Restaurant Florent To Close on June 29th

Hey Family,

I just heard that Restaruant Florent, located in the meat packing district is scheduled to close on June 29th.

The quirky French bistro – housed in an old diner that was a speakeasy in the ‘20s and a favorite greasy spoon for longshoremen and meatpackers in the ‘50s – has become even more cherished in recent years as a corrective to the fratastic Bridge and Tunnel scene dominating the neighborhood. The closure is caused by the increasingly repetitive groove in New York’s broken record: obscene real estate prices. Once Morellet vacates, the lease will jump from $6,000 to $50,000 per month; odds are the new tenant won’t be operating an idiosyncratic bistro.

I have one distinct memory of Restaurant Florent....this had to be around 1981 -1982, me and a bunch of my friends were hanging out after a late night of partying and decided to have some coffee and some snacks at Florent. In case you've never been to Florent, at that time it most definitely had a "diner" sort of feel to it? It was the middle of summer and me and my friends were "Village Regulars" at the time. There are several memories of this day that stand out in my mind...one of them being the fact that we were the only black folks in the place AND the coffee was an interesting blend of many ingredients....one of which included chicory....which made the coffee smell like.....er....lol... um....Crack?? AND they had those long hanging plastic strips (like they put in supermarket meat freezers to keep the cold in)....hanging across the entranceway.

We Ki-Ki-ed off of thess facts for a while and if memory serves me correctly....we had some munchies and coffee and then decided to head uptown home....It was what happened next that I will NEVER forget...as it's one of my all time favorites...lol...as memories go... me, and my childhood buddies Tommy Brock, Karen "Aja" Newman and a few others and were preparing to leave Florent when the DJ (Yes! They had a DJ back then!) decided to put on "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugar Hill Gang....this was still when folks LEAPED out of their seats when they heard this cut....

Well we had nearly reached the door and the song came on and we just began dancing where we stood (back then the song was Oh So Infectious) and I kid you not...maybe 1 or 2 minutes into dancing....folks jumped up out of their seats and began dancing along with us....you know they had to be white folks because....lol....

They jumped on the counters and started dancing like we were filming the movie "FAME".....I swear!!! And NOBODY asked them to stop or get down....they just let us get our "groove" on.

It was absolutely joyous....for that very brief moment of time (lol...the length of the song) there was no black or white...only people having the time of their lives....

I remember wishing while I was dancing that I had a camera to record it for posterity....

But alas....the memories in my head will have to do. I will miss Florent.

"Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose."