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!

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”!

Old New York: Discover It All in "Discovering Vintage New York"

By Mitch Broder

Walk by the Streit’s matzo factory and get handed a hot piece of matzo as you pass the open window of the matzo-cooling room.

Sit down at Marchi’s Restaurant and get served the one and only meal they’ve been serving there every night for the past 70 years.

Marchi's.

Slip into Marie’s Crisis Café and get amused by people singing show tunes around a piano before you break down and start singing along.

I can’t live around such opportunities and not tell people about them. That’s why I’ve written a book called “Discovering Vintage New York.”

About two years ago, I started writing Vintage New York the Blog. But long before that, I dreamed of writing Vintage New York the Book. And that’s just what I did — dream. But as vintage spots kept disappearing, I knew I’d better get to work while the dream could still come true.

The result is the first and only book to collect all the Manhattan restaurants, shops, cafés, and nightspots that take you back in time. It covers more than 75, and it spotlights 50 with profiles that tell you what each place is like now and how it got that way.

Katz's.

My blog, as its subhead notes, allows for “justifiable detours.” But the book travels exclusively on Vintage Road. All the spots are at least 50 years old (or very close to it). And all the spots, in some genuine way, evoke a bygone era.

The subjects range from the Café Carlyle to Katz’s Delicatessen, and from The Four Seasons to The Donut Pub. I spent hours at every one of them and interviewed people at every one of them. I wanted to get each spot’s history straight and to convey each spot’s unique charm.

A friend who once worked in publicity has called the book an “adventure map,” and though I have to leave terms like that to publicists, I secretly think she’s right. No one I’ve met along the way has known about all of these places, let alone been to all of them. Or even to a lot of them.

I add this in the book’s introduction:

I chose places that some of us see as the heart of New York — the ones that created the city that’s squeezing the likes of them out. When places like these close, people who always meant to visit them start grieving. I wrote this book to save you some grief.

More than that, I wrote it to tempt you to visit these spots for fun. They are precious places, and they almost always leave you with precious memories. I don’t want to say how many vintage places have disappeared since I started dreaming. I’ll just say that no matter what you think, nothing lasts forever.

I tell more about the book in the introduction, and I thank the many people who helped to make it possible in the acknowledgments. Still, I’m compelled to shamelessly steal my own words again, and repeat the first paragraph of those acknowledgments:

The people who most directly made this book possible are the people who own, manage, and otherwise tend to the places featured in it. Thanks to everyone who invited me in, showed me around, told me stories, and kept the places going long enough for me to show up.

And now I also thank The New York Post for introducing the book to New York City with a big splash, in last week’s Sunday paper. It was appropriate, since The Post is the oldest newspaper in the city, and yet it was nimble enough to scoop me on a story about myself.

Find what's really cool in “Discovering Vintage New York,” published today by the Globe Pequot Press. It makes a great gift. I’m not just saying that.

Old New York: The Broadway Restaurant is Still Just the Ticket

By Mitch Broder

The menu says “Photos Are For Suggestion Only,” which explains why the Broadway Restaurant does not look like the Parthenon. But it is a temple — a temple of New York short-order cookery. It’s the perfect place to nestle while awaiting a dawdling New York spring.

It’s one of the last of the bygone Manhattan coffee shops, the kind with pastrami and eggs for breakfast and meat loaf parmigiana for dinner. The kind where the pastrami and eggs is $6.65 including potatoes and toast, and the meat loaf parmigiana is $12.95 including potatoes, vegetables, and soup.

It’s a place to find a sumptuous five-dollar burger, and to chase it with an intriguing five-dollar “Milk Shake with an Egg.” It’s a place where your waitress calls you “honey” and sounds like she means it. It’s a genuinely homey place. There are so few left.

I felt at home when I came in alone and saw the signs that said “Seating of 2 Or More in Booths,” and the waitress promptly seated me in a booth. I felt at home when the waitress took the time to help me choose my short order. I felt loved when she called me “honey.” I felt married when she called me “dear.”

I had the burger, which beats ones that cost three times as much, though I postponed the Milk Shake with an Egg so I’d still have it to look forward to. And I was not alone, after all. I dined with Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe, and Sophia Loren, who smiled at me from the wall. It was the perfect lunch.

My waitress was Ann Taylor, who told me how, when the prices go up, she changes them on the menu signs with red nail polish. “Stuff goes up for like a nickel,” she says. “It’s so much work for a nickel.” But she knows it’s worth it. The signs are among the things that make the place homey.

They date to around 1970, which is when Broadway opened, says Angelo Arsenis, who bought the place in 1980. He chose to keep the signs. He had to keep the wagon-wheel lights. “I tried to change the lamps,” he explains. “People complained. I put ’em back up.”

Most important, he kept the horseshoe counter, which evokes an old-time doughnut shop, which is what Broadway reportedly used to be. Customers say that in the sixties it was part of the Twin Donut chain. Back then, doughnut shops were supposed to be pleasant.

Angelo figured that a coffee shop also ought to be pleasant. And he figured that his ought to be homey — not only for you, but for him.

“This is my house. This is my second house,” he says. “When I leave my house and come here, I feel like I’m in my house.”

Settle into Broadway Restaurant & Coffee Shop, 2664 Broadway, between 101^st and 102^nd streets, in New York City.

  

Old New York: The Carnegie Deli Launches Its Congenial Stage

By Mitch Broder

Next time you sit down at the Carnegie Delicatessen, brace yourself for what may come with your big sandwich:

A big smile.

After 75 years, the place has decided to start being nice. It’s enough to make you ask for your money back before you start eating.

The Carnegie, which is world-famous for its morbidly obese sandwiches, is also famous for having them hauled to your table by someone who’s crabby. But it has a new COO, and he says that crabby is out: “That may have been cute when it was old Jewish waiters back in the sixties, but it’s not the way it is anymore.”

The new COO is Robert Eby, and his niceness policy is the third in a recent series of shocks to hit the deli right in its kishkas. First, its lifelong rival, the nearby Stage Delicatessen, closed up. Then, its 20-year manager, Sandy Levine, stepped down. Oy.

Those two consecutive events prepared it for anything — except this. A Jewish deli without grumpiness is like a day with sunshine.

The Carnegie has reveled in its rudeness. It knew that people had come to expect it. Its insults were featured in a souvenir video that it made in the nineties. In the video — called “What a Pickle!” — a crusty waitress peppers her patrons with lines like: “You want me to smile? Did you come here to eat or see teeth?”

The place won’t go schmaltzy, Robert says: “We’re just gonna warm it up.” That’s reasonable when you’re getting seventeen bucks for a pastrami sandwich. But usually it’s competition that triggers such a reversal. With the Stage gone, you’d think that they’d let themselves get crabbier than ever.

Then again, the demise is a good reason to cheer up. The Stage was a relentless source of crabbiness for years.

Both delis opened in 1937, but the Stage Deli made its debut at 48^th Street and Broadway. Five years later, it moved to Seventh Avenue between 53^rd and 54^th streets. The Carnegie was on Seventh Avenue between 54^th and 55^th streets.

The Carnegie’s founders, Izzie and Ida Orgel, sold the deli to Max Hudes. He got the sobriquet “Carnegie Max,” but that didn’t get him the crowds. The Stage, too, had a Max — Max Asnas — and he’d already made his Stage a star. For over three decades, the Carnegie was relegated to second fiddle.

It stayed there till 1976, when Milton Parker and Leo Steiner took over. Steiner hired his brother Sam to cure their own meats in the basement. In 1979, Mimi Sheraton, in The New York Times, named the Carnegie one of the three best places for corned beef and pastrami. She didn’t name the Stage.

But the day the story came out, the Carnegie’s line reached to the Stage. Though they’d stocked up, the owners ran out of pastrami by 3 in the afternoon. In a single day, they had finally eclipsed their competitor. Mimi Sheraton had done for the Carnegie what Hugh Grant would do for Jay Leno.

Leo Steiner became the deli doyen that Max Asnas had once been. He courted stars, catered to comics, and kept making the sandwiches bigger. When Steiner died in 1987, Parker did his best to take over that role. In the video he appears in a bow tie, lugging around a giant pickle.

In 1993, he brought in Sandy Levine, who had been working in apparel but who was a natural in a deli. Sandy honed the art of abusing customers just enough so that they enjoyed it. He had business cards that said “MBD.” It stood for “Married Boss’s Daughter.”

The daughter is Marian Harper Levine, whose father was Milton Parker. She is still in charge, and she admittedly has little to be crabby about. She owns the Carnegie’s building, and she’s getting not only her own customers but also the Stage’s. “Now they have no choice,” she observes.

The staff will still be playful, Robert says. But only to a point: “We want to let our guests know that they’re appreciated.”

In other words, don’t expect to get that waitress in the video, who bade her customers a touching farewell with: “You’re not paying rent here. It’s time to go.”

Have a nice day at the Carnegie Delicatessen & Restaurant, 854 Seventh Avenue, between 54th and 55th streets, in New York City.

Old New York: Christmas is Served, at Rolf's German Restaurant

By Mitch Broder

The angels appeared to be tooting, but there was no way I could have heard them, what with all those other people chattering away on our branch.

Still, I couldn’t help liking my afternoon in the tree, even if I couldn’t help expecting an icicle to fall and puncture my head.

Anyone who will listen knows that I get sick of the holiday season around the time that the first bag of candy corn arrives at Duane Reade. I blame this on years of working at newspapers where every story written after Labor Day began: “Christmas came early for...”

I used to look forward to going to, say, Rockefeller Center. Now I almost look forward to not going to it. But Bob Maisano said his place is different. He said I must come see it. And he was right. Christmas came early for me, at Rolf’s German Restaurant.

Rolf’s is not a restaurant with a Christmas tree. Rolf’s is a Christmas tree with a restaurant. It is a place packed with ornaments, lights, fake pine, fake ice, and fake snow, such that you don’t feel like you’re around a tree; you feel like one’s around you.

The dominant feature are the ball ornaments, in clusters of red and gold. Also the icicle ornaments, aiming squarely at your head. Also the tiny lights, of which Bob says there are 85,000. Every feature is dominant. Everything glistens or glitters or glows.

Walk around, if you can, and you’ll pick out the dolls and the sleighs and the tooting and fiddling angels, and maybe the three Santas swigging Merlot. And none of it’s junk. That is, none of it’s cheap. Bob says that the thousands of pieces are mostly nineteenth-century German antiques.

Last year, I chatted with Bob on a sultry summer’s day, when the crowd at Rolf’s, besides me, consisted of Bob. When it’s hot, people withdraw from jaeger schnitzel and smoked bratwurst. That’s why Rolf’s needed Christmas. That’s why Christmas there lasts for three months.

It wasn’t like that in 1968, when Rolf Hoffman opened the place. Back then, the patrons were satisfied with glowering waitresses in dirndls. It was Ben House who decided to fortify the holiday décor when he and Bob took over, after Rolf died in 1981.

Ben started off cheap. Bob says his taste ran to dollar-store silver garlands and animated polar bears swigging martinis. “You wouldn’t know if it was a restaurant or a store that sold Christmas decorations,” Bob says. “He loved Christmas decorations. … It seemed like the business was secondary to that.”

Ben died in 1996, and Christmas fell to Bob. He bypassed the dollar stores in favor of New England antique barns. He added stuff each year, and his tree became a destination. “If we didn’t have this Christmas here,” he says, “we wouldn’t have this business here.”

Rolf’s perked me up, at least until I hear “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” And perking people up, Bob says, justifies the six weeks of installation.

“Maybe they had a bad time somewhere. Maybe they had a bad day at work. And at least they walked in here and had a moment of happiness.”

Find happiness at Rolf’s German Restaurant, at 281 Third Avenue, between 22^nd and 23^rd streets, in New York City.