The Sheriff of the Upper West Side has been awful busy lately taking care of the neighborhood’s outlaws — businesses that don’t pay their rent or taxes.
Okay, so there isn’t really a “Sheriff” of the Upper West Side, but the city marshal does seem to be coming to the neighborhood quite a bit lately to slap “Seized” signs on the doors of businesses that can’t keep up with their bills. In the past few weeks, Sushi A-Go-Go at 1900 Broadway between 63rd and 64th Streets, and Brian Deli & Food Plaza on the corner of 67th Street and Amsterdam Avenue have both been shuttered by the marshal.
Upper West Sider Whitney Hess sent in the above photo of Sushi a Go-Go, which was closed on Sept. 15 for failure to pay taxes. Mike at My Upper West also got a shot of the restaurant after it was closed. Sushi A Go-Go is actually right next to Josephina, another Lincoln Center pre-theater hotspot that closed suddenly in August. That stretch is slowly turning into a ghost town. (I have a theory about this, but that’s for another article.)
A week or so ago I also came across a marshal’s sign on the door at Brian’s Deli and Food Plaza on 67th Street noting that the landlord now has legal possession of the premises. What’s more, it looks like nobody even bothered to clean out the store: as you can see in the photo below there were tons of perishable items just sitting there more than a week after the store was closed. What a waste!
It would be helpful to know why it closed. Was the rent too high? If it were, what was the the rent? Better describe the business. What kind of restaurant was it? Who owned it? Was it a fly-by-night business? How long had it been open? etc.
Merely to say it closed doesn’t tell the reader much.