Oy gavelt! Was at P & S Fabrics on Broadway near Franklin to get some findings that one just can't find anywhere else . . . and they had those banners hanging all over the place: Going Out of Business, Liquidating*, etc.
This fabric store had EVERYTHING - fake monkey fur, beads, grommet setters, everything . . . it was an incredible resource. How much stretchy sequin fabric have I bought there?
Closed on Saturdays, this place was an old school New York Yiddish store . . . the guys who worked there forever, never batted an prayer shawl when a bleached-haired, finger-nail painted, eye-liner-residued, draggoon (moi)marched up to the counter with an arm full of pink flouresent fun fur. P&S is ike Yentyl meets Dragzilla, and a customer is a customer.
I forget which stitch-withch drag queen first reccomended it to me. Ethyl or Agosto or maybe Madame . . . but 2 out of 3 of those legends are gone now too.
But now with P&S's demise, I don't know where I'll go when I need some thingamajib. I never needed another place; they had everything. I wonder where Messy Carly Simon is going to go to by her camel-hair cloth now? Oh dear!
Speaking of charming old NYC, did anyone see the article on Holiday Coctail Lounge in the Times on Sunday, City Section. That place is pickled . . . and will last as long as the owner does (but it will be a Chipolte Mexican before long).
Part of "charming" old NY was that there was a certain level of decrepitude to the charm . . . you know the floors slanted, the people working at the joint had something a little off perhaps -- sort of like they were from a Passolini or Fellini film . . . and there was some sort of left over energy from the 1940s gilded-age of NYC that managed to survive after the gilding wore off . . . I have been trying to put my finger on it.
I started thinking that NYC today is all hurry and hussle, but no NYC has always been hurry & hussle - but what I realized was that the finesse is missing. There used to be a dance to the the hurry an hussle when one was weaving one's way down a busy sidewalk.
The horror stories that barrrell down the sidewalk today - four abreast- don't get the dance . . . I remember thinking that walking through the streets of NYC was like shuttleing through a giant loom and we were all weaving this beautiful busy fabric . . .
but when you take thousands upon thousands of SUV drivers, bring them to the city -- one can't expect them to make nice as pedestrians. They are graceless energy hogs running over whatever gets in their damn way. Oy vey.
* Note To Sweetie: No, "Liquidating" does not mean peeing on the guy who buys your dinner.
xo Haps