No More Moondancing

Just heard about this one this morning from my friend Rob. The Moondance Diner is evidently the latest victim of the glass condo sprawl. A fine little eatery tucked at the bottom end of 6th Avenue, just above Canal Street, the Moondance Diner was already an endangered species. That it's being tweezed like a blackhead from its long-time roost shouldn't surprise anyone at this stage. Clearly, nothing is sacred and there's no room for sentimentality in the ruthless realm of real estate. Oh, and contrary to popular belief, the Moondance Diner is not the diner featured in Martin Scorsese's "After Hours" (which, as I've labouriously mentioned elsewhere on this weblog, remains my favorite film of all time). While the Moondance would've made perfect sense (it being situated, like the film, right in Soho), Scorsese actually used the River Diner across from the Javitz Center up in Hell's Kitchen for that location. Go figure. Here's a shot of my daughter, Charlotte, from the tail end of last summer, after a robustly satisfying-if-artery-clogging meal at the Moondance.