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Drag Dining Staple Lips Shutters in the Village, Moves to Midtown

By DNAinfo Staff on June 27, 2010 10:28am

By Nicole Breskin

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

WEST VILLAGE — Drag queen dining staple Lips, which has dished up food with a drag show in the West Village for 15 years, has closed, according to store management.

The signature bubble gum pink painted walls with sparkly red lips were still intact this week at Lips storefront at 2 Bank St., but tables were turned upside down and larger-than-life wigs on mannequins dolled up with sequined bras were pouring out of trash bins inside, after the eatery closed earlier this month.

“We are going to miss the Village,” said Lips manager Joanne Lopez. “But it made sense to leave.”

Lopez said Lips’ lease was up this month and management opted to relocate the drag spectacle — which hosts “Bitchy Bingo” and “Drag Karaoke” — to Midtown due to high rent in the Village.

Although the Village location was ideal, the new digs proved cheaper and bigger, according to Lopez.

Along with Lips, the Italian eatery Artepasta at 81 Greenwich Ave., which shares the same owner, also closed, leaving a huge gap on the block wrapping around from Bank Street and down the block on Greenwich Avenue between Seventh and Eighth avenues.

Local realtor Brad Schwarz, of Sierra Realty, said he put the Lips and Artepasta spaces on the market under one lease for $39,500 per month.

“I am pretty confident we’ll find a new tenant with a few months,” said Schwarz, who said he has already received several proposals. “We just need someone to come in and spend some money to update the space and I think it will be a focal point on that street.”

He imagines development will likely lead to a new restaurant, or two at the storefronts.

Down the block, Café de Bruxelles a 30-year-old Village establishment shuttered in January and will become a new French restaurant. Quirky diner Day-O at 103 Greenwich Ave. has been vacated for years, but is now leased and will likely be a new restaurant, according to its realtor, Ripco.

Village old-timer Arthur Farrier, 69, who was the original owner of Left Bank Books, which was booted from its location at 304 W. 4th St. off Bank Street, said it was ironic that the bookstores, the drag queen haunts and the quintessentially West Village establishments that contributed to the eccentric vibe of the neighborhood that attracted developers ultimately led to the demise of those small businesses.

“Rents are just doubling, tripling and going up and up in this neighborhood,” he said, recalling that there used to be two independent bookstores on Greenwich Avenue when he moved his bookstore into the neighborhood in 1992. “You blink twice and something changes here.”

But Lopez hopes change will be for the better for Lips, with the bigger space allowing room for a stage for more performances which took place at the old spot in between dining tables.

“Hopefully we can increase our capacity and have some great shows,” she said.

Lips is currently open for business at 227 E. 56th St.