The Beatrice Inn: Still boarded up!

We were so excited about the new incarnation of The Beatrice Inn: the egalitarian, OpenTable.com, anti-smoking restaurant that will take the place of its former celebrity drug-fueled dance haunt, which shuttered three years ago. Especially since Graydon Carter, along with former Waverly Inn partners Brett Rasinski and Emil Warda, had promised that this time, there would be no Paul Sevigny.

In multiple interviews, Mr. Carter placed the opening of the new Waverly at the end of May. Yet anyone who has walked by 285 West 12th St. recently can see for themselves that the Beatrice is still under heavy construction. Another minor hiccup: they still don't have their liquor license. “Most tables will be available on a first-come, first-seated basis. This will be a restaurant for our West Village neighbors and their friends,” Mr. Carter told The New York Post on May 2nd, dispelling rumors that this will be another exclusive Waverly-type secret.

And while we waited desperately for some signs of life inside the Beatrice Inn, May passed. The New York State Liquor Authority still has The Beatrice Inn under "pending" status for their December request for an on-premise alcohol license.

Technically, the restaurant could be holding a friends and family soft launch any time, as long as they give the alcohol away for free.

Mr. Johnson-Calderon said he had just been to a Brooks Brothers party for True Prep, the new sequel to The Official Preppy Handbook you may remember from your days at Choate. "At the True Prep party, a lot of the old people that were there, like, my friends' parents, were like, 'What? Who is this person?!'" Mr. Johnson-Calderon said. "And everybody else was like, 'You look rad!'"

"But my close friends were like, 'Get that nail polish off, you look like you're from Milwaukee,'" Mr. Johnson-Calderon continued. "I'm like, 'I'm from California. That's very different.'"

But to get back to that bow tie -- it was an awfully cute one, in a distinctive toile pattern that looked just the tiniest bit familiar. Paul, who makes the tie?

"I make this bow tie," Mr. Johnson-Calderon said. "The line is called Mauvais Garçon, which is 'bad boy' in French, and they're the original curtains from the Beatrice Inn. So this is the Beatrice tie."

Wait, wait, wait. The original curtains? How did he -- how can we put this delicately -- acquire them? (Does the name of the line provide a clue, perhaps?)

"Ages ago, before it closed, I got them, and I had them up in my apartment because they're beautiful toile curtains," he said. "But then I was like, 'How do I make this something for everyone, you know?' Not for everyone, but for the people that used to go to Beatrice, it's a little piece of history."

Very Sister Maria! "Thank you, yeah! I think my inspiration was Gone with the Wind," Mr. Johnson-Calderon said with a flourish. We're still unsure how he got the curtains.