each week dedicated to one of the Kubler-Ross stages of grief. Week One, starting Monday, May 26, will be Denial, with the remaining four weeks themed as Anger, Bargaining,......

New York has lost another vintage factory built diner: The Cheyenne, a popular all night eatery near Penn Station, will close its doors on Sunday after 68 years of operation. And the owner of a rival diner – the bigger Skylight Diner nearby – is to blame. Skylight owner George Papas also owns the narrow 20-by-100 foot site the Cheyenne currently occupies and he plans to build a nine-story apartment building on the property. Forgotten-NY’s......

Photo via Minicloud's Flickr. As mentioned late last year, Flux Factory (LIC's beloved art space) is being forced out of their home under eminent domain to make way for the MTA's $6.3 billion East Side Access project. They report on their (hopefully temporary) end online:Now it must all be destroyed. Our entire block will be razed by the pitiless bulldozers of the MTA. Everything Must Go. Alas, such is the fate of all terrestrial......

Today Starbucks all over are closing for 190 caffeine-free minutes. The blackout (hold the cream and sugar) is set for 5:30pm, so be prepared for a temporary Venti Soy Latte drought. Even more disturbing for Starbuckistas, however, is the sign above. The "Dear John" letter is from an 8th Street outlet (between 5th and University) and addressed to its loyal patrons. A closing Starbucks? Creepy, indeed. As for the 8th Street regulars, looks like......