By Julie Shapiro

The doors to Yaffa’s were open on Monday at lunchtime, but customers who walked in could not get anything to eat.

Tables usually covered in platters of Mediterranean food were covered instead with piles of pots and pans, stacks of empty mugs and rows of empty teapots, plus a few blenders, a food processor and the occasional rooster figurine.

Downtown Express photo by Julie Shapiro

Everything, including the furniture, was for sale, as Yaffa’s prepared to shut down after 24 years at the corner of Greenwich and Harrison Sts. As people walked by and saw the red “AUCTION” sign plastered to the building, many exclaimed, “Oh no!”

“It’s been my mailbox, my kitchen, my hangout,” said Maryse Alberti, 55, who lives upstairs. “I think the whole neighborhood is sad.”

Alberti and others said Yaffa’s was one of the last remaining links to Tribeca’s bohemian past. The quirky design, a mélange of mosaic tiles, chandeliers and unframed paintings, made Yaffa’s comfortable and inviting. It was a place where locals ran into each other and chatted for hours.

At the center of it all was Yaffa Faro, the eccentrically-dressed, Israeli proprietor who gave the place her name, her community-oriented philosophy and her stylistic flair.

On Monday afternoon, as she prepared to auction off the restaurant’s wares, Faro had little time or inclination for sentimentality.

“Don’t be sad,” she told one of the many regulars who stopped by. “I’m not out of business,” meaning she hasn’t run out of money yet, though she would be in danger of going under soon. “I’m just leaving.”

Faro usually counts on lucrative summers to make up for much quieter winters, but this summer the rain, the poor economy and the months of utility construction on Harrison St. conspired to keep customers away. The construction won’t end anytime soon, and Faro said she does not have enough money saved to make it through another winter.

Wearing one of her trademark unconventional outfits — knee-high platform boots, jeans, a sparkling silver jacket and a cowboy hat — Faro strode around her restaurant on Monday getting ready for the auction and occasionally stopping to talk to well wishers.

When she sat down for a moment, Faro spoke about the changes in Tribeca since she opened Yaffa’s in 1985, three years after she opened the first Yaffa’s, which she no longer owns, in the East Village. In the ’80s, Tribeca was home to more artist lofts than million-dollar condos.

“It wasn’t about what you have,” Faro said. “It was about who you are.”

Downtown Express photo by Jefferson Siegel

Some of the last bits of what had been a Tribeca mainstay.

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After 9/11, Faro kept her doors open to feed rescue workers, grilling burgers outside and throwing together enormous salads, recalled Phyllis Fortson, a bartender at Yaffa’s since 1994. A group of volunteer firefighters from South Carolina slept on the floor of Yaffa’s tearoom, Fortson said. Regular customers biked over with boxes of sandwiches, nuts and fruit.

But in the months after 9/11, many of the regulars moved away, Fortson said. Faro continued to hold fundraisers, community barbecues and her annual Halloween costume party, but the events got smaller.

The neighborhood changed rapidly, and Faro said the wealthier people moving in started complaining about her music and sidewalk cafe.

“For everything, they blame me,” Faro said. “Let them be quiet here like they like it…. I’m not part of the new neighborhood, I’m sorry.”

Faro, who grew up in the desert near the Dead Sea but says she is “from nowhere,” has no immediate plans. She has to pay her son’s last year of college, but she said she doesn’t need much money to be happy.

“Cigarettes and coffee, gas and rent,” she said, ticking off her expenses. Gesturing to the mountains of chairs, glasses and tchotchkes, she said, “I don’t need all this [crap].”

But a gentler side came out after she bargained with a longtime customer, Ellen Miller, over the price of some potted plants. Once Miller had paid $25 and was pushing the pot of pink flowers away in a wheeled cart, Faro called after her, “Take care of it!”

Faro owns a Tribeca loft so she will likely remain in the neighborhood, but she does not plan to open another restaurant. She was reluctant to speak to Downtown Express this week.

Apart from the hubbub at Yaffa’s on Monday, Fortson, the bartender, sat out on the steps smoking a cigarette. She said she kept her job for the past 15 years because she loves working for Faro.

“I’m still in shock a little bit,” said Fortson, who found out about the end-of-August closing two weeks ago. “I never thought Yaffa’s would go.”

Fortson recalled Faro’s decision to expand Yaffa’s eight or nine years ago. Back then, the front bar space filled with smoke whenever the restaurant got crowded, so Faro rented adjacent space and built the broader tearoom, where no smoking was allowed, Fortson said. Although the city’s smoking ban in 2003 made the separate space largely unnecessary, Faro continued to maintain the back tearoom, serving the same food in a more laid-back atmosphere.

Last Saturday night, Yaffa’s held a last hurrah for regulars and workers past and present. Fortson said the night was bittersweet, with some people dancing on the bar and others crying as they exchanged phone numbers.

Along with the sadness, a tinge of anger emerged as people stopped in at Yaffa’s on Monday.

Eric Oatman, 68, who ate at Yaffa’s nearly every week, said Tribeca’s new residents and businesses are pushing out the old.

“I’ve been looking for another crime wave to get these people back to the suburbs,” Oatman joked. He called Faro “one of the mainstays of old Tribeca.”

Alberti, who lives above Yaffa’s, said she hopes that whatever business comes in next will have the same small-town feeling.

“It’s like everything else in life,” she said. “Things pass, and something else will grow here.”

Then she paused, had a thought, and switched her tone. “If it’s a McDonald’s,” she said, “I’ll bomb it.”

Julie@DowntownExpress.com