How 24 places died, and New York became the City That Sleeps

On a recent Sunday evening, Imad Khachan encountered a problem once unthinkable in New York City.

“I had a friend and his wife visiting from overseas,” says Khachan, the owner of Chess Forum, Greenwich Village’s last remaining chess shop. “They stopped by and said, ‘We’d like to go have dinner around nine o’clock.’ . . . I understand it was Sunday, but we really were hard-pressed to find a place that opened till 10 o’clock, let alone 24 hours. I couldn’t tell them where we [should] go. I felt so embarrassed.”

Khachan’s experience reflects a strange new reality facing New York’s night owls. Across the five boroughs, restaurants and businesses that once opened into the wee hours of the morning shut their doors between 8 and 11 p.m.

Late-night coffee shops are all but extinct, and all-ni