That odd-looking building on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 14th Street whose ground floor has been vacant for many years is finally about to get a tenant. The "For Rent" signs have been taken down, the windows have been papered over, and signs have gone up in the windows that say "Coming Soon: for your bathroom".

If there are any other stores called "For Your Bathroom," I haven't been able to track them down because a Google search for that phrase is essentially useless. But I think we can assume that they will sell bathroom supplies, most likely fixtures instead of toothpaste.

As some of you may know, this building was the longtime home of a theater, first known as the Palace, then the Armory, and finally the Minerva (which writer Pete Hamill mentions in his classic memoir "The Drinking Life.") When we discussed the theater in more detail last year, he explained how it once served as home base for The Tigers, one of the street gangs that ruled the neighborhood in the postwar years:

"The Tigers one time in the place, they went in to watch some movie. They were all sitting together in the orchestra, and they brought screwdrivers with them and unscrewed the whole aisle. And at the break they went out onto Seventh Avenue with the whole aisle! And the owner was a guy named Seymour, he knew that if he called the cops they'd probably burn the joint down in retaliation. And they dropped it over by The Factory and had a big laugh, and they never replaced it! So there were four or five rows, then an empty space, and then another six rows to the back of the theater."

Times have certainly changed!