Nicole Guzzardi 101 Avenue DIf you read this week’s Voice and thought Yongman Kim’s scheme to relocate the entire Kim’s rental collection to Sicily was pie-in-the-sky, get this: the Kim’s Video mogul tells The Local that he plans to open an “alternative and interactive pizza store” on Avenue D.
Kim’s Video Makes a Pizza, as the venue will be called, will be located at 101 Avenue D, in a new building facing the Jacob Riis Houses that is home to the Arabella 101 rental apartments (it’s also the future home of the Lower Eastside Girls Club).
Mr. Kim said the pizza parlor and wine bar would “intermix the new business and the old using the Kim’s Video mentality and personality.”
If that sounds similar to Two Boots, Mr. Kim thinks otherwise. “My restaurant would be a full-sitting restaurant where young and night owls gather and talk about music, films, art and other cultures,” he told The Local.
The switch to pizza follows what Mr. Kim said was a decline in the video business that started in 2001 and worsened in 2005. “Digital has hurt my business and so has the Internet. It is what caused me to close most of the Kim’s locations,” he said, adding that he had tried, unsuccessfully, to go digital in 1994 (well before Netflix, he pointed out). “I was preparing the Internet venture side of my business. I organized my team and it didn’t work,” he said. “It failed over and over again.” Read more…
