You know you are getting old when:

[LizzieMaine]

With the end of "coat and tie" restaurants has come the end of jokes about gravy-spotted ties and soup-stained lapels. It's always sad when a dependable source of material dries up.

Long ago I knew a guy who worked as a maitre'd in a restaurant with airs. You knew it was high class because it called itself "The Bistro," and he had to wear a tux every night to work. But he only had the one tux, and it was up to him to keep it sharp. So every afternoon before he went in to work, he'd sit down with a can of black shoe polish and a rag, and he'd buff the lapels until they gleamed. He looked distinguished, but he always gave off the lingering aroma of Kiwi Parade Gloss.

 

[tonyb]

...
Long ago I knew a guy who worked as a maitre'd in a restaurant with airs. You knew it was high class because it called itself "The Bistro," and he had to wear a tux every night to work. But he only had the one tux, and it was up to him to keep it sharp. So every afternoon before he went in to work, he'd sit down with a can of black shoe polish and a rag, and he'd buff the lapels until they gleamed. He looked distinguished, but he always gave off the lingering aroma of Kiwi Parade Gloss.

There’s airs, and then there’s airs.

There’s a point where a restaurant’s “theme” becomes a bit much, no matter the number of dollar signs appearing in the newspaper reviews. Indeed, sometimes it’s the more down-market eateries that lay it on a bit too thick.

Case in point (which I’ve alluded to before) is a diner about half a mile from here. The food ain’t bad, and the structure is a genuine stainless steel diner. The tile work is very good, the fixtures are period-correct, etc. But the effect is ruined by the Elvis and Marilyn standees, the airbrush images of ’57 Chevys and hot-rodded ’32 Ford Coupes, the little plaques at the counter reading “Reserved for Frankie Blue Eyes” or Sammy Davis Jr. or Dino or Jerry Lewis, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

But, they’re doing a steady trade. So all that saccharine kitsch I find objectionable is doing little apparent harm to the bottom line.

 

[LizzieMaine]

This is something that bothers me a lot about not just restaurants but modern culture in general -- it's so friggin' *self-conscious.* It's not enough to simply "be," to simply exist as what you are, you have to have an overriding theme to make it clear at a glance to any onlooker what you're trying to convey. You can't just have a neighborhood greasy spoon, it's got to be self-consciously a "neighborhood greasy spoon," with waitresses in twee uniforms and pink Keds, carefully trained to chew gum and call you "hon."

If you have a *real* neighborhood greasy spoon, no quotation marks, in your neighborhood -- the kind where the two eggs any style come without a portion of smirking irony -- cherish it, because it won't be around long. Eventually some MBA type will "give up the rat race" to move to your neighborhood and fulfill their lifelong dream of running a "neighborhood greasy spoon." The food will get fussy, the decor will become exaggerated, and the prices will double. And you'll end up eating breakfast at Dunkies -- whatever else you can say about them, at least they're sincere.

This type of thing has happened to my entire town over the past twenty years or so. We're no longer a coastal Maine fishing town. We're a "coastal Maine fishing town," and I hate it.

 

[tonyb]

This is something that bothers me a lot about not just restaurants but modern culture in general -- it's so friggin' *self-conscious.* It's not enough to simply "be," to simply exist as what you are, you have to have an overriding theme to make it clear at a glance to any onlooker what you're trying to convey. You can't just have a neighborhood greasy spoon, it's got to be self-consciously a "neighborhood greasy spoon," with waitresses in twee uniforms and pink Keds, carefully trained to chew gum and call you "hon."

If you have a *real* neighborhood greasy spoon, no quotation marks, in your neighborhood -- the kind where the two eggs any style come without a portion of smirking irony -- cherish it, because it won't be around long. Eventually some MBA type will "give up the rat race" to move to your neighborhood and fulfill their lifelong dream of running a "neighborhood greasy spoon." The food will get fussy, the decor will become exaggerated, and the prices will double. And you'll end up eating breakfast at Dunkies -- whatever else you can say about them, at least they're sincere.

This type of thing has happened to my entire town over the past twenty years or so. We're no longer a coastal Maine fishing town. We're a "coastal Maine fishing town," and I hate it.

Tell it, sister.

It’s akin to slumming, and, like slumming, it’s insulting to those who live here. For us, this way of life isn’t a diversion or a “second career” or anything we can afford to walk away from when the novelty wears off.

 

[tonyb]

I’m reminded of a place in Seattle that opened in the early 1980s in what I think was an existing hole-in-the-wall eatery. It was on the ground level of a building near Pioneer Square. It was named the Western Coffee Shop by its new proprietress, because (it’s safe to presume) it was on Western Avenue.

I was quite peripherally connected to that proprietress and her clientele — the “theater people” who operated or worked at or frequently attended the productions of the Pioneer Square Theater, which was going great guns at the time, eventually growing to simultaneously stage productions at three different venues in the district. My tenuous connection was via my then-girlfriend, who had come west with her old college roommate, who was among the actors at the theater company.

The proprietress (who, it ought be noted, was never anything but pleasant to me) played up the “Western” theme, going all cowboy on the menu and the signage and whatnot.

I recall the proprietress asking my opinion of the place shortly after its opening. Food was fine, I told her, but she recoiled just a bit when I offered that it was a tad on the pricey side. I spared telling her I found the portions kinda skimpy. (Potatoes are cheap. Fill ’em up with the spuds and they’ll come back tomorrow.)

The restaurant is long time, as is that old girlfriend of mine. Turned out that she was in slumming mode herself; after a couple-three years she decamped for New Haven, to attend grad school at Yale.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Long ago...

Those were the days.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Typical german smalltown-walkaround:

Home - Doc - apothecary - home...

 

[LizzieMaine]

You know you're getting old when things you've enjoyed all your life just don't have it anymore.

I've always loved second-hand bookstores, and for over thirty years I've been going to one about an hour and a half up Route 1, a mammoth affair set up inside a converted poultry barn, and over the decades I've gotten some pretty good stuff there. I usually get up there at least once a summer, and I took yesterday off from work specifically to make that trip. And I found that it just didn't seem as enjoyable as it used to.

Part of it is simply physical. My vision has deteriorated to the point where browsing in a store is actually very difficult for me -- I can't see what's on the shelves unless I'm standing a couple inches away, and I can't scan across book titles like I used to. The fun of looking over every shelf for a rare title is now hard labor, and it saddens me greatly to realize this. You can browse online all you want, but there's nothing like the feel and the smell of being right there among the books -- but if you can't read the spines, there isn't much point, is there?

And the other disappointment is that the stuff they have more and more of just isn't what I want. When I started going there, the twenties and thirties were well-represented on their shelves, with plenty of rare stuff if you knew what you were looking for, and their back-issue magazine department was the best in New England. There was always something there I could use, and the prices were reasonable.

But now, the shelves are crowded more and more with stuff that just doesn't interest me -- 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. I went thru the Entertainment Biographies section, and found multiple identical unread copies of bios of Fran Drescher and Diana Ross -- but nothing at all that I'd want to own or read or be able to use. And while the magazine department was still reasonably well-stocked, the prices have become ridiculous. Since when is any copy of Life, the single most common "old magazine" in the world -- and they have multiple copies in stock of every issue -- worth $25? What the hell? $25 a copy for *Collier's*? Who, besides a handful of people here, even heard of Collier's? $20 for Time? $18 for Better Homes & Gardens? Seriously? Since when? Those titles were under $10 as recently as last summer, and I thought even that was a bit much given the supply versus the demand.

I did find a couple of things cheap and obscure enough to interest me -- a nice first-edition of a Robert Benchley for $5, because nobody there knows who Robert Benchley was, and a rare in-jacket copy of "Redder Than The Rose," a blistering collection of columns by New Masses humor columnist Robert Forsythe for $12. And for $5 a 1939 issue of "Ken" with a fascinating article on European Jewish refugees illegally entering the US via small boats from Cuba.

But I'm still left with an unhappy taste in my mouth from the experience. Maybe that was my last trip. I hate to think so, but when the fun is gone, why bother?

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ Understand and can only express my sympathy for your vision issues - "scanning" the shelves is part of the fun.

As a used booksstore fan, I, too, have noticed the shift toward the post-war decades (I'm have enthusiasm for the stuff up through the early '60s and then my interest drops off rapidly). My guess, the stores get a lot of their stocks from "estates" and the people passing away today probably had books more from the '50s on.

I'll start paying more attention to the old magazine prices and see if I notice a difference down here.

What I miss is - at least in NYC - the days when you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a neighborhood used book store and when one or two became "your" store. Now, there are a few left, but they don't feel neighborhoody, they feel "bigger" as the stores understand their new role is to attract the small percentage of the population that cares about used/old books versus when a used bookstore could be neighborhoody and quirky .

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yep. We had a shop like that right here in town, run by this gnomish, gnarled old man who could have come from Central Casting. I got a lot of great stuff there over the years, but last year he said he was retiring, and I guess he meant it, because the place never reopened this year. It's just sitting there, waiting to be cleaned out and turned into another ridiculous art gallery. Bah.

 

[3fingers]

I can still occasionally pick up a stack of Life, Colliers, etc. from the '40s to mid '50s for a couple dollars from our local auction house. There isn't huge interest in them here.They do a lot of estate sales there and I think Fading Fast is right, time moves on and many of the estate sales are now for people who were children in the time frame I am most interested in, hence their magazine stashes are increasingly from the 1960s or later.

 

[Fading Fast]

Yep. We had a shop like that right here in town, run by this gnomish, gnarled old man who could have come from Central Casting. I got a lot of great stuff there over the years, but last year he said he was retiring, and I guess he meant it, because the place never reopened this year. It's just sitting there, waiting to be cleaned out and turned into another ridiculous art gallery. Bah.

I can still occasionally pick up a stack of Life, Colliers, etc. from the '40s to mid '50s for a couple dollars from our local auction house. There isn't huge interest in them here.They do a lot of estate sales there and I think Fading Fast is right, time moves on and many of the estate sales are now for people who were children in the time frame I am most interested in, hence their magazine stashes are increasingly from the 1960s or later.

There's been an increase in the number of local bookstores in NYC (and from what I've read, around the country) in the last few years, but they aren't the kind we are talking about; instead, they are spiffed up "niche" stores with a narrow selection of mainly new or new copies of older titles targeted to the local demographic and the store will usually have other businesses inside them - a coffee or juice bar, some food, maybe some eclectic or small-brand clothing selection, etc., for sale - and might host local bands or speakers.

Hey, that's all good as it's better than no book stores, but I just can't get into them as, while I see people hanging out in them, I don't feel it. I look at the selection - as noted, targeted and not used - don't care about the non-book stuff and leave.

Oh, and there's no dust all around or old-book smell - the hallmarks of a good, comfortable used-book store that you can hang out in.

 

[GHT]

Yep. We had a shop like that right here in town, run by this gnomish, gnarled old man who could have come from Central Casting. I got a lot of great stuff there over the years, but last year he said he was retiring, and I guess he meant it, because the place never reopened this year. It's just sitting there, waiting to be cleaned out and turned into another ridiculous art gallery. Bah.

Art Gallery, you should be so lucky, the internet has decimated The High Street. In place of retail shops, that's real shops selling goods and wares, we get coffee shops/cafes, fast food takeaways, real estate shops, charity shops, betting shops, they are a mixture of betting on horse & greyhound racing as well as lottery tickets and electronic, one armed bandits. Community retailers like the high street bank or the post office are all disappearing. As for bookshops, they have become as rare as rocking horse droppings.

 

[Fading Fast]

Art Gallery, you should be so lucky, the internet has decimated The High Street. In place of retail shops, that's real shops selling goods and wares, we get coffee shops/cafes, fast food takeaways, real estate shops, charity shops, betting shops, they are a mixture of betting on horse & greyhound racing as well as lottery tickets and electronic, one armed bandits. Community retailers like the high street bank or the post office are all disappearing. As for bookshops, they have become as rare as rocking horse droppings.

This is funny, but NYC lost its OTB (Off-Track Betting) "parlors" several years ago as the state - get this - lost money on its monopoly on racetrack gambling. For every dollar gambled, the state kept about 18 cents (think about that, a guaranteed gross of 18 cents on every dollar) - the parlors looked like something out of East German (i.e., they put no money into them for decades), but they still had lines - but it turns out the salaries were so high (they were all political and union "payoff" jobs) that they still lost money. Basically, the state could not profitably run a legalized monopoly on gambling - UFB. Now, NYC has no racetrack betting parlors.

 

[tonyb]

One secondhand bookseller friend has kept her one remaining store (she had four at one time) post-bankruptcy, and from the sounds of it that remaining place is hanging on by a thread.

Another friend shut down his retail store before the Great Bookstore Collapse of a decade or so ago and went 100 percent online.

I miss what most others miss about used bookstores — leaving the store with a book you didn’t know existed when you came in, or, at least something you hadn’t thought to look for. I was introduced to much of my favorite literature that way.

As to old periodicals and the prices they’re fetching (or asking, anyway) ...

I have a couple of boxes full of LIFE and Collier’s and a few editions of Look and Sunset and some others, mostly dating from the 1940s, some from the ’30s, and quite a few from the ’50s into the ’60s. I bought dozens, scores, maybe a hundred or more, for 15 bucks (as I recall) at a yard sale. The others I rarely paid more than a buck apiece for.

Having seen numerous online listings for old print advertisements I’m left thinking that that is part of what’s fueling this price escalation. Sellers are apparently buying up these old rags and cutting ’em up to sell the ads.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Probably. That's been going on for years, but -- so I've been told -- only with coverless or otherwise incomplete copies. If they've started in now with whole copies, that's when I put an armed guard on the closet where mine are stored. That kind of stuff is about on the same level as chopping up typewriters to make cutesy jewelry, gutting radios to turn the cabinets into wine racks, and turning old appliances into yard planters on my list of things to ban once I become dictator.

One thing I'm thankful for is that the magazines I'm most interested in -- show business trade sheets, lefty/commie opinion journals -- carry litte or no advertising that would appeal to the page-chopper crowd. Although the Daily Worker usually has a half-page or so of ads for electrolysis parlors in Brooklyn that might be fun to hang on the wall of a hair salon.

 

[tonyb]

...

One thing I'm thankful for is that the magazines I'm most interested in -- show business trade sheets, lefty/commie opinion journals -- carry litte or no advertising that would appeal to the page-chopper crowd. Although the Daily Worker usually has a half-page or so of ads for electrolysis parlors in Brooklyn that might be fun to hang on the wall of a hair salon.

I tend to turn up my nose at fauxtiques — reproduction posters, etc. I’d much rather have a ratty original than a fake.

Still, though, if it’s gonna be interior decor at some commercial establishment, just to be torn out in a few years when the latest look turns to the next latest look, then please, use a fake.

 

[3fingers]

If they've started in now with whole copies, that's when I put an armed guard on the closet where mine are stored. That kind of stuff is about on the same level as chopping up typewriters to make cutesy jewelry, gutting radios to turn the cabinets into wine racks, and turning old appliances into yard planters on my list of things to ban once I become dictator.

Too many of the epay and Etsy crowd doesn't care much about destroying old magazines or anything else for that matter. As long as people will fork over 10 bucks or more for a whiskey ad, they will chop up anything that will sell. When they run out of material or the market fades, they will move on to the next thing.

 

[Zombie_61]

...As for bookshops, they have become as rare as rocking horse droppings.

Sadly, I have to agree. In the "uptown" area of my home town, at one time there were six different book stores (used and new, but mostly used) within a half-mile square. Can't find anything here? Check the store up the block, or on the next block north or west. And even though they were all separately owned and operated, the owners seemed to not only know what everyone else had in stock, but were more than happy to send the business in their direction. "Oh, you should check with Mr. Aames over on Greenleaf; he usually has a good selection of mystery novels."

Those stores are long gone. They're now bistros, cigar lounges, or boo-teek shops selling "vintage" clothing that's not too different from the stuff on the racks at Goodwill. There are two comic book stores, but I rarely see customers in them as I'm driving past.

 

[3fingers]

There are two comic book stores, but I rarely see customers in them as I'm driving past.

My youngest son went through a comic book phase for a couple of years. It was always an interesting crowd in our local shop. Kids, businessmen and professionals of all types, goths, gamers, etc., you name it they were all represented.
I was always taken aback by the numbers of customers who were obvious cases of arrested development of some kind. 30 to 60 year old men who appeared reasonably normal, but had stopped at an approximate maturity level of a 12 year old. Harmless enough, but they always made me uneasy.