Antiques Garage

VANISHING

We've been hearing about the end of Chelsea's Antiques Garage flea market since 2007. And now, after lost leases, new leases, sales, and financial acrobatics, the end has finally come.



Crain's reports: "After two decades of business and several last-minute reprieves, Chelsea's Antiques Garage has finally set a closure date. The flea market, which began in a parking lot on West 25th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues in 1993, will operate its last weekend on June 28. The site will be developed into a hotel tower."



I have often enjoyed the Antiques Garage, but will let Larry Baumhor from Larry Baumhor Photography's Facebook page wax eloquent about it, as he does so well:

"The Garage has a legacy for collectors and dealers that will never be duplicated. When you walked up and down the ramps at the Garage, you entered a grimy, dilapidated, concrete building that seeped into your pores with its lack of ventilation, and no heat, or air conditioning. You felt a voltage of electricity, with endless possibilities, anticipation, and excitement. You became alive! Your troubles evaporated as you gasped for air in the summer, shivered in the winter, and breathed in carbon monoxide from the cars unloading and packing. Chips and chunks of concrete fell from the ceilings and walls, rats scampered across the floor, and on snowy and rainy days water dripped from the ceiling from the cars parked on the third floor. And yet this was our home, and this was our family. The buyers and sellers were eagerly seduced by the romance of nostalgia and the lure of discovery."

"It was entertaining theatre, a community of artistic and creative people sharing a common bond, a cultural phenomenon. It’s where eccentricities were nurtured, cherished, and admired."


photo: Larry Baumhor

Larry Baumhor takes photos of the people of the Garage and features them on his excellent Facebook page. ("Like" it and see many more there.)


photo of Lynn Yaeger: Larry Baumhor


photo: Larry Baumhor

It's as if all of New York's most glorious freaks, artists, and outcasts, banished and vanished since the late 1990s, re-emerge from hiding each weekend to walk and strut and shop the Garage in all their finery.

Now where will they go when the Garage is gone, replaced by yet another glass box, another hotel for tourists?


photo: Larry Baumhor


photo: Larry Baumhor

And how does a Chelsea real estate broker respond to this sad news, to the loss of yet another place beloved by eccentrics and artists, a place embracing and strange, original and wild?

"This whole area is rapidly changing," said one Aaron Gavios to Crain's. "Schlock is on the way out, and the trendy clothing boutique and restaurant scene is on the way in."