Old New York: Town Shop's Old Skills Have Found a New Home

By Mitch Broder

Why did the Town Shop cross the road?

To get to the other size.

Especially since the other size is three times the previous size.

Town Shop is the store where women undress you with their eyes — at least if you’re also a woman, and in search of the right brassiere. It’s the bra-fitting capital of New York, and it has just moved across the street to a shop that can provide more women than ever with its formidable support.

This is fitting, since Town Shop has always been preoccupied with size. It advances the theory that 80 percent of women are afflicted with ill-fitting bras. When a member of that 80 percent walks in, a fitter quickly looks her over and then announces her proper number and letter. There’s not a tape measure in the house.

But the once-over measure must work, since the store is around a century old, with roots in a Bleecker Street notions shop of 1888. It has had several branches around the city, but this is the one that endured. It’s been a fixture on the Upper West Side since 1936.

For most of its life it was run by Selma Koch, the founder’s daughter-in-law, who arguably became even more famous than her bras. Her crusty devotion made her a media darling. She ruled the store for 75 years. She was undoubtedly as famous as you could get and still be a bra-store owner.

Selma died 10 years ago, and the store has since been run by her son and grandson, Peter Koch and Danny Koch. Schooled as they are in spatial relationships, they were primed to increase their square footage. When a chance appeared across the street, they packed up their underthings.

The bright new space, Danny says, is a jolt to some longtime patrons: “They say, ‘Oh, we loved that old store’ or ‘We miss the intimate feel.’” But others are jolted with joy. “They can’t believe this is us,” Danny says. “They’re not accustomed to shopping in one of our stores where you can actually see the merchandise.”

The merchandise, as always, includes all manner of ladies’ delicates. But now it also includes a whole department of gentlemen’s delicates. The Koches tested the waters two years ago with the Spanx line of “compression” undershirts, and their new store has expanded it into an entire man’s room.

Along with the Spanx compressors, the room displays underwear and pajamas with fancy-pants brand names like Calida and Derek Rose. As Danny points out, women buy most men’s underwear, but just in case, the man’s room has a TV set that always shows the game.

Danny loves his new place — but he made sure to give it some old spirit. You can see it in things like the dressing-room curtains and the Town Shop memorabilia. The store is shiny, but it’s still a long way from Bloomingdale’s. Or in Danny’s words: “It’s somewhere between what we had and the Apple Store.”

Cross over to Town Shop, now at 2270 Broadway, between 81^st and 82^nd streets, in New York City.

READ THE WHOLE STORY OF THE TOWN SHOP AND THE STORIES OF DOZENS OF OTHER CITY CLASSICS IN THE AMAZON BEST SELLER “DISCOVERING VINTAGE NEW YORK”! GIVE IT THE ONCE-OVER AT THE TOWN SHOP!

New in New York: Potatopia is a Paradise of Potato Possibilities

By Mitch Broder

If, like me, you can’t enjoy a potato without a choice of 10 aiolis, then you grasp the importance to total potato gratification of Potatopia.

Well, actually, that’s not like me. I really don’t want any aiolis. And if I did, I probably wouldn’t want them anywhere near my potato. I would want sour cream, or maybe cheese. But Potatopia has those, too, which means that it seeks to gratify everyone, which makes it truly a Potato Utopia.

Potatopia is a new idea that, in New York, you’d think is an old one: a restaurant that serves only meals featuring potatoes. It offers 10 different forms of potatoes, 16 different toppings, six different “proteins,” and 15 different sauces, including, indeed, 10 different aiolis.

I got 100 on my eighth-grade math midterm, but I still can’t begin to calculate how many different potato-meal options those choices can yield. But I’m pretty sure that you could get a different one every day for the rest of your life and die in old age regretting all the potato combinations you missed.

Your potato choices include Baked Potato, Baked Sweet Potato, Smashed Potato, Mashed Pie, Skin Chip, Shoestring, and Curly. Your topping choices include Broccoli, Sweet Pepper, Cilantro, Red Onion, Cheddar Cheese, Asiago Cheese, Pepperjack Cheese, and Specialty Cheese.

The proteins are Chicken, Sausage, Bacon, Shrimp, Steak, and Egg. And the sauces — besides Sour Cream, Melted Cheddar, Ketchup, and BBQ — include Mustard Aioli, Ranch Aioli, Curry Aioli, Chipotle Aioli, Truffle Aioli, Savory Bacon Aioli, and Roasted Pepper Aioli.

All these choices are on the menu under “Build Your Own/Follow Steps 1 - 4.” As I have previously expressed here, I tend to get ruffled by Steps. But for the Step-averse, there is “Signature Meals/Leave It To The Potato Experts.” The Potato Experts offer seven Step-free selections.

These include Frequent Friers, comprising “Shoestring, House Salt & Pepper, Parmesan Cheese, Parsley, Garlic with Parmo Aioli,” and Smashed Hit — pictured here — combining “Smashed Potato, House Salt & Pepper, Cheddar Cheese, Asiago Cheese, Scallion, Red Onion, Garlic, Cilantro with Roasted Pepper Aioli.”

There have long been guys in the city with potato carts. But to make all the stuff in Potatopia, a guy’d need a potato Winnebago. That’s the point of Potatopia: It’s not a baked-potato joint. It’s closer to an unprecedented spudian smorgasbord.

Not unprecedented, though. Potatopia had an out-of-town tryout. Its first store opened two years ago in, inventively, Edison, New Jersey. But its founder, Allen Dikker, acknowledges that he opened it with the goal of opening his second store in New York.

He anointed potatoes, he says, because “everything else is out there.” In a city with restaurants like OatMeals, that’s more or less true. He conducted aioli experiments at home to assemble his roster of sauces. Not surprisingly, he’s now at work on an all-potato cookbook.

Before the grand opening.

Potatopia’s top potato is the Smashed Hit, though there is interest in the most complex choice, which has 16 ingredients, four of which are cheeses. It’s called the Comatoser. The store has been open for just a few weeks, but Allen says that more are already on the way. He’s understandably feeling his oats.

Still, he also acknowledges that I’m far from the only person who is perturbed by the profusion of potato possibilities. As the store manager, Albert Sierra, told me: “In the beginning, people find it a little intimidating. But by the second or third time, they get used to it.”

Weigh your options at Potatopia, 378 Sixth Avenue, between Waverly Place and West Eighth Street, New York City.

POTATOPIA HAS A LOT — BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE A KNISH. FOR THAT, YOU NEED THE CENTURY-OLD YONAH SCHIMMEL KNISH BAKERY. FIND YONAH SCHIMMEL, ALONG WITH OF DOZENS OF OTHER CLASSIC CITY SPOTS, IN THE AMAZON BEST SELLER “DISCOVERING VINTAGE NEW YORK”!

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"!

New in New York: Now You Can Pinpoint Your Wafels & Dinges

By Mitch Broder

When I was a boy my mother deemed waffles and ice cream an official meal, which is why I still love my mother and why I still love waffles and ice cream. But a good waffle, like a good mother, can be hard to find, which is why Wafels & Dinges has opened its first shop that doesn’t move.

Till now Wafels & Dinges has been the mildly baffling name of a fleet of trucks and carts that dispense waffles in mildly baffling forms. Powdered — make that powered — by public response, the owners have opened a waffle café in Alphabet City without any wheels.

Dinges, pronounced “ding-ess,” which is Flemish for “things,” are the toppings that you can get on your wafels. Wafels, pronounced “wah-fuls,” which is Flemish for “waffles,” are Belgian waffles. Belgians speak Flemish. New Yorkers are learning.

The main wafels are the Liège, which is “soft, sweet & chewy,” and the Brussels, which is “light n’crispy.” Once you have selected your wafel, you move on to selecting your dinges. Standard dinges include maple syrup and butter, but the dinges go way beyond standard.

One dish premiering at the café is the Oh Oh Serrano, which is a “flavor fest on a grilled Brussels wafel with serrano ham, asiago cheese, & fig spread.” Another is the 2^nd Street Salmon Special, which loads your Brussels wafel with smoked salmon, capers, red onion, and lemon-dill sour cream.

These join things familiar to truck patrons, like the wafel with pulled pork, and the wafel with Bauernschinken ham, Raclette cheese, and scallions. Also things like the World’s Fair wafel, topped with strawberries, whipped cream, and powdered sugar, just like the ones that were the hit of the ’64 fair.

My mother never stocked Asiago cheese or lemon-dill sour cream, let alone Bauernschinken ham or pulled pork. So I ordered waffles and ice cream. I chose chocolate ice cream on a Brussels wafel. I knew it wouldn’t match Breyers on a Downyflake. But it came remarkably close.

Still, at least in New York, Belgian waffles have a checkered history. They’ve never had a golden moment like, say, Belgian fries. Over a decade ago I wrote about a new place called Bulgin’ Waffles Café. It was soon toast. Then again, its special was the Hot Waffle in a Bag.

More recently, there was a place called Go For a Bite, whose two specialties were its  “Original Belgium Waffles” and its Cream Puffs. It, too, went up in smoke. Curiously, it has been replaced by a restaurant that serves only oatmeal, which is called, suitably, OatMeals.

Acccording to Sophie Grant, the manager of Wafels & Dinges, waffles are a tough sell largely because of Breyers and Downyflake. “It’s one of those meals people take for granted,” she explained. “You can get them at any diner and have them at home in the freezer.”

“What sets ours apart is the quality,” she added. “It’s as close to a real Belgian waffle as you can get. We chose one thing to do really well.” That choice was made by Thomas DeGeest, the Wafels & Dinges founder, who sold his first wafel in 2007 from a 1968 Chevy truck.

Thomas’s triumphs since then have included popularizing spekuloos spread, a Belgian topping that looks like peanut butter and tastes like a gingerbread man.

Awhile ago I got it on a Liège wafel from a Wafels & Dinges truck.

I’m trying to get my mother to deem that another official meal.

Get off the street at Wafels & Dinges, 209 East Second Street, between avenues B and C, in New York City.

WHEN ONLY A DOUGHNUT WILL DO, NURSE ONE AT THE DONUT PUB, THE CITY'S CLASSIC DOUGHNUT SHOP! IT'S AMONG THE DOZENS OF RESTAURANTS, SHOPS, AND BARS SPOTLIGHTED IN "DISCOVERING VINTAGE NEW YORK," THE FIRST AND ONLY BOOK TO COLLECT ALL THE CLASSICS! NOW AN AMAZON BEST SELLER!

Old New York: A Sad Last Look at What's Left of Big Nick's

By Mitch Broder

It was clear almost immediately that I was not going to be getting a hamburger.

And yet I stayed. Surely someone would show up and say it was all a mistake.

I'm never in the last four stages of grief. I enter denial and I stay there. This applies to the loss of places as much as to the loss of people. So when I visited Big Nick’s Burger Joint & Pizza Joint a few days after its closing, I was sure that it would be coming back. Despite all that crap in my booth.

Big Nick’s is the joint that had more character in its 28-page menu than most restaurants in New York today have in their 28-day lifespans. Ironically, for all its earthiness, it gave the Upper West Side class. It closed last week because its space can now be rented for the price of 10,000 hamburgers a month.

Nevertheless, Big Nick — ever the gracious host — invited me in, even if, for the first time, I would have to leave hungry. I roamed the ruins, unsure what I craved more, the earthiness or a hamburger. It didn’t matter. Neither one could have existed without the other.

The earthiness included framed photographs of mostly stars of the future, and little signs for selections like the Sumo Burger (“Over One Pound [1 LB.] of Meat”). The hamburgers included 60 varieties among which was the Sumo, although, if you were going strictly by weight, that one should have counted as two.

Nick always embraced his jointhood. He put quotes on the back of the menu like: “Big Nick’s is a 24-hour dump that … inspires affection.” His place was a roadside diner, except that the road was Broadway. On his tables, there was never a laptop. On his TVs, there were always Three Stooges.

Nick is actually Demetrios Niko Imirziades, who arrived from Athens in 1961 to make his Broadway debut. He washed dishes. But he also diligently attended restaurant school and worked his way up to manager at the coffee shop that he would buy in 1964.

He renamed it The Burger Joint (now the name of the unconnected joint at Le Parker Meridien). A few years later, he unveiled the Big Nick burger in response to the Big Mac. In 1976, he renamed the place Big Nick’s. The name was accurate. Nick had once excelled in discus and shot put.

Through the years, Nick has opened and closed about a dozen other joints. One was Big Nick’s on 71^st Street, which still exists but is no longer his. The last to go, before the flagship, was the nearby Niko’s Mediterranean Grill & Bistro, which closed in 2011. It had been inspired by his mother’s cooking.

I thought of all this as I trudged past the now burgerless grill, the now empty stools, and the now Stoogeless television sets. I thought of it as I gazed at the corner booth where I once sat with Nick, when he told me that it was the booth in which he’d had a heart attack thirty years ago.

Now, before I left, I spoke with Nick outside. He seemed confident that he’d be opening another place, around 20 blocks up. “It’ll be a little bit more limited menu,” he said. “It’ll be a combination of what I sold at Niko’s and what I sold at Big Nick’s.”

“I will know in September if something’s happening, and if it doesn’t work out, maybe we’ll try something else,” he said. “Nothing is set a hundred percent.”

Except for this: The old Big Nick’s will be back. I know it. No need for anger, bargaining, or depression.

And definitely no need for acceptance.

Big Nick’s was on Broadway at 77^th Street. I’ll let you know when it comes back.

VISIT THE CITY’S OTHER VINTAGE SPOTS BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE. FIND THEM ALL IN THE NEW BOOK “DISCOVERING VINTAGE NEW YORK.” IT COVERS OVER 75 PLACES THAT TAKE YOU BACK IN TIME. IT INCLUDES THE WHOLE STORY OF BIG NICK’S.

Old New York: Catch the Cool Cats at Bleecker Street Records

By Mitch Broder

Creeper and Scuzzball apparently will be moving to a new store, but that shouldn’t stop you from paying a call on them while they’re at the old store. At the old store, after all, you always know where you can find them. In the new store, at least at the start, they might actually get up.

Creeper and Scuzzball are the languid cats of Bleecker Street Records, one of the few consequential record stores left in New York. It’s been said to be closing, due to the typical rent challenges of city stores. But credible sources tell me it’s moving, probably in the fall.

It’s moving, they say, to the former site of another record store — 186 West Fourth Street, once the home of Disc-O-Rama. Disc-O-Rama, which has had several stores, is now just at 44 West Eighth Street. It, too, carries CDs and LPs — but not with the festiveness of Bleecker Street.

At Bleecker Street Records, the main attractions are the walls. There aren’t any. At least not that you can see. If they are there, they are concealed by hundreds of beguiling albums, which recall the joys that were once a part of a hunt for musical treasure.

They include rarities by the likes of the Beatles and Buddy Holly, and oddities by the likes of Carroll O’Connor and Zero Mostel. This may the only place in the world that displays an LP by the Detergents, who answered the bizarre Shangri-Las hit “Leader of the Pack” with their bizarrer hit, “Leader of the Laundromat.”

The albums provide education along with entertainment. They are festooned with labels that tell you things you never thought you could know. A formidable example is found on the label for the Japanese pressing of an album intriguingly titled “The Best of Cheryl Ladd”:

“Did you know this former ‘Charlie’s Angel’ was also the singing voice behind the animated cartoon ‘Josie & the Pussycats,’ and she was very popular in Japan where she enjoyed a successful career and released many Japanese Market only releases!!! Well, it’s all true!!!”

And as if that isn’t enough, the label makes sure to add: “Japanese pressing/Best Quality! ... Immaculate Condition!!!! This Gatefold LP comes with a huge color poster of Cheryl … Va Va Voom!!!!”

Below the displays, the place is packed with recorded music, much of which you’re unlikely to find anywhere else. It spans not just rock and pop, but everything from country to Broadway, with a dash of Noël Coward, Jimmy Durante, Chad Everett, and Rosey Grier.

Topping it off — almost literally — are Creeper and Scuzzball, two big gray furry meat loaves who doze on boxes by the stairs to the basement. They hardly move and they rarely respond. Evidently, this gives them mystique. One of the store’s best-selling items is the Creeper and Scuzzball T-shirt.

Inevitably, there’s some whining online about the record prices. They can be high. But so can prices on any other antiques. Besides, the bins in the basement are full of surprising bargains. And if you’re looking for “The Best of Cheryl Ladd,” how many options do you have?

The store, more or less as it is, dates to 1972. It was called The Golden Disc, with “disc” referring to vinyl. It changed hands in the mid-nineties and was redubbed Bleecker Street. The new store settled in just in time to enjoy the golden age of compact discs.

Today it counts on record hounds willing to pay the price, says Rob Lecuyer, one of the store managers. “People come to New York to spend money, and this is a real tourist street,” he says. “Some people complain about prices. Other people drop thousands in one sitting.”

West Fourth is also a tourist street, so it seems like a good bet. And that’s good for New Yorkers — at least the ones who still like to hunt.

“Anything and everything will sell,” Rob says. “What you think is crap, somebody else is like: ‘I’ve been looking for this my whole life.’”

Take a spin at Bleecker Street Records, 239 Bleecker Street, between Carmine and Leroy streets, New York City.

FOR MORE RARE RECORDS, VISIT HOUSE OF OLDIES, ON CARMINE STREET, JUST AROUND THE CORNER FROM BLEECKER STREET RECORDS. AND READ ABOUT HOUSE OF OLDIES — AND DOZENS OF OTHER CLASSIC SPOTS — IN THE AMAZON BEST SELLER “DISCOVERING VINTAGE NEW YORK”!