Regular readers — and I am grateful for and amazed by each and every one of you — may remember an entry I posted here back in 2013 regarding a long lost shop on West Broadway in SoHo called SoHoZat, which was simply a great hive of delightfully off-center reading material.
As I mentioned, I used to regularly stop into SoHoZat to check out their enviable collection of underground comics, rock mags, indie zines and the like. This, of course, was back when SoHo was a comparatively low-key haven for artists, and not the exclusive playground for the monied and excruciatingly douchey.
In any case, SoHoZat was forced to shut up shop in the first half of the 90’s. In short order the space it previously held court in became a deli (although there *may* have been another concern in there between it being SoHoZat and it becoming the deli…I can’t be sure). As delis go, it was pretty standard. You could buy yourself an orange soda and bologna sandwich. But weirdo underground comics? Sorry, friend … ya can’t get that stuff no more. Or at least not at 307 West Broadway.
Anyway, I had a job interview way downtown this morning (shhhhh…. more about that later, maybe) and on my walk back uptown afterwards, I found myself on West Broadway. I was shocked to suddenly spot that the deli I was discussing in the graph above had joined SoHoZat in the annals of businesses that formerly operated out of that space. Here’s that space now….
Anyway, I have no grand point to make here. Given the proliferation of expensive condos, hotels and such in the neighborhood, I’m sure this space will swiftly be turned into yet another Liquiteria or Fresh & Co. or CVS or even another goddamn bank. Stay tuned for that, I guess.
But it’s worth repeating how very much this particular strip has changed. Way back when (well, the 1980’s and into the 1990’s), this patch of real estate on West Broadway just above Canal Street was pretty desolate. There was no SoHo Grand, obviously, but rather an open field of gravel. What is now the Dunkin’ Donuts on the northwest corner of West Broadway and Canal was greasy spoon. A few doors down from that was The Trader, which I’ve spoken about before (a great place to procure camo gear, knives and disused munitions … should you be into that sort of thing). There was captivating street art all over the place, and a real sort of frontier sensibility. I found the picture below on Flickr several years back, and it really telegraphs that vibe. Snapped by one Rob Klurfield in 1984 (albeit wrongly identified as Little Italy), here’s West Broadway, just north of Canal Street, looking west from the east side of the street. Today, that lot is where the SoHo Grand stands. As for the (abandoned?) baby buggy,….I’m sure there’s a disquieting story there.
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