New York Times restaurant critic Francis Bruni one-stars Gemma in the Bowery Hotel today. (We said it was like TGIFridays mixed with the set of "8 1/2" with a nod to the boudoir scene in "When Doves Cry.") Salient Bruni-isms include, "Gemma loves candles the way Liberace did," and that it's "a cheat sheet of a restaurant whose proprietors take fewer risks than a hurricane-insurance agent in Nebraska." Well, according to FEMA—which has declared 35 disasters mostly having to do with severe storms in Nebraska in the past 48 years—Gemma should be pretty dang experimental. But we see his point.

Gemma In The Bowery Hotel: The Less-Literary Waverly Inn

Gemma, the new Italian restaurant in the Bowery Hotel, is nothing if not spectacular. As baroque as the hotel lobby, every inch of the space is crammed with vintage candelabras, portraits of stern Italians or faggots. Copper pots dangle from hooks and wine bottles line a shelf that encloses the whole restaurant, like an alcoholic eruv. The atmosphere is something like TGIFridays mixed with the set of 8 1/2 with a nod to the boudoir scene in When Doves Cry. When we walked in last night, around 9:30 pm, the massive space was fairly full. The couple next to us was on a gay date but that didn't hinder one of the gentlemen from asking the (cute) waitress: Do I know you? Are you from LA? Are you a model? I'm in the business. More »

Bowery Hotel Suddenly Sexless, Whoreless

One of the nicer things about the Bowery Hotel, up until recently, was that after a night drinking Pimm's Cups and being too much of a schlub to approach the women whose long languorous limbs are so thoroughly draped over every armchair, you could stumble to Bowery Video, a video store-cum-brothel, right next door. Now it has been closed for "prostitution." (We're going with "downlow gay sex" ourselves.) And now, the Bowery days of wine and hos are really over. More »

Bowery Hotel Finds Bowery Slicingly Real

A week or so ago, Times scribbler Denny Lee checked into the Bowery Hotel and noted its charming opulence while giving the Bowery bums that still linger a good old-fashioned elegiac waxing. But what if these sleeping indigent transient Nemos wake up? When a knife scuffle broke out on the street outside recently, "One of the hotel's red-coated doormen rushed out, hustled the bystanders inside, then held the door closed." According to New York mag, owner Sean MacPhearson "seemed to find it good for the hotel's brand" and said "We are trying to offer an Old New York experience." What, was the guy part of the Dead Rabbits? We happened to be at the Bowery Hotel over the weekend and are pretty sure the bum was pissed the bartender had no idea how to make a decent Pimm's Cup. We sure were. Stabbingly pissed. —josh More »

The Bowery Hotel: Bums are Such A Bummer

The Bowery Hotel is, gasp, on the Bowery. Down there, apparently, the close proximity of poverty and luxury raises some hairy questions. One of the questions it probably doesn't raise is the one Denny Lee chooses to ask in the Times: "So what if you might have to step over a few vestigial bums to get there?" Yeah, so what? Also enjoyable is Lee's characterization of Midtown as a "glassy city on a hill" while the East Village resembles "a dim valley of grimy walkups." On the bright side, better the hotel be in Travel than the much more widely-read-by-jerkfaces Styles section. That way, that vestigial bum might have a few more moments slumber before the onslaught of city-on-a-hill transplants flood the lobby. —Josh More »