Of all the vanished spots around Manhattan I’ve devoted myriad posts to, Bleecker Bob’s is probably in the top three, right behind CBGB and the old Cedar Tavern on University Place. This is somewhat ironic in that, while the shop in question was indeed a widely beloved landmark for music geeks of all stripes, the shopping experience at Bleecker Bob’s was frequently somewhat fraught, largely thanks to the titular proprietor’s infamously bad temper. The late Bob Plotnik, who left us in 2018 after complications from an earlier stroke, accrued a storied reputation for screaming at customers and staff alike, establishing an atmosphere of hair-triggered derision that made even browsing in the store often unrestful … or amusing, depending on your sensibility.
Regardless, as first invoked in this ancient post, when I first discovered the place in the early `80s, it became a regular spot for me for decades, even if that meant weathering a storm of spittle-flecked invective from dear old Bob. The sheer volume of vinyl I procured at the West Third Street iteration of Bob’s shop (for a while, he operated a smaller place on nearby MacDougal Street, just off West 8th) was pretty staggering.
In any case, I’ve unspooled countless yarns about Bleecker Bob’s over the years, and a simple Googling ought to bring up more of them than you’d probably care to read. Most of these were penned to document the slow, painful demise of the shop and the rumors of what business was going to replace it on that strip of West Third Street. First reports asserted it would become a — wait for it — Starbucks, but those turned out to be false. Then it was supposedly to be a frozen yogurt place, who even hung a “coming soon” sign in its window. That venture, too, failed to materialize, and it started to seem like the space would become just another dormant storefront.
Eventually, about a year and change after Bleecker Bob’s cleared out, the space became occupied by a Japanese restaurant called Miyabi. In 2015, a friend and I decided to go dine there, resulting in a post I titled “Bento Boxing at Bleecker Bob’s.” As I recall, while the meal was perfectly fine, it was in no way especially distinctive, although my projections may have been tainted by my associations with the address’ former tenant.
Much as with the aforementioned CBGB, while there was fleeting chatter about a new iteration of Bleecker Bob’s opening up somewhere, it unsurprisingly never happened. As I’m prone to laboriously point out, the demand for brick-&-mortar record stores here in the new millennium isn’t exactly robust, least of all for a comparatively niche concern like Bleecker Bob’s. While they indeed hung a Madonna poster in the window during their latter eras, not many people went to Bleecker Bob’s looking for chart-based pop bullshit. You went there for obscure proto-punk vinyl, rarified out-of-print editions, hardcore 7”s, hard-to-find imports, bootlegs and a wide array of badges, patches, t-shirts and posters designed to frighten, provoke and/or witheringly insult the mainstream, … which was precisely how we liked it.
That said, and again, much like CBGB, in its latter years, the shop started to gradually degrade. The stock was no longer quite so well looked after, there wasn’t a lot of turnover and the staff seemed less and less enthused about the prospects of their employment. I remember stopping in on the final day with every intention of buying something to show my support, and finding really nothing I was interested in.
That’s all ancient history, now. Bleecker Bob’s, the shop, closed up in 2013 and Bleecker Bob, the man, passed away in 2018. That was that.
Today, meanwhile, I stopped in for a slice in neighboring Ben’s Pizza on the corner of West Third and MacDougal. It’s not that the slices at Ben’s are anything to write home about (they remain pretty perfunctory, as pizza goes), but they've been holding court on that corner since before I can remember. As I was departing, I glanced up and noticed that Miyabi’s gate was down and that all its signage — both on a hanging sign and above it’s window — had all been spray-painted over.
I found no mention of its closure online, but could Miyabi also have left the building?
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