Signing Off: We've Fled the Growlers and Turned Down the Heat

By Mitch Broder

A growler can be a container for beer.

It can also be other things, none especially pleasant.

The Growler Station, a small chain, squirts "craft" beer into jugs and bottles that you can take home, or wherever it is you like to take your beer. But no matter what "growler" makes you think of, it's probably not as appealing as brew, which could be the reason that the Eighth Street Growler Station has ceased to squirt.

At least it could be according to the axiom of Signing Off, which holds that while a name can conceivably make a place, it can definitely break it. At the end of a miserable day, the word GROWLER in big orange letters doesn't seem like the thing to convince you that this is the place to escape all the world's growls.

If you agree, here are more places that may have made the same mistake.

If you disagree, your closest Growler Station is now in Columbus, Ohio.

There are few times in New York life when high heat is attractive, and clearly not enough of them to support a burger joint by that name. But then, New York City is not currently starving for burger joints. And Waldy Malouf is a famous chef, so he'll surely come up with something cooler.

Animal Crackers are for people, but this store was for dogs. Thus your expectations were frustrated before you walked in the door. So you didn't. Instead, you went somewhere else to find yourself some cookies. And then, if you needed dog food, you went somewhere else for that.

This was a spiffy gift store, and it lasted for twenty years. But even with all its letters it couldn't handle today's numbers. It couldn't have helped that many customers who wanted to recommend it couldn't pronounce it, unless they were fluent in Superman comics. Still, it survives in Jersey City.

Cigkoftem is a Turkish chain that sells sandwiches of spicy wheat balls. But to the unversed, the name could suggest something you might get from excess smoking. If a place is selling just one food, it should make clear what that food is. Though I can't swear that it would have helped to have named the place Spicy Wheat Balls.

I can't say whether robatayaki is better known than cigkoftem...

... but I can say that Prohibit sounded awfully prohibitive.

And I can say that while we appreciate our bees and our desserts, we appreciate them separated.

And now they are.



Vintage New York always tries to understand.

GLASER'S BAKE SHOP HAS BEEN OPEN SINCE 1902 AND HAS NEVER FELT THE NEED FOR A MORE INVENTIVE NAME. READ ABOUT GLASER'S AND MORE THAN SEVENTY-FIVE OTHER CLASSICS FROM SIMPLER TIMES IN THE AMAZON TRAVEL BEST SELLER "DISCOVERING VINTAGE NEW YORK"!