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It’s the quintessential feel-good story.

Two best friends who grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., became high school sweethearts, attended college together, got married and had a baby, have also created a successful, independently funded denim brand called Still Here that is carried in leading retailers including Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman and Farfetch.

The husband-and-wife team of Sonia and Maurice Mosseri created the brand shortly after their wedding in 2018, building on Sonia Mosseri’s hobby of hand-painting vintage jeans she’d been collecting since she was a child. A lightbulb went off when the couple was invited to bring the jeans to the Capsule show and they found themselves fielding requests from retailers who wanted to buy the collection. That included the-then Barneys New York, whose merchant team asked for a line sheet.

“What’s a line sheet?” Sonia Mosseri recalled asking.

They did their homework and drilled down to learn everything they could about the denim industry. “We spent a year on research and development,” she said, studying patterns, fabrics, fits and washes. “We invested our wedding gift money into the product.”

One year later, they went back to Barneys after creating that elusive line sheet and the buyers were still interested, allowing them to launch their brand. The first order was for 250 hand-painted jeans, which sold out in less than two weeks, she said.

They then traveled to Los Angeles to figure out how to scale their newfound denim collection and picked up other retail customers, including Net-a-porter. And the brand was on its way.

Enter COVID-19.

Although they had no e-commerce business, Maurice Mosseri, who has a degree in business, knew the brand would need a backup plan as all their wholesale clients were forced to close because of the pandemic — and Barneys would, of course, go bankrupt. They created a makeshift website to connect with their consumers and that channel now represents 40 percent of Still Here’s overall sales.

Creating connections with their customers has been a hallmark of the brand since the inception. It’s not unusual for interested shoppers to knock on the door of their office in Industry City and ask to come in and try on jeans. That’s one reason the couple decided to open their first retail store.

The shop, which opens officially on Thursday, is on Elizabeth Street in Manhattan’s NoLIta — a 380-square-foot boutique that they have leased for the next six months with an option to renew. It’s next door to Rag & Bone and close to Buck Mason, Cezanne and other stores.

The shop is inspired by 1970s dens and features Donald Judd-style custom furniture and chrome accents. Classic American materials such as dark walnut stained wood are contrasted by subway tiles and a colorful lightbox menu displays Still Here’s fits and painted styles that are available for purchase at the store.

“We jumped at the opportunity to open in New York,” Sonia Mosseri said, adding that the “marketing opportunity” for the brand was vast since the neighborhood is full of its customers just walking down the block. “We felt the community was itching to connect with us,” her husband said.

What customers respond to is Still Here’s classic styles that have been updated with a modern aesthetic. There are only six styles including the original, The Tate, which is the one that sports the hand-painted Rainbow strip that set the direction for the brand. It’s a button-fly, classic high-rise. The Childhood, which is more relaxed, is the most popular fit right now, and The Subway, midrise with a wide leg that is reminiscent of a carpenter, is among the newest additions. Then there’s The Cowgirl, a model inspired by riding jeans with a cutout on the side.

The plain jeans retail for $235, while the hand-painted styles sell for $280.

As the brand has grown, Sonia Mosseri has had to expand beyond painting every style herself and has added a team of designers in L.A. to replicate the samples she still produces in New York.

They have also branched out into complementary products such as a denim jacket and a line of knit sweaters and loungewear. The first T-shirt will be added this summer. But the goal is not to expand into too many categories too quickly and instead “make really good jeans first,” Maurice Mosseri said.

Although the brand is marketed to women, many of the jeans can also be worn by men and they purposely offer larger sizes to accommodate the male consumer.

As part of the brand’s thrust to be as sustainable as possible, the couple has limited the number of styles and finishes available. Every jean is made from 100 percent cotton deadstock, upcycled or BCI-certified materials and they work with production facilities to decrease water consumption.

Although Maurice Mosseri admits that it’s impossible to be completely sustainable, they’re doing what they can. “It’s such a hard industry to be sustainable in as a small business,” he said. “So we’re trying to find ways to be better and only use 100 percent cotton and limited the number of fits and washes.”

Another thing they’ve done is create the Still Here Café. The company partnered with its fabric mill, The New Denim Project, and a coffee farm in Guatamala to grow a Still Here coffee bean using composted materials from its denim production process. The medium roast blend is sold in the store — $24 for 12 ounces — and samples are free.

If the store is successful, the Mosseris hope to eventually replicate the concept in other locations such as L.A., Aspen, Colorado and other cities. “It’s definitely a concept we’re excited about testing,” Maurice Mosseri said.

His wife is a little more reticent. “I would want to test pop-ups first,” she said. But they’re both hopeful that their first store will be a success. “We’re really excited to finally be calling the shots,” she said.

The team behind hot Manhattan restaurants Charlie Bird and Legacy Records is opening the doors today on its latest project, a Sicilian restaurant and wine bar located next door to the group’s wood-fired pizza spot Pasquale Jones. Bar Pasquale — at 98 Kenmare Street, at Mulberry Street, in Nolita — will serve zhuzhed up Sicilian classics ranging from fried calzones and handmade pastas to sfincione, a type of pizza the team is topping with ‘nduja and anchovies. The space has been designed to look like an “updated red sauce joint” with an open kitchen and red leather banquettes, according to a spokesperson. The spot includes 86 seats indoors and another 36 seats on a corner patio. Open Wednesday to Sunday, starting at 5 p.m.

A new bakery, called Sugarwood, is Manhattan’s latest NSFW dessert bar, serving “adult-themed” waffles shaped like genitalia and dipped in milk chocolate, salted caramel, and other sauces. What’s going on here? The bakery at 157 Prince Street, between West Broadway and Thompson Street, is the second of its kind to open this year, following Kinky’s Dessert Bar on the Lower East Side in February. This one comes from Magnolia Bakery’s Tom Smallwood and Austin Allan, founder of soup company Tio Gazpaacho.

Milk Burger, a Bronx burger shop touted as Anthony Bourdain’s regular delivery spot, has opened this second location downtown. According to EV Grieve, the restaurant’s thin, Shake Shack-style burgers and takeout Henny Coladas are now available at 321 East Houston Street, between Attorney and Ridge streets, on the Lower East Side.

Chef John Coppola and Chris Cote, an alum of Michelin-starred venues Noma, Aska, and Rebelle, will open a small tasting menu spot under the name Pearl Street Supper Club. The restaurant, billed as a “12-seat tasting counter experience” on Instagram, is slated to open at 147 Front Street, near Jay Street, in Dumbo this summer.

Back in the 1980s, the fringe streets around New York's SoHo were a true neighborhood.

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A place where Italian ladies in black dresses went to St. Anthony's church every Wednesday for Bingo Night. Where screaming kids ran through the alley behind my fifth-floor walk-up on their way to Ben's Pizza for Italian ices. Where every autumn, as the thick humidity of summer blew away in the September winds, wooden fruit crates with California labels piled up along the curbsides (evidence of apartment winemaking), and over on West Broadway, all the fabulous one-of-a-kind shops reduced their summer dresses by 50 percent.

A place, in other words, where you'd go to get a taste of a "real NYC" neighborhood.

These days, SoHo (even its fringes) has turned into designer Disneyland, prompting New York magazine to run a piece calling SoHo more Upper East Side than the Upper East Side. A claim bolstered by the Tiffany store that's just opened on formerly grungy Greene Street.

And it's not just SoHo that's lost its neighborhood feel. Lately, Greenwich Village seems like a combination chain store mall and NYU campus. And as for Little Italy, a recent New York Times story reported that there were no actual born-in-Italy Italians living there (and only 5 percent of the current residents would call themselves Italian American). A visitor could be forgiven for thinking there are no authentic New York neighborhood experiences to be had in lower Manhattan.

Lucky thing there's Nolita (an amalgam of North of Little Italy), those formerly empty streets I would trek through on the journey between my SoHo walk-up in the '80s and my favorite Little Italy red-sauce joint. Now those streets are a destination in themselves. A neighborhood where the brick tenements are cheaper than SoHo's lofts for the young singles - and fewer young families - who live there.

Cheaper also for the one-of-a-kind shops and restaurants that used to fill up SoHo's formerly grungy streets. All of which makes Nolita a more interesting (and, by SoHo standards, less expensive) place to eat, drink, shop and wander in Lower Manhattan.

Here's how I do it. First, establish some boundaries. New York real estate agents, who can be a bit squishy with boundaries when it suits their commissions, define Nolita as the blocks bordered north and south by Houston and Kenmare streets, and east and west by Bowery and Broadway.

Second, establish a home base. For exploring Nolita, I like to stay in one of the first hotels to open below Houston Street (1996), the SoHo Grand. Maybe because this loft-inspired hotel opened in the nanoseconds before SoHo got too cool for its own good, but the SoHo Grand never makes me feel like I'm not quite hip enough to be staying there. Plus, they'll let guests borrow a bike (for free), which you can use to ride over to Nolita on the Grand Street bike lane.

Third, either bike or walk to Nolita (the walk takes less than 10 minutes) and start exploring. I generally wander the streets, stopping when I get hungry, or when I see something irresistible in a window. But it's useful to have a few recommendations.

Eat and drink: I love Tacombi at Fonda Nolita - tacos served from a VW bus inside a garage with Christmas lights and Spanish music blaring from lousy speakers. I also love that they spike the horchata with sake. Being from New Jersey, I'm no judge of Mexican food, but my L.A.-born-and-bred significant other gives Fonda Nolita two salsa-covered thumbs up.

At Cafe Habana, we're talking pork, pork and more pork. Cafe Habana's Cuban sandwich, which includes both pork and ham, was voted the Best in NYC. It's spicy and smoky. Its pulled pork Sloppy Joe is pretty terrific as well. This is the Nolita outpost of a wildly popular Brooklyn restaurant. In Brooklyn, they've got a sand beach. Here they've got 1950s-era Formica tables crowded into a silver diner-style building. The wildly popular part is the same though, so it's best to time your Latin pork feast for an off-hour.

Parm is what would happen if Carmela Soprano took cooking lessons and then let Meadow design her restaurant. Run by Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi, the New York wunderkind of ItalianAmerican cuisine, Parm is old-school Italian cooking (baked ziti, eggplant parmigiana, sausage and peppers) done really, really well. The atmosphere is casual, a long counter with seats in the back, and wallpaper I swear that my grandmother had in her kitchen. The menu is simple, everything can be ordered either as a hero, or on a platter with ziti or salad.

Torrisi Italian Specialties is what would happen if Carmella Soprano went to the Cordon Bleu and opened her own place. Also run by Carbone and Torrisi, this is their upscale place. Lace curtains, fixed-price menu, old-school Italian dishes elevated to all new heights. Make reservations, and go hungry.

Emporio is one of my Nolita favorites. I always stop at its casual bar toward the end of the day for a Campari and soda or a glass of wine - the restaurant is supposed to resemble a Roman grocery store; I don't see it, but I still like it - and always stay right in the front room for one of its smoky, thin-crust pizzas. (It may be possible that I've never actually seen the back dining room.)

Shop: New shops are always opening in Nolita, and the best way to scout them out is by walking the streets. Elizabeth between Prince and Spring is fertile shopping ground, as is most of Mott Street. Most clothing stores are one of a kind, owned and run by the designer.

I like Baby Blue Line on Mott, for not-too-pricey clothes you can wear anywhere. For those who are into vintage, Ina on Prince is a rare find. Ina's side-by-side men's and women's boutiques feature vintage designer items from the '50s through the '80s, all of it in pristine condition. Yes, it's a little spendy for vintage. But think how expensive this stuff was the first time around. Plus, both sides of Ina run very good sales.

I always try to do my Nolita shopping on Saturdays so I can visit Super! Market. This designers' market, held in the gym of Old St. Patrick's Cathedral, is the best place to catch up-and-coming local clothing and jewelry designers before they blow up and you can't afford them.

Then if it's between March and December, I walk around the corner and stroll through the weekend Nolita street market on Prince. This little market - it's just a block long - is the perfect spot for original designs in jewelry and graphic T's.

Hang out: Every time I drop into McNally Jackson Books, I can forget that Manhattan has become the Land of the Barnes & Noble. This indie bookstore has a carefully curated selection of fiction and nonfiction, and a terrific cafe where I've spent way too much time reading beneath the flying books. It has recently put in a print-on-demand machine, where you can print out public domain works or self-publish your own tome.

Unless it's raining or the dead of winter, I never leave Nolita without sitting in the tree-shaded DeSalvio Playground on Spring Street, watching a couple of old-timers argue over their game of dominoes, or spying on a hipster couple staring into their iPhones like they were reading their own futures. Once in a while, I find the outline of a Skully box chalked on the macadam of the playground, and on hot days, I watch the toddlers running through the sprinkler rainbows.

Sitting there, I can almost believe that when I head back through the fence, there will be Italian ladies on their way to Wednesday Bingo Night, and wooden crates piled up against the curb, and screaming kids with Italian ice smeared across their mouths.

Newark airport is much closer to lower Manhattan (via the Holland Tunnel) than the other New York airports, but be careful with your departure time. The Holland Tunnel is a major end-of-day commute route.

Tacombi at Fonda Nolita, 267 Elizabeth St., (917) 727-0179, www.tacombi.com. Open 11 a.m.-midnight Sunday through Wednesday, until 1 a.m. Thursday through Saturday. Most tacos less than $5.

Cafe Habana, 17 Prince St., (212) 625-2002, www.cafehabana.com/new-york. Open daily, 9 a.m.-midnight. Average dinner entree $12.

Parm, 248 Mulberry St., (212) 993-7189, www.parmnyc.com. Open daily 11 a.m.-11 p.m. (Thursday-Saturday until midnight). Heros, $12; platters, $17; nightly specials, $25.

Torrisi Italian Specialties, 250 Mulberry St., (212) 965-0955, www.torrisinyc.com. Open daily 5:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. Open for lunch Friday through Sunday from noon to 2 p.m. $65 for the seven-course tasting menu, not including wine. Call for reservations.

Emporio, 231 Mott St., (212) 966-1234, www.emporiony.com. Open daily noon-11 p.m. (until 10:30 p.m. on Sundays, midnight on Thursday-

Saturday). Pizzas average

$16; pastas, $17; dinner entrees, $25.

SoHo Grand, 310 W. Broadway, (212) 965-3000, www.sohogrand.com. The design pays tribute to the cast-iron loft buildings of the neighborhood - check out the cool lighted staircase in the lobby. Double rooms start around $279 per night depending on the season.

Baby Blue Line, 238 Mott St., (212) 226-5866.

Super! Market, 268 Mulberry St., inside Saint Patrick's church, www.super-marketnyc.com. Open Saturdays, 11 a.m.-7 p.m.

Nolita street market on Prince Street between Mulberry and Mott. Open Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., March through December.

McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince St., (212) 274-1160, www.mcnallyjackson.com. Open Monday through Saturday 10 a.m.-10 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m.-9 p.m. An excellent place to find carefully curated books; they also host frequent author events.

DeSalvio Playground on the corner of Spring and Mulberry streets. This tree-shaded playground is the perfect spot to sit and take in the neighborhood.

Author and travel writer Janis Cooke Newman lives in San Francisco. E-mail: [email protected]

As tech stocks struggle, a prominent startup investor is buying the dip in another beleaguered sector: New York City’s office market.

AlleyCorp, the venture capital firm led by entrepreneur Kevin Ryan, bought the office building at 174 Mott Street in Nolita for $41 million from affiliates of Jack Jangana’s Continental Equities and investor Juergen Ostertag, records show.

The six-story building spans just over 32,000-square-feet, meaning AlleyCorp paid close to $1,300 per square foot. PincusCo first reported the sale.

Continental Equities bought the property for $8.9 million in 2006, according to records, which also list the building’s address as 368 Broome Street. A decade later, Jangana sold a 25 percent stake in the building for $11 million to Ostertag, who was then a partner at the law firm Pryor Cashman.

Jangana’s company secured multiple loans for the property over the years. By 2019, NASA Federal Credit Union held a $25.6 million loan on it, records show.

The entire building was recently available for lease and sale, according to marketing materials, meaning AlleyCorp has free rein to redesign the interior to its needs or those of one of its portfolio companies. Other tech firms, including Google, have made similar moves in New York.

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AlleyCorp is led by Kevin Ryan, a New York City tech investor who first gained notoriety during the dot-com boom as CEO of DoubleClick, an online advertising company that Google bought for $3.1 billion in 2007. His other investments have included Business Insider, online wedding registry Zola and e-commerce startup Gilt.

Jangana is perhaps best known for his partnership with developer Joel Schreiber, WeWork’s first investor. The pair partnered to buy the Broadway Trade Center, a 1 million-square-foot historic department store in Los Angeles, for $130 million in 2014. The property is now facing foreclosure from its lender, an affiliate of Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital.

Schreiber recently put the property’s ownership entity into bankruptcy to stave off the foreclosure, but Jangana and members of his family filed a motion to dismiss the bankruptcy filing, which they argued was a waste of money that they did not consent to, according to court filings.

Jangana’s not the only party involved in the Nolita office deal with a WeWork connection. The co-working firm, then led by Neumann, acquired AlleyCorp-backed social media platform Meetup for $156 million in 2017.

Continental Equities did not immediately return a request to comment nor did Alley Corp.

It may be little, but it’s not going down without a fight.

Manhattan Community Board 2 voted last week to deny an application to build a development on Elizabeth Street Garden, a quaint, 1-acre plot that makes up one of the last remaining open green spaces in Nolita.

The garden has occupied the area on Elizabeth St. between Prince and Spring Sts. for nearly 200 years. It was once a public school’s recreational space, and has since evolved into a popular venue for weddings, art installations and celebrity sightings.

Last year, the Department of Planning of Housing Preservation and Development issued environmental approvals for a project, dubbed Haven Green, scheduled to break ground on the lot this summer. The development would replace the open space with 123 affordable housing units for seniors.

But those approvals were given by way of an Environmental Assessment Statement and a so-called negative declaration statement, which allowed HPD to bypass a more thorough Environmental Impact Statement.

Supporters of the garden, which included musician David Bowie, among many others, launched a legal campaign to stop the construction, arguing that the development could be built on a larger site less than a mile away at 388 Hudson St.

“This is classic government pitting community against community,” said Norman Siegel, the attorney representing supporters of the garden. “We can and must have open green space and affordable housing.”

Siegel said that the city is not following its own rules, and the move simply takes city property and gives it to a private developer.

The development has been backed by Councilwoman Margaret Chin, who included the site as an addition to the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area on the Lower East Side in 2012.

“Haven Green will create green space that will be open to the public on a consistent basis with access from Elizabeth and Mott streets,” Chin said in a statement last year. “It will also create more than 100 units of desperately needed housing for the over 200,000 seniors who are currently languishing on waitlists. Additionally, the more than 100 units will be marketed, with the assistance of Advocacy & Services for LGBT Elders (SAGE), specifically towards LGBTIQ seniors.”

The Community Board’s vote is merely advisory and non-binding, but the development will also be reviewed by Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and the city’s Planning Commission before reaching the City Council for a vote.

Advocates of the garden have an uphill battle ahead of them — the City Council typically defers land use decisions to local members.

“We have to explain to City Council members that this garden is not only relevant to C.B. 2, but also the entire city and throughout the country,” Siegel said.