Historic Stonewall Inn Is at Risk of Closing Due to COVID-19, Owners Say

The Stonewall Inn “faces an uncertain future,” owners say

New York City’s historic Stonewall Inn — the site of the 1969 Stonewall riots and the birthplace of the modern LGBTQIA+ civil rights movement — is at risk of closing, its owners say.

The historic Greenwich Village bar, located at 53 Christopher Street, between Seventh Avenue South and Waverly Place, has been temporarily closed for the last three months due to the novel coronavirus shutdown and now “faces an uncertain” future, according to co-owners Kurt Kelly and Stacy Lentz, who have started a GoFundMe campaign for the bar. A second GoFundMe campaign has been started by the bar’s owners to support their staff.

The bar, which President Barack Obama named as the nation’s first national monument dedicated to the LGBTQIA+ rights movement, has been resurrected under different names over the last 50 years, with a spate of closures in-between. Kelly and Lentz bought it in 2006. “We resurrected the Stonewall Inn once after it had been shuttered, and we stand ready to do it again,” they say.

So far, the bar’s GoFundMe campaign has raised close to $90,000 of its $100,000 goal.

In other news

— Manhattan-based Japanese restaurant Tonchin is headed across the East River today for a Brooklyn pop-up, according to a spokesperson with the restaurant. The pop-up, which serves the restaurant’s tonkotsu and brothless mazeman ramens, will be open from Thursday to Sunday, at 191 Knickerbocker, at Jefferson Street, in Bushwick.

— One-stop candy shop Economy Candy will be operating a push cart outside of its store every Saturday and Sunday this summer, weather permitting, according to the store’s third-generation co-owner, Skye Cohen. In addition to takeout orders, the push cart will be selling mystery sweet, sour, and chocolate candy bags for $10 each.

— Mimi Cheng’s is headed to the Upper West Side. The local Taiwanese dumpling chain has signed a lease at 309 Amsterdam Avenue, between 74th and 75th Streets.

— Chris Crowley at Grub Street asks whether it’s time to retire the printed restaurant menu.

— An ode to the now-shuttered McDonald’s flagship store: