Lit Lounge is closing up shop on 2nd Avenue in the East Village and moving to more hospitable digs in Bushwick “sometime in the next two months,” owner Erik Foss told nightlife writer Steve Lewis. A “for rent” banner went up over the bar last month, and Foss confirmed that it’s due to “the new East Village crowd and the flight of the creative types to creative Brooklyn. It was inevitable. NYC is an ever changing animal. I am just glad that I got to be here before downtown changed into what it is now.” The owners of Lit opened a cafe called the Currant Cafe in the McKibbin Lofts last year, and the new Lit will be in the basement beneath the cafe.
The bar, which opened in 2001, is a filthy dive known for its gnarly basement and for being a great place to meet a one-night-stand. It was one of the capitals of cool NYC nightlife in the early ’00s (the Strokes were regulars), right as the East Village was turning into the bro partyville it is now. Its move to the McKibbin Lofts is spiritually fitting, as that is another scuzzy early-00s bacchanalian paradise that’s managed to keep the party going for a very long time. It joins other priced-out dives like Trash Bar in Williamsburg by moving to an increasingly dive-saturated Bushwick.
(Photo: Linda Flores)
