Speak-easies are back in New York.
And not the tourist traps that have been filling perfectly good storage space in the backs of bodegas, pizzerias and pet stores across Williamsburg for a decade — but actual illicit drinking dens.
Page Six is told that a famous Upper East Side bar and lounge as well as a trendy downtown hotel have been opening up in spite of the coronavirus lockdown — but strictly for discreet friends of the owners and managers.
Meanwhile, the New York Post revealed this week that the Lower East Side’s Omar’s La Boîte hosted a small invite-only party in early May. “I know at least five people who were at [the hotel bar] on Monday night,” said a source. “I called one of them and said, ‘I heard you were at [said hotel bar] last night, and she sounded shocked. She said, ‘How did you know!’”
The source said that the spot has opened for several such surreptitious shindigs. After The Post published a picture of La Boîte that appeared to show a gathering of “over a dozen revelers with no masks in sight,” the club’s manager denied that there had been any parties there.
Then the owner, Omar Hernandez, said in a statement, “We are looking into this distressing report. I’m sheltering outside the city, certainly wasn’t there, and I had no knowledge of any social gathering on-site.”
The original speak-easies, of course, popped up in the Prohibition era, when bars were banned from selling booze.
0 comments