I remember it as an ancient business on the Jewish Lower East Side. I was doing a project in college, investigating a neighborhood in the big city, trying to figure out history.
(Things would have been different if I had gone to NYU, when each of the streets was part of the campus)
And then, during Fringe, it was the "anchor" business of the neighborhood, like the largest store in a near empty mall. On Ludlow street, there was "The Piano Store", with one baby grand still in the window, and then we tore things down to the beams. I walked into a rehearsal room that was all plywood.
There was a hpster bar called Standard Notions, and Amy's Hat Store, kittykorner across from El Sombrero. (Really).
There were fireplugs that were painted pschedelic colors, and nobody had any cash in their pockets because they were all poor college students, some of which escaped from Barnard without a college degree (or someone like me, who graduated from a lesser school-having already had my nervous breakdown in high school)
