Living with Legends

In
case you didn’t notice, Star Lounge is no more, its basement space gutted,
transformed into a dark, dusty,
rubble-strewn cavern.  As we celebrate the long-awaited demise of
this despised blight upon the Chelsea community, it’s time to look back upon the events leading up to the closure.  

With the club devolving into several nights of hiphop a
week, complete with the inevitable battles spilling out into the
street, on February 8, 2010 , Star Lounge owner Charles
Ferri appeared before the licensing subcommittee of Community Board 4 with a
request to renew his liquor license and transfer it to fellow club runner Noel
Ashman.  There, Ferri ran into the
proverbial buzz-saw of community opposition. 
The subcommittee recommended the license transferal, but with a number
of stipulations designed to make the club a better neighbor.  Ferri’s request was scheduled for a vote by
the full board, when Noel Ashman—perhaps unable to abide by the stipulations,
or fearing further community flak—apparently pulled out of the project.
Star
Lounge battles grew worse .  At this point Ferri, apparently fed up with
the whole club game, quickly tried to transfer his liquor license to a club
runner named Carlos Narcisse at a licensing subcommittee meeting  in April 2010 .  Fearing an attempt at an
end-run, the community activists turned out to make sure that the stipulations
agreed to at the earlier meeting were included in the new license.  
         
     Things got somewhat quieter at Star Lounge in the next month,
as Ferri—realizing he would have to placate
residents in order to sell his
club—hired a new security firm to police the club.  However, at the full meeting of Community Board 4 on May 5, 2010, the board recommended DENIAL OF
THE LIQUOR LICENSE.

So
that’s where things stand now: after a spectacular flame-out, Star
Lounge is now a black hole, devoid of music, liquor, crack, and related
debauchery.  Most likely, the Chelsea Hotel's new management will
try at some point to con another club runner into opening some kind of
liquor-serving establishment in the basement, but hopefully he will have enough
sense to take his business elsewhere. The music is over, Lounge Lizard King, turn out the lights.