City Winery Pier 57 move on tap
BY LINCOLN ANDERSON
City Winery, the Hudson Square music hot
spot, will be closing on Varick St. on Aug.
1.
But it won’t be “the day the music died”: The
tunes-and-vino venue will be reopening in January
in a stunning new setting at Pier 57, at W. 15th St.,
in Hudson River Park.
Owner Michael Dorf currently has a lot brewing
— or, rather, fermenting. He opened another
City Winery in Rockefeller Center last month, has
one opening in Philadelphia next month, and is very
excited about soon uncorking yet another location
— City Winery Hudson Valley, located on 22 acres
near Newburgh, N.Y.
“It will be the perfect wedding and event space,
only 90 minutes from New York,” he said.
But he said it’s not going to be a Woodstock concert
like venue.
“I don’t think it will snowball into a Woodstock,”
he said. “People wouldn’t want that. It’ll never be
Bethel Woods.”
City Winery has eight locations around the country,
including a smallish spot, City Vinery, at Pier
26, in the Tribeca section of Hudson River Park.
As for the Pier 57 space, it will have about the
same number of seats — 300 — as Varick St.
As has been his practice, the musical acts will
continue to get the majority of the ticket revenue.
City Winery’s business model, in turn, is to make
money on the sale of wine and food. In one of the
business’s hallmarks, the wine is made on site. To
be a true “bonded winery,” each location must produce
more than the federal minimum of 600 gallons
of wine per year.
The grapes mainly come from California. Dorf
said New York’s grapes unfortunately can’t compete
with those grown in sunny California, and fl ying
them in from places like Australia is costly.
Although the musical acts will continue to get
most of the ticket revenue, Dorf will have to pay
to the Hudson River Park Trust what he called the
“crazy rent” at Pier 57.
He said he didn’t want the actual fi gure printed
in the paper.
He was told he had to vacate the Varick St. space
after Trinity Real Estate sold the entire block to
Disney, which will develop a new headquarters
building there. However, Trinity Church — whose
extensive property holdings were deeded to it by the
English crown in colonial times — had previously
encouraged him to invest in improvements in the
Varick location, as he tells it. Dorf was working on
adding a second-fl oor space, when Trinity abruptly
closed the Disney deal, and Disney promptly sent
him an eviction letter, leaving Dorf feeling burned.
He is currently suing Trinity to recover the money
he poured into upgrading the space.
“All we are trying to do is recover the investment
we made fl ying on their promise,” Dorf said of Trinity.
“We just want them to be a mensch and deal
with this morally and ethically. Is that too much to
ask of a church?”
Dorf, originally from Milwaukee, said he “felt
a connection to New York” ever since he was 16.
It’s been a barrel of laughs, good times and great music at City Winery on Varick St., but
Michael Dorf is pulling up stakes to head to Pier 57 in the Chelsea section of Hudson River
Park.
After launching a record label back home — Mr.
Bloodstein’s Knitting Factory — he opened the
Knitting Factory, his fi rst New York music venue,
in 1987, after moving to the city when he was 23.
After a few years on E. Houston St., he reopened
the place in Tribeca, on Leonard St.
At the Knitting Factory, he focused on avantgarde
multi-genre music.
“Sonic Youth played a lot,” he said, of “The Knit.”
“Early They Might Be Giants. It was where Beck
had his fi rst show in New York. Ornette Coleman,
Geri Allen, Cassandra Wilson, John Lurie and the
Lounge Lizards. We had Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson.”
Dorf was such a purist, he even turned down
Phish when they gave him a demo tape, telling them
they sounded “derivative of the Grateful Dead.
We’re going for more avant-garde music,” he told
the now-famed jam band.
“I had this bizarre integrity of wanting to have
avant-garde music,” he said. “I was one of the biggest
schmucks in all of music. That month, I also
turned down Harry Connick, Jr. I said it sounded
too much like straight-ahead jazz. But that’s where
my head was at. If I had my 57-year-old brain in my
23-year-old body at the time, I would have given
them the gig.”
Following the closing of the Knitting Factory,
COURTESY MICHAEL DORF
Dorf gave it some serious thought and came up
with a whole new direction and business model.
“Eleven years ago, I set up City Winery,” he said.
“I thought, ‘What’s going to draw a roomful of people
similar to me and fi ll a room with people that
want to see music?’ The singer-songwriter model
really fi lls that role very nicely.”
The food and beverages were an important part
of the mix. City Winery features fare like fl atbreads,
burgers, risotto balls and duck tacos, plus its homebrewed
wine, which Dorf refers to as the world’s
oldest true “craft beverage,” predating beer.
The types of acts that have defi ned City Winery
at Varick St. have been the likes of Steve Earle, Suzanne
Vega, Joan Osborne, Joan Armatrading, Los
Lobos, Squeeze.
“The Crosby, Stills and Nash guys, we’ve had
them all separately,” Dorf said. “They’re going to
tour and play until the day they die. They love it so
much, and they love their audience. And we’re the
perfect venue for them.”
Part of the formula is seating, with drinking and
eating, rather than standing.
“The audience that loves David Crosby is also
60 or 70 years old,” he noted. “They don’t want to
stand.”
Dorf was happy to hear that Steve Earle will be
DORF continued on p. 19
18 August 1, 2019 TVG Schneps Media