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The Grey Dog Closing Its Flagship West Village Shop

Ben Yakas

Published Oct 15, 2011

Modified Oct 15, 2011

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Ben Yakas

Published Oct 15, 2011

Modified Oct 15, 2011

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The Grey Dog coffeeshop has been a neighborhood fixture in its Carmine Street location since it first opened in 1996. But because of a landlord dispute, the flagship West Village shop will be forced to close tomorrow. "The journey that began in 1996 has taken us down a road that no one could have ever envisioned or predicted. I believe that our lives started the day that Grey Dog opened. We grew up in this space," the store's owners, brothers David Ethan and Peter Adrian, wrote on their website.

The brothers are closing the shop not because of a lack of popularity, but rather because they have been locked in a rent dispute with their landlord for the last seven years. The landlord, Janusz Sendowski of Sarsen Realty, “claimed he had made an oversight on our lease and informed us he was intending to collect property taxes retroactive to the beginning of the term. This fee was not included in the lease and amounted to over $100,000,” the brothers wrote on the website.

A new Grey Dog is opening up on Mulberry Street near Chinatown on Friday October 21st. They add that you can come "pay your respects" for the Carmine Street store on Wednesday October 19th at 6 p.m. Regulars told Our Town Downtown that it won't be the same: “There really isn’t any other place like it in the neighborhood,” said community member Dar Wallace. “While I do like to think that I will walk to the new location, that’s probably not going to happen very often.”

We spoke to co-owner David Ethan a few years ago, and he told us what he thought made Grey Dog standout among Manhattan's many cafes and coffeeshops as "one of the few truly bohemian places left in New York City:"

I describe it as a less complicated American café. We have a manual dumbwaiter to bring up the food. We don’t use computers. In order to get the food into the kitchen we have a hole in the floor that we lower it into. We call out people’s names. when their food is ready. We’re not high tech. The food’s real simple but it tastes like mom just baked your bread; you’ve got the smell of bacon and coffee. It’s a simple, small town Americana.

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coffeeshop

manhattan

the grey dog

west village

Ben Yakas

Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.

Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

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