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The Post On Joe's Closing: 'Sad Slice Of Life'

Posted by Adam Kuban, October 23, 2004 at 8:34 AM

Not much time this morning to write much of an entry here, but here's the New York Post on the Joe's closing:

When your rent hits the sky, like a kick to the eye — that's finito.

Joe's Pizza, a world-renowned Bleecker Street fixture on the corner of Carmine Street, is closing after 29 years because of an enormous rent hike, the owner told The Post.

"It makes me sad," said Joe Pozzuoli. The landlord is "asking too much. I offered him $11,000. He said no, he said he's renting it for $15,000 plus tax."

That's quite a jump from the $900 Pozzuoli said he's been paying for decades for the 240-square-foot space.

The popular Greenwich Village pizzeria, which has been immortalized on big and small screens, most recently in the opening scene of "Spider-Man II," will stay in business sporadically throughout the rest of the month. It most likely will close after Halloween.

Fans of the famous $2.25 thin-crust slices will still get their fill three doors down at the other Joe's locale on Carmine Street, but pizza purists say they'll miss the original spot's atmosphere.

"It's not the same. I mean, the pizza is the same, but the place is different. [The original's] got that rundown charm." said Adam Kubar [sic], who runs a pizza-oriented weblog, sliceny.com.

"It's like an institution!" exclaimed a saddened neighbor, Liberty Boucher, 26.

"Everybody knows about Joe's . . . It's like the best pizza."

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Tags: Closings, Joe's, Manhattan, NYC, Press, The Village