During the hiatus we received a several emails about the bizarre developments at El Gavilan through July and August.
Mark writes:
Fresh scoop for you... About to enter El Gavilan restaurant on E5th and Church to take out food at about 8pm tonight. Police car pulls up. Officers go to kitchen door and front entrance. Three or four more officers crossing Church and enter restaurant, and then even more follow. I tell the cop waiting outside that I was about to go in and order dinner. He says to me "Not tonight." They finally were going in to shut them down after numerous complaints regarding music. He said they play loud music at four and five in the morning and they certainly don't have a cabaret license either.
Wow, I'm sorry for everyone who is affected by this, but that sounds
awesome, Mark. Did you ask if you could mess with their taser?
Jessica writes:
It would be worth writing a post about El Gavilan. At one time it was a nice neighborhood restaurant. In the past couple of months, it has become a problematic nightclub complete with a knife fight out front, alleged prostitution vans coming and going all night, defecation on a local's front lawn and general loud, unruly behavior which winds down around 6am. Needless to say, it has the east 5th street block all worked up. It is currently closed due to 'unlicensed bouncers' until 9/11 when the owners will have their next court date.
The first two times I read this email I sort of glossed over "defecation on a local's front lawn", but this time it's sticking out a bit. Did some poor homeowner watch this actually taking place? Truly terrible.
Multiple news sources confirm that they are closed for at least 30 days and are under probe from the NYPD and Liquor board. According to the signage on the restaurant itself, a judge heard the case on August 28th, but we haven't heard anything further.
