Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Time Machine

The Mysterious Time Machine has left 14th Street--and moved south. Located for years on the second floor, behind dusty windows printed with the words MEMORABILIA and NOSTALGIA, the shop looked like it had been there forever.


the old space

The large room was packed with cardboard boxes filled with vintage magazines--movie magazines, girlie magazines--and comic books. The walls were covered with posters and magazines, faces from the past. I loved going up there and wading through the ephemera. (I love an odd second-story business, climbing the murky staircase to what feels like a secret spot above the city crowd.)

On a recent trip, I was met with a sign that said, "We moved." I looked up. The place has been cleared out, white-washed, the ceiling hung with cold track lighting. Imagine the wonderful nail salon to come!



I walked to the new address, a basement spot on 6th Avenue, next to Bigelow's drugstore. You walk down now, not up, into a much smaller room.


the new spot

I know I'm supposed be grateful that they were able to find a new space, and I am. Still, everything that makes this city interesting, if it's not vanishing completely, keeps getting crammed into ever smaller spaces, pushed to the margins, relegated to basements.

So I'm grateful, but bitter.

I liked that big room filled with those super-saturated mid-century colors, where you got a good feeling that expanded your insides, and where you could buy a magazine or a comic book and read it downstairs while enjoying a cup of coffee and cruller at the Donut Pub


Previously:

Time Machine
Donut Pub

7 comments:

Tommy Raiko said...

For what it's worth, the New York Times did an article on this store a few years ago that really captures what makes it special. Glad to know this store continues, even if in a smaller space (and in another variation of the several related names Roger's used over the years...)

(Plus, there's something about the idea of going downstairs to the shop that strikes a nostalgic chord. Maybe it's invoking a memory of the erstwhile basement location that Gallagher's Paper Collectibles used to have way back when...)

Anonymous said...

Glad to hear that they moved! I went past on the bus the other day and saw that the space was cleared. Usually I would be shocked by something like this, but after seeing so much of this over the last decade it hardly surprised me. The few times I went in there over the last year or so, I knew it was only a matter of time before they were gone. Glad they found a new location. Can't wait to see what kind of vapid culture killing entity will arrive in the old space.

Mitch said...

On the other hand, in their new location I might actually notice them when I walk by, whereas I am sure only people who knew they were there went in before.

laura r. said...

please include the locations when something vanishes. was this east or west 14st? i spent much time there but never noticed the shop.

Unknown said...

Thanks for pointing out this little gem. I spend much time in the area so will make sure to visit this "vanishing" spot soon

MarthaG said...

Just discovered them. So nice.

snooze said...

I went to the old shop once on a trip to New York, it was a great little shop and I got some gems there, it is a shame that it moved as i felt I was stepping into New York history. I'm quite sad that I'll never see that dusty old comic shop again.