Florent restaurant—a staple for many New Yorkers living with HIV, and the site of POZ’s historic 10th anniversary cover shoot (May 2004), for which dozens of people living with HIV posed nude—will close its doors after 23 years on June 29, the New York Times reports (nytimes.com, 5/21).

“The first time I went to Florent I had been out very late at night with some friends and we were looking for somewhere to go for breakfast at about, you know, 3:30 or 4 o’clock in the morning,” said POZ founder Sean Strub in the Times article. “We went down there and it was very dark and we came onto Gansevoort Street and the restaurant was lit up and it looked—it looked almost like a mirage. It felt magical.”

According to the article, the restaurant’s owner, Florent Morellet, paid $1,350 per month in rent when he initially opened the restaurant; it is expected to rise to more than $30,000 a month in upcoming months, Morellet says.