Bubble Lounge

By 1998, two years after it opened on West Broadway, the Bubble Lounge was, in Wine Spectator's words, New York City's popular Champagne-based wine bar, and it was planning a San Francisco branch at 714 Montgomery Street^{1, 2}.

In April 2006 it threw itself a tenth anniversary party³. Around then the owner, Eric Benn, learned to his surprise that a Sufi mosque, Masjid al-Farah, stood exactly 192 feet from his front door, which put the bar's liquor license at risk under a 1934 law that keeps bars from opening within 200 feet of a house of worship or school³. In the end it wasn't the eight feet that did it.

In February 2015 Tribeca Citizen reported that the onetime Tribeca hotspot would be closing soon, and the landlord said the lease ran out in July¹. The space, downstairs level included, was offered at $35,000 a month¹. The Bubble Lounge closed at the end of March 2015; SFist reported that the trouble in New York was rent going up to almost double what it had been paying^{1, 4, 5}.

That August the for-rent signs came down and workers moved in⁶. In September 2016 Rag & Bone opened its ninth Manhattan store there, and its first standalone men's shop, at 228 West Broadway and 8 North Moore Street⁷. It was still there in 2022⁸.