Down the Way from the K Cafe

I can't put a specific date on it, but I'm inclined to say that the Kmart on Astor Place opened up sometime in 1996, but I honestly don't remember voluntarily setting foot in the place until U2 held a bizarre press conference there in 1997 to kick off their ultimately flawed PopMart tour (to this day, I can't help but think back to them playing their somewhat anemic b-side, "Holy Joe" in the area where greeting cards are now sold, just north of the cash registers). Like Kmart's very placement on Astor Place itself, the event was fairly botched and ill-considered.

I didn't do any genuine shopping in that Kmart until I had kids (opting instead to buy my sundry housewares at places like Surprise Surprise on Third Avenue between 12th and 13th). But, once babies were on our scene, I was regularly dispatched to Kmart to procure diapers and accompanying gear in bulk.

Despite seeing the odd punk rock luminary in its expansive aisles (I've run into both Richard Hell and Jon Spencer within its walls), I've never warmed to the Astor Place Kmart, and I sincerely doubt I ever will. If they closed it up tomorrow, there's nothing about it I'd miss. Well, there is maybe one thing...

On the second floor of the southeast corner of the building (which, of course, used to house the department store Wanamakers, way back before my time), there's a chamber with big, beautiful picture windows that face east and south. When Kmart first opened there, that space was used as the "K Cafe." There used to be a clip on YouTube of a news report, suggesting that this little wing of the Kmart stayed true to the neighborhood's bohemian roots, and it would feature art shows and the like. Sadly, that video is no longer available, but you can see a little bit of the K Cafe in this NYU student film from 1996.

Evidently, the K Cafe didn't really take off, and it became their audio/video department for a while. The last time I was there, it looked like the place where cut-out CDs, holiday DVDs, and budget electronics went to die. Being up there is fairly depressing.

That said, the views from what was the K Cafe are still striking. If you're there with a device that takes pictures, it's hard not to succumb to the temptation of snapping a shot. I took that one up top of my kids looking south down Lafayette Street in 2011.

Last night, however, I was perusing around Flickr, and I stumble upon the shot below by one Ethan Wolff (click here to see more of his excellent photographs of NYC). I'm guessing he shot this particular photograph from that same second floor vista in the K Cafe fairly soon after the place opened. The parking lot on Astor Place is still pictured, the diner on the right hand side is just that -- still a diner and not yet a Starbuck's. Across the way, it's still Barnes & Noble (and not yet the Walgreen's, although it would morph into Astor Place Wines & Liquors between those two incarnations, if memory serves). Click on the photo to enlarge...

I've spoken at great length in the past about how I feel about Astor Place, basically how once upon a time in pretty much symbolized the gateway to everything I held dear. As we all know, Astor Place is shortly to get a radical facelift (this on top of having a couple of horrible structures already erected on it). As such, the Astor Place that I know and love will probably not be recognizable as such for much longer.

As a quick aside, the bus stop pictured above in Wolff's photo at the bottom of the image also made a fleeting cameo in Glenn O'Brien's "Downtown 81" (see below) in a scene wherein Jean Michel Basquiat is accosted by a foppish David McDermott. The acting is wooden and terrible, but it's an interesting snippet. When this scene was filmed, the diner on that corner hadn't even opened yet. Today, once again, it's yet another entirely needless Starbuck's.

Comments

[Michael]

I still go to Surprise Surprise. The staff there is quite helpful (if you ask for help.) Meanwhile so long Astor Place!

[Beatricethecat]

Whenever I'm in Kmart with someone who has never been there I take them to that window. Its such an amazing view! I do think it opened in 1996 - I was in the UK at the time and I remember seeing this segment where Ruby Wax interviews Helen Mirren. At the very end they stop at Kmart and are as dumbfounded as we all were that they'd put a Kmart on Astor Place. They also walk around a rather nondescript NYU land, but Tower Records makes an appearance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoxLkHCYRzM

I can't imagine anyone has ever warmed up to that place, its weird being on three floors and you can never find anything. I usually forget its even there when I'm trying to find something and use it as a last resort.

[rick mcginnis]

My single vivid memory of the diner (now Starbucks) at Astor Place is from the '80s, and the girlfriend who didn't heed my pleas to stop sucking up the free booze at the gallery opening we were attending uptown. (She was trying to keep up with me - it was a feminist thing, I think - but I had a good 60 or so lbs on her, and am Irish to boot.) She got all frisky, then woozy, on the subway ride back downtown, and proceeded to upchuck all over my Doc Martens right in from of appalled diners in the big window seats in the diner. Good times.

[Alex in NYC]

My lasting memory of the pre-Starbuck's diner was that they just did. not. give. a. fuck.

I remember sitting their one afternoon with my friend Rob and, for some reason, we ordered a pair of chocolate shakes. The delivered them, but without straws. We asked if we could have a couple of straws. The guy took about ten minutes getting them, came back, and from the distance of about seven feet, blithely tossed them on our table like an afterthought. We couldn't stop laughing.

[James Taylor]

Another terrific post on what is surely the only pleasure to be derived from setting foot in K-Mart.

I have vivid memories of watching that Helen Mirren interview back home in England, probably for the sole reason of prolonging a school night in order to catch the merest glimpse of recent footage of NYC. Ruby Wax was an annoying TV personality but on the BBC her brazen Americanness stuck out like Cool Whip on crumpets. Seeing this again now her loud-mouthed brashness seems completely normal, and not because I now live in New York, but because I think people in general have become more like that. I'm more struck by Mirren's painful Englishness.

In Ethan's photo you can see one of Paula Scher's posters on the side of Joe's Pub. Walgreen's was still Barnes & Noble when I moved here... I must have missed Astor Wines' residency in that building.

[Dean Spicoli]

In Southern California (some say there's no place as bad as) Kmart is the best place to buy flannel shirts.

[greg]

I really love this sentence you wrote about Astor Place: "basically how once upon a time in pretty much symbolized the gateway to everything I held dear".
It totally applies to me to...and I remember thinking of Astor Place as the door to the east village and to the best fun I was having in NYC in the 90's....arriving at St Marks and 3rd was a joy, just thinking of all the adventures awaiting for me...
GA
New York in the 1990's Photo Archives
http://galessandrini.blogspot.fr

[Uncle Waltie]

K Cafe was one of the most serene EV vantage points on a snowy winter's day. I spent many a morning there overlooking Astor Place and Cooper Union, which turned into a picturesque winter wonderland. The staff was always very nice and let you sit there for hours over a cup of coffee.