1980s East Village cafes still packing crowds

Restaurants have always had a short shelf life in New York.

But even in today’s frat bar-happy, quasi-Bridge and Tunnel East Village, some old-school eateries are still drawing crowds.

From the January 1986 issue of local arts newspaper the East Village Eye comes this ad for Life Cafe—once a refuge for the bloody and battered who were caught up in the Tompkins Square Park riots of the late 1980s.

I never knew Yaffa Cafe had a slogan. But here it is in their ad from the same newspaper.