Yesterday at around 3pm a friend and I wandered over to Gobo, one of the great restaurant in the West Village, only to be informed by an employee that an hour earlier it had been shuttered for good.
Gobo wasn’t merely a restaurant. It was a Zen-like island of peace and calm, a beautifully crafted space where people came not only to eat great food, but to find a refuge from the intensity of life in Manhattan.
You could often spot famous people there, ducking out of their too-scrutinized lives to catch a moment of quiet, an hour or so of conversation unsullied by the fast paced world outside. A few years ago I saw Bob Balaban and Anne Hathaway, presumably working out the logistics of the forthcoming Academy Awards. If anyone else knew who they were, nobody let one.
And then, yesterday, it all came to an end.
Like all New Yorkers, I ponder the irony. It is, quite precisely, the presence of amazing places like this that makes New York a fantastic place to live. But those very qualities contribute to rising rents, which eventually force such lovely and inspiring places out of business.
I wonder what will take its place. If past experience is any judge, it will be some generic chain store that is more impervious to rental hikes. Or maybe a major national bank looking for an easy way to park its money.
It doesn’t really matter, does it? Those of us who live here will mourn the loss of one of the magical ingredients that made our neighborhood wonderful.
Yet we have learned, through the years, to live with these little tragedies. It’s not as though we have a choice.