[Above left, Tonic, back in the day. Above right, Tonic, 10:45am this morning]
Friday the 13th—appropriately, the last night of operation for Lower East Side club Tonic at its 107 Norfolk Street location. Once a barren wasteland, the area has famously gone condo-crazy, as seen in the photo below from this morning (that's Tonic in a BLUE-Switch Building sandwich—tasty). The great John Zorn will usher the joint into retirement this evening. A moment of silence, please.
· Farewell Letter [tonicnyc.com]
· Tonic Closes, NYC Nightlife Dies For the 15,000th Time [Village Voice]
· Dying of the LES: Tonic, Sin-e Shuttering [Curbed]
UPDATE: Tonic fans will not go quietly into the night. Brooklyn Vegan reports that musicians and friends are urged to gather at Tonic at 11am tomorrow in protest: "DON'T LET REALTORS DECIDE NEW YORK CITY’S CULTURAL FATE!" [Brooklyn Vegan]
UPDATE II: Singer Miho Hatori from the Tonic stage last night: "Everywhere we go, it's gonna be, like, buildings." [The Real Estate]
BLUE BONUS: Tonic or not, BLUE continues apace. A tipster emails, "Here's another unimpressive Blue rental. Seems that the pixelated glass makes the views from the inside kind of chintzy. And the kitchen and bath look ho-hum boring." Charmingly, Sotheby's refers to the building as "The Blue." [Sotheby's]