NYC Cups

Last weekend, when I ordered a chocolate egg cream at Ray's Candy, it inexplicably came in a Wolfgang Puck coffee cup (click to view) instead of the usual Greek-design "We Are Happy to Serve You" cup so emblematic of the city. I thought little of it, figured he got some deal on cheap cups, finished my egg cream, and tossed the cup away.

Last summer's egg cream at Ray's:


Remarkably, the next day, City Room solved the mystery, telling the story behind the recent proliferation of random coffee cups of New York. Jennifer 8. Lee explains, "much of the eclectic assortment of cups are part of a lively underground market of what are called 'misprints'....they are overruns, discontinued prints, leftovers from promotions, or the results of cup-using vendors who go bankrupt, leaving the manufacturer with unwanted cups."


photo: Angela Jimenez for The New York Times

Aside from Wolfgang Puck, the random cups advertise banks, football stadiums, soft drinks, and pharmaceuticals. Aside from my feelings about ubiquitous advertising, I am now left to worry that the iconic "We Are Happy to Serve You" cup is about to vanish from the city.

I am not alone. Some years ago, an artist named Rodger Stevens had the same concern. As the Times wrote in 2005, "Horrified, Mr. Stevens began assiduously collecting--or, more precisely, not discarding--as many different cups as he could find. Even after realizing that his panic had been premature, he continued adding to his collection. Today he has about 100 cups..."


photo: Angela Jimenez for The New York Times

In that article, Mr. Stevens had some rather eloquent things to say about the cup, so I will let him say them:

"These little cups are its distinctive birthmarks. They are all little bits of proof that this is New York and not someplace else."

Having them replaced by upscale coffee shop logos (his fear at the time) is "something akin to plastic surgery, an eradication of blemishes that might denote age or a certain, lower status."


photo: Angela Jimenez for The New York Times

The Times article also tell us, that the cup's "design dates to the mid-1960's, when the Sherri Cup Company of Kensington, Conn., designed it to appeal to the hundreds of Greek coffee shops then operating in the city. The cup was named Anthora, a muddled version of Amphora, the Greek word for the ancient jars depicted in its design."

The design changed over time, but stayed identifiable. Says the 2005 article, "Greek motifs continue to adorn up to 40 percent of 10-ounce cardboard cups in New York." But that was then. Today, we are besieged by "misprint" cups. In the near future, will the Anthora cup only come in ceramic? Or as coin purses?

As Anthora cups disappear from the streets of New York, you can still buy the cup in bulk here. It might be time to stock up.