Breaking: Workers Dismantle Intimate, Obstinate Second Avenue Deli, Where You Know Everyone You Meet

This image was lost some time after publication.

When news broke in the Times last week that the Second Avenue Deli was shuttered, at least temporarily and perhaps more permanently, in a rent dispute, it seemed partially tragic but also partially perhaps just a particularly intense game of real-estate chicken between the hondlers who own the deli and the hondlers who own the building. The latter option seemed increasingly likely when the second-day story revealed that the rent increase sought by the building's new owners was in fact built into the existing lease, negotiated 15 years ago.

But apparently it's not just a dance — or, if it is, it's a particularly disastrous one. An East Villager reports:

In case anyone thought (as I sort of did) that the temporary closing of the Second Avenue Deli was the owner's hard-line negotiating tactic with his landlord, and that the East Village landmark would find a way to reopen, well... WRONG. I just walked past the place, which is just a few blocks from my office, and workers are on ladders taking down the giant illuminated sign (unscrewing it from the exterior wall letter by letter, and laying each piece on the sidewalk in front, a.k.a. the Yiddish Walk of Fame), while other workers in green sweatshirts emblazoned with the name of a used kitchen supply company are loading chairs and coat racks into the back of a truck. I have to say, it's sort of traumatic seeing that iconic sign being taken down... I can suddenly (sadly) imagine the place as, like, a Marc Jacobs boutique... or a new Chase branch.

Clearly we need pictures. Get to it, kids.