Lit. (Photo: Daniel Maurer)
Yesterday, while sharing our oral history of Lit Lounge, we reported that Allan Mannarelli, owner of The Cock, was taking over the space. Today he confirms to us that he plans to move his Second Avenue dive a few blocks up into Lit’s currently shuttered home, and hopes to have bands like Scissor Sisters and Peaches play at the new incarnation of the “rock ‘n roll fag bar.” The potential move isn’t sitting well with the East Fifth Street Block Association, aka the “plywood patrol.” Ahead of a Community Board 3 meeting on Monday, the association is circulating a flyer demanding that neighbors “BLOCK THE COCK” and tell the “notorious” Mannarelli to “KEEP HIS COCK WHERE IT IS!!!!!”
Mannarelli told Bedford + Bowery that he was amused by the “tempest in a teapot.” When he saw the flyer on EV Grieve, he emailed us to say, “This falls in the category of no good deed goes unpunished. My 20-year-old, a rising junior at Northwestern University whose bedroom was above the Cock from 4th to 12th grade, is having a chuckle at the Notorious moniker.”
Mannarelli moved to New York in 1982 and graduated from NYU Stern with an MBA in 1984. At the age of 30, he and a business partner owned seven buildings and were described by the Times as “slum busters” who bought problematic buildings in Harlem and fixed them up without evicting the tenants. He got slightly less positive press as a managing member of Superdive, described by the block association as a “frat-house style” joint with “all-u-can-drink specials and midgets.” Neighbors complained about the bookstore-turned-bar to 311 and the community board, and it eventually closed.
Mannarelli is also an owner of Albion, a craft beer bar in Kips Bay, and was an owner of Drop Off Service until 2012. Late last year, he tried to relocate The Cock, which he has operated since 1998, to the home of Idle Hands on Avenue B. He informed the community board that the bar would offer drag shows, “art performances,” and meat pies from Tuck Shop. But the application was withdrawn during a community board meeting, according to EV Grieve.
Still, Mannarelli is determined to secure a new home for the bar. “We have a certain time left on our lease [at 29 Second Avenue] and we get more time here,” he told us of the Lit space. “We plan on staying in the neighborhood, since we’re a part of it.”
Mannarelli agreed to answer a few questions about his endeavor so long as we posted his responses in their entirety, so we shot him a few queries over email.
Lit. (Photo: Daniel Maurer)
Will the bar be named the Cock? Same concept? Anything different?
Yes it will be The Cock and we will hopefully add Drags Shows and some live music as that is what has been at LIT since 2002. Since we are a rock ‘n roll fag bar hopefully we can have The Scissor Sisters, Peaches, and Hercules and Love Affair open for us or play there or use it for their band practices and pre touring and album release laboratory.
It’s being characterized as a club — is that what you’re planning?
I don’t know what the word Club means but to us it is a bar.
How do you respond to the idea that the area is too residential and it’s going to become another Superdive?
Ridiculous on it’s face. LIT is currently a bar and has been for 13 years and that hasn’t proven to be a problem when it has been managed properly. And the whole SUPERDIVE issue is so overblown. A lot of wailing about about not that much but small minds see big problems where none exist. The intellectually fallacious will always resort to hyperbole and ad hominem attacks to mask their true nature.
How does it feel to be “notorious”? Can you talk about your track record at previous establishments? Has East Village nimbyism gone too far? made it difficult to run a small business? Would love to hear your thoughts about the opposition you faced with previous locations.
My 3 children who have and are being raised in the East Village would take issue with that word notorious. Like the Notorious B.I.G ? haha I was changing a diaper when I first heard about this effort by the 5th St Block Association. Rather than deal with me directly and like an adult they chose the route they did, the tactic of the personal attack. A good lesson to teach my children about acting forthright and mature. I don’t take it personally and realize everyone has their own agenda and valid reasons for those agendas. We will prevail eventually when the naysayers realize we are good neighbors to have.
As for SUPERDIVE it is funny how it goes unmentioned that across the street I owned Drop Off Service at the same time and had no issues whatsoever during the entire time I owned it from 2005-2012. I have been operating both my current establishments without incident since my involvement in each began so this is much ado about nothing, a tempest in a teapot as it were.
Bar owners are easy targets and people seize on minutiae in other people’s lives to attack. So much for forgiveness and redemption. Thank goodness they don’t burn witches at the stake anymore or the blog mobs would have reduced the population of the East Village to zero. I consider myself an interloper and I moved here in 1982, so I’m not sure who has the props or chops to decide what should actually happen here. As for nimbyism, it is clear here but only on a more micro block scale. So much for the liberal open minded denizens of the greatest city on earth, the city that never sleeps (though apparently for all the wrong reasons , one of which is due to noise from loud unruly bars and their patrons and another unfortunately being people lying awake at nite thinking of how to disparage others.)
Are you working with any partners?
The Cock is an ideal, a true collective effort involving the entire community. Everyone involved in The Cock is a partner in fun, otherwise it never would have lasted this long.
Previously: ‘It Was Our Fantasy’: The Story of Lit Lounge, Told By Its Regulars