Monday, July 20, 2009

Stop the SuperNoise - Please Help

A new bar, SuperDive that has recently opened on Avenue A between 12th & 13th Street and has caused quite a stir in the blogosphere. I went in there a couple weeks ago and experienced a hot, sweaty, stinky bar of the kind regular people avoid. Young girls in extremely short skirts and their beefy boyfriends, however, seem to like drinking from kegs at their table, and also while hanging upside down, which is what I witnessed.

The main problem is how drunk the people who go there are when they depart. They stand outside and scream at each other as though they are all hard of hearing even though they are way too young for such problems, or the upside down drinking is stuck in their ears. I can hear this drama, most loudly on Friday and Saturday nights, from way around the block. Seriously. They aren't even on my block and I can hear them around the corner and up 76 steps.

There are already several bars within one block and SuperDive adds to the incredible noise and street drunkeness that already is out of control. It is located directly next door to Habibi, and close by there is Destination, Drop off Service (sigh I miss the laundry that was there), Common Ground, Planet Rose and some others on E13th Street but I don't know the names.

The legal/technical problem with SuperDive is that they never applied for their liquor license in the same way that everybody else is required - by going before the Community Board and describing their intentions. New applicants are required to get signatures from people who live in the immediate area where the bar will be located, to prove that they are a welcome addition to the block.

Instead, the owner closed down the former place, a book shop that had a liquor license, and who were quiet and upstanding members of the community, and reopened a few months later as SuperDive, using the same liquor license that the book shop had, becoming the frat party go to joint in the East Village.

I wrote to our Community Board and asked, "what's up with that?" The answer was that I am not the first to complain, and they are in the process of putting together a report for the State Liquor Authority.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?
You can write a letter detailing your concern for their not having properly applied for their liquor license through the Community Board and not giving the neighbors a chance to comment on their application. Also include your experience with the noise and any other concerns you may have about this establishment, and mail it to:
Woody Pascal
Chief Executive Officer
State Liquor Authority
80 South Swan Street, Suite 900
Albany, NY 12210
  • Cc: Susan Stetzer, Community Board 3 District Manager
  • Rosie Mendez, City Council Member, District 2
  • Scott Stringer, Manhattan Borough President
  • Daniel Squadron, State Senator
  • Brian Kavanaugh, State Assembly Member


Related Reading:
Eater's Live Blog from SuperDive
UrbanDaddy
Gastrochic
Yelp reviews
EV Grieve


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU FOR DOING SOMETHING ABOUT THIS.

Anonymous said...

Calling 311 is also important because the Community Board and the SLA use that as a record of how often and how many people complain.

Anonymous said...

So much for Rapture being so into the community. The guy who ran the place couldn't make any money because the place was so poorly-run so he turns around and opens SuperDive on the sly. Nice way to re-pay the neighborhood people who did patronize Rapture.

Anonymous said...

I dont think it's the rapture guy who opened SD. I think it's the jersey guy from common ground.
I would be shocked to see the Rapture guy/s own something as horrible as SD.

Jill said...

The name on the SuperDive liquor license is Joseph Birdsong. Here it is: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p2jgVV2iZVs/SkGFJFDvxvI/AAAAAAAAQDc/9YIfVthNSIU/s1600-h/rapture1.jpg