GOODBYE PAUL SMITH

 
    So long, Paul Smith. Today is the first day in 29 years their doors won't open in Union Square.
    End of an era.

    When City Bakery openend in 1990, lower 5th Avenue storefronts were vestiges of a prior
    generation. Businesses like Brownies [health food], The Holding Company [handbags], Army Navy
    Surplus [rope!] and B. Shackman Co. [children's toys and vintage novelties] lined the avenue.  
    It was not really so long ago, but it was unrecognizable from today.

    Paul Smith pioneered this generation of lower 5th Avenue retail for men's clothing.
    It was the first high-end store of its caliber along an avenue that today is entirely high-end.
    Armani Exchange was just getting started when City Bakery opened, but Paul Smith had
    already been been open four years in its handsome wood-paneled home on 16th Street and 5th.

    The retail occupants of Lower 5th today: Coach, Sephora, Eddie Bauer, Zara, Tory Burch,
    Aveda, Victoria's Secret, Club Monaco, Lucky Jeans, Anthropologie and others, reflect a vastly  
    different era of value for the neighborhood. As a measure of that change: I once asked a longtime
    Paul Smith exec why they picked Lower 5th as their first New York location:
    "It was the only place we could afford" he said with a smile.

    It was not really so long ago.

    A walk along 5th Avenue today, from the arch in Washington Square north to 23rd Street, reveals
    exactly two retail stores open since City Bakery opened 25 years ago: Bravo Pizza is one,
    between 19th and 20th, and Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop [pictured above] between 22nd and 23rd.

 

      

                                       

LATE NIGHT CITY HIGH JINX

Maybe it's good luck!?!

18th Street. Fallen Chocolate Zucchini Cake.

MORNING MILK DELIVERY

                      

STOPPED ON THE SIDEWALK

Now THAT'S a window graphic.
Up the street from City Bakery, the AIGA exhibit on 100 years of type. 

                             

JUST WONDERING

   

But how would caveman have known
that toast - let alone France -
would ever exist? 

GOOD MORNING UPPER WEST SIDE

Your [Single Origin Peruvian] coffee is ready.
And so are your Baker's Muffins. And Sunflower Seed French Toast. And Pretzel Croissant.
Broadway between 80th and 81st Street. Right across from a little market named Zabars. 

WISH THEY WERE LIKE THIS IN NEW YORK

SUNDAY SIDEWALK

CLOSING TIME 2012

Thank you.  

WHAT HAPPENED TO STUMPTOWN?

Back in early January this year, news went out that Stumptown Coffee Roasters […the heralded, the revered, the coffee Messiah] had rented the corner of MacDougal and 8th Street in the Village. This location, to be its second in NYC [after The Ace Hotel], followed news that Stumptown had been acquired by the venture capital firm TSG Consumer Partners for an undisclosed, presumed amount of many millions of dollars. 

Since the announcement of what the New York Times called the "powerful investor," the corner space has sat empty. And empty. And empty, still. 

It should take 3-4 months for a coffee bar to be built out in that size space, especially from a coffee company with millions of dollars in its pocket. A hands-on effort by a can-do operation could build out a space like that in two months. Eleven months later, what happened to Stumptown? 

I've heard, unofficially, that there is a landmarks issue. That might make sense, if not for the permit in the window from NYC Landmarks, issued November 2011. 

Eight Street feels poised, let alone overdue and wanting, for a turnaround. The would be Stumptown corner is in the center of the stretch from 5th to 6th Avenues. Half of the south side of the block near 6th Avenue is empty. There's a tiny Indian restaurant and a tiny cookie store and a Goodwill thrift shop. On the side closer to 5th Avenue, a bad little bakery just closed after a brief bad little bakery life, and Andy's Chee-Pee's vintage just closed too [that hurts]. There's a Domino's pizza, a wine bar and a new craft beer takeout shop, each busy but lonely. The north side of the block is a cornucopia of funky commerce: a cheap hat store, knock-off shoe stores [the heritage of Eighth Street past], a new nail salon, a scary foot massage place, take-out chicken and a new fancy popcorn spot [I kid not]. Walk down this street, and the feeling is that sooner than later, it will be re-invigorated with quality retail. It seems due. 

Right now, kraft paper covers the windows where Stumptown will presumably open one day. Back in the summer, a sign with a contractors name appeared one day, then disappeared weeks later. Then different kraft paper went up [a better papering job than the first]. I wonder how and why a venture capital firm that controls a retail business like this lets eleven months drift by with nothing to show for it. Aren't the VCs the ones with all their millions on a stringent timetable with hell to pay when schedules [read: dollars] aren't met?  

If TSG is studying the numbers, they must know it is now four times the amount of time it should have taken to get open, and still, no hammers or nails appear in motion.

MONDAY MORNING AFTER THANKSGIVING

THE SLIPPERY SLOPE OF THE PRODUCT LINE EXTENSION

My guess is that the "brand managers" sit around drinking
the stuff, then start naming the most idiotic ways
they can think of to ruin good vodka.  

SUNDAY BRUNCH