IHOP, tracked into the city from some long stretch of Midwestern highway like burs on a mangy, MSG-scented cur, appears to be closing its West Village location. Didn't it just open a year ago? Yes.
According to a Wall Street Journal article penned in 2012, IHOP signed a 49-year lease at $300,000 a year for the first two years, then $360,000 with an annual 3 percent increase. The "restaurant" is still open, but the "For Lease" sign on the window suggests it won't live to see its first rent increase. Reached by phone, an employee told us, "We're open as of right now, but we don't discuss our personal business with anyone."
It's too early to start dreaming of what will take over the 10,000-square-foot space, which formerly served the very important function of Long Abandoned Grocery Store, but all signs point to Combination Chase Bank/Taco Bell. With two cavernous levels, the building is perfectly suited to continue its legacy of serving extensively processed meats, at the same time ensuring that rows and rows of identical "Jessica The Measured Teller" cyborgs and their AccuSkin hands systematically deny loans to needy families. On the bright side: Free Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Taco (1) when you open an account!
The East Village IHOP is still truckin' along, to the certain delight of residents deafened by the restaurant's smell-sucking ventilator. Oddly, little has been written since a noise committee formed to combat the machines 24-hour eructations. Did IHOP brass quietly gather them all into a truck and deposit them in rural Ohio? Where, ironically, they will eat nothing but IHOP for the rest of their lives?
