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Hashtag Bar Shutters Again to Make Upgrades to Building and Change Name

By Nicholas Rizzi | August 26, 2016 3:20pm | Updated on August 29, 2016 8:36am
 Hashtag Bar closed down again this week, this time so new owners could make upgrades to the building and clear out old fines.
Hashtag Bar closed down again this week, this time so new owners could make upgrades to the building and clear out old fines.
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DNAinfo/Nicholas Rizzi

STAPLETON — A beleaguered music venue suddenly shuttered again Monday this time to fix long-standing violations to the building with a new set of owners promising to turn the place around.

Hashtag Bar, at 388 Van Duzer St. closed down after new owners — Jonathan Joseph and The Sign Guy owner Ryan Brehm — saw a backlog of violations from the city on the building and decided to make the upgrades all in one shot.

"We realized instead of accumulating more and more fines we’d just shut down the building," said Joseph, who also owns Fifth Borough Media. "We can't accumulate these fines that these guys were ignoring, as unfortunate as it may be it was best to close down the place."

Joseph said they hope to re-open in the fall and were waiting on permits from the city to get started with work.

Aside from clearing out old violations, the new owners also plan to make another set of renovations, like adding a second stage to the front, and eventually ditching the name Hashtag Bar.

"[The former owners] come in and they say they're going to do it but they're working on like limited funds and the place kind of looks the same," Joseph said. "We're keeping the spirit of the place still intact, we’re just tweaking it to be what it should've been."

The pair took over the space nearly three weeks ago and started to switch the spot to being a restaurant with "high end" bar food in the day and live entertainment at night, Joseph said.

The new owners inherited a building with several violations from the past, including a 2015 $1,500 fine for failure to get a new certificate of occupancy, according to Department of Buildings records.

Instead of just fixing the violations one by one while they stay open, the new owners decided to shut down the spot completely while they make repairs, the Staten Island Advance first reported.

Over the years, the venue has had several name changes, owners and shut downs since it first opened in 2001.

The spot was originally called The Muddy Cup and later just The Cup until it closed in 2010, the Advance reported.

Eventually, Robert Parker and comedian Sal Volcano bought the spot and renamed it The Full Cup, but after Volcano's TV show "Impractical Jokers" took off he gave the bar to Parker.

In 2014, the bar hit financial trouble and almost closed until new partners stepped in and worked on turning the front into a pizzeria.

The spot eventually changed names to Hashtag Bar and, when those partner backed out, closed down in September 2015 while they worked on more renovations with a new set of partners. 

It re-opened in January and trudged along until Joseph and Brehm took it over in the summer and retooled the menu.

Despite all the uncertainty in the past, Joseph — who said he worked on opening three other successful Staten Island bars but couldn't name them because of nondisclosure agreements — said the new owners will make the spot last.

"I'm hoping this one is something that's here to last," he said. "They're going to work really hard to make sure that they keep this place going."