Fret not, graffiti fans… this is not an obit nor portentous lament. It's just a rumination on a photo I took.
As I walked south on West Broadway, this morning, heading towards work, it struck me how astonishing it seems the Scrap Yard is still hanging on after all these years. If memory serves, the place was originally called, ahem, Bomb The System … this being prior to the age wherein such monikers riled the sensibilities of the easily alarmed. An endearingly tenacious hive of street art in a neighborhood that ceded its bohemian character decades earlier to become a staid and irretrievably exclusive enclave for monied douchebags, Scrap Yard still flies its freak flag in retina-burning colors and unruly fonts.
Despite being an avid fan of all manner of street art, I feel somewhat regretful to admit that I’ve never spent a thin red dime in Scrap Yard, although I did routinely blow wads of cash at its (I think) sibling operation across the street, that being underground comic emporium SoHoZat (which I wrote about here and then again here). Bomb The System … true to its name … was for the bombers, i.e. taggers and graffiti writers of all stripes. I can only imagine that they changed the name to Scrap Yard in the wake of 2001, but that’s just my speculation.
Once nestled between a greasy spoon diner on the corner of Canal and the vacant lot left behind by the razing of The Church of St. Alphonsus Liguori, the shop that became Scrap Yard has seen massive changes on its home strip of West Broadway. SoHoZat across the way vanished in the mid-1990s. It was replaced by a deli of no great distinction for a while, but is now an animal shelter, of all things. The vacant lot is now home to the sprawling SoHo Grand hotel. The greasy spoon on the corner became a Dunkin Donuts. West Broadway’s fortunes ebb and flow -- and there are more than a few empty storefronts and vacant restaurant spaces, not unlike the rest of the city – but somehow Scarp Yard has managed to stay put. I frequently wish its furtive, niche clientele would leave more of a mark in the surrounding neighborhood, but those days are long gone, I guess. There’s precious little street art left in SoHo, comparatively speaking.
Anyway, like I said, I have no news to share or spread about Scrap Yard. Long may it continue, as far as I’m concerned.
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