Armin to Get You Hammered: Bungalow 8 Doorman Is Opening His Own Joint

Armin to Get You Hammered: Bungalow 8 Doorman Is Opening His Own Joint : From the New York Observer

Those who have been waking up and night-shivering and sweating, possessed of one thought: Where in the world is irrepressible Bungalow 8 doorman Armin Amiri?—can rest easy.

“I’m shooting a movie with the Weinstein brothers called Crossing Over,” said Mr. Amiri, reached by phone on April 10. Oh, but there’s more: “I’m opening my own place on Jane Street and the West Side Highway. It’s a Cuban lounge in the style of 1940’s speakeasy.” The ground floor, he said, will be a “1930’s-style peasant café,” for all those million-dollar peasants that now populate the meatpacking district.

“It’s called Socialista!” said Mr. Amiri with gusto, adding soberly: “I believe in a healthy balance of capitalism and a socialism.”

Mr. Amiri is not aiming to recreate the exclusivity of Amy Sacco’s Bungalow 8, where he worked the door for five years. “I just want it to be really, really down low and quiet,” he said of the new place.

But the doors of Socialista, which is scheduled to open mid-May, will definitely be shut to one person: onetime “It” boy Fabian Basabe, currently suing Mr. Amiri after the doorman allegedly slapped him on June last year.

“Fabian is absolutely not allowed,” Mr. Amiri said.