Thursday, May 27, 2010

j'adore le clic


One of my favorite new shops in the Big Apple was Clic Bookshop & Gallery.  The presence, attitude and fantastic conversation with the very French, Gilou, made the experience all the better!


Art books galore.  The unusual, the oversized, the out-of-print.  Every photography book you can imagine.  All the while, you're surrounded by this gallery of huge prints that ask you to walk right inside them (and Gilou doesn't dissuade you one bit, au contraire!, she encourages it!).  I'm a big photo fanatic (believing once upon a time that RK and I would be photographers for a living, the love of film still hangs on) and I enjoy talking with others who are, as well.

In this "new" New York, you encounter quite a few "precious" shops that believe their own hype and can't say 'hello' or 'hows it going?' over a pair of those $1,000 jeans.  You're asking to much of them, stop expecting it!

So, to walk into Clic--placed in the hot new extended-Soho neighborhood, housed in a regal looking restored warehouse-- and encounter, not only beauty, but kindness, as well... j'adore clic!

****

And, on the other end of the spectrum, from the world of old-school:  After 34 years of serving NYC, Empire Diner, on 10th Ave, served their last meal on May 15th and they were moving what was left out to the curb.

Cruising down the street to hop on the Highline, my friend Sherief and I passed by the now-closed Empire Diner as they were clearing out the rest of their goods.  We stood around and talked to one of the owners and the original piano player, who played there the night it opened.  As we were standing there, we noticed a table of silver cake stands and ironstone platters.  They seemed strangely out of place and we wondered what they were doing with them.

Ah, take em, the owner said to us, you missed all the really good stuff.

To us, this stuff seemed plenty good.  We could own a piece of history. 
And now I own three:  A cake stand, an ironstone platter, and before we walked away, the piano player called after us,
hey, take this tile tooit was the original Empire Diner tile.
and a little square black tile.

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